The resolution of quantificational ambiguities in the TENDUM system

A method of handling the ambiguity and vagueness which usually surrounds a nounverb relation is described. The complex of semantic phenomena associated with this relation is called 'quantification'. It is argued that in natural language sentences some aspects of quantification are often left open, and that a semantic analysis of quantification in a model-theoretic framework should therefore use semantic representations in which these aspects may also be left open. This paper describes a suitable basis for an analysis procedure that leads to those and only those interpretations that are relevant in a given domain of discourse and does so in a computationally efficient manner.