THE NOUN PHRASE - HOW TO APPLY A LOGICO-S EMANTIC CONCEPT TO DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE

The Noun Phrase: How to apply a logico-semantic concept to documentary practice. The present article describes the main decisions that have to be made when indexing large texts. After recalling the distinctions between human and automatic indexing and between free, controlled and natural language in indexing, the basic distinction between predicati ve and referential text parts is applied to German texts. The Noun Phr ase is defined as the minimal referential text unit. The logical natur e of descriptor terms is pointed out and compared to the logical value of noun phrases; hereby the question is raised whether all noun phras es (i.e. text units referring to objects) are good descriptor terms (i .e. expressions referring to objects which are classes). In addition, various tools designed to help the user of an information system opera ting with natural language noun phrase indexing are presented and the advantages and disadvantages of indexing systems compared to controlle d-language systems are discussed. Further we define the anaphore and d emonstrate the usefulness of automatic recognition of the antecedents of anaphoric possessive determiners and personal pronouns, which allow s to calculate the frequency of Noun Phrases in texts. Finally, morpho logical and syntactical rules are established to identify the antecede nt noun phrase of anaphoric pronouns.