finite-state-semantics

Finite state possible world semantics using FOMA

Installation and Usage

Using this code requires the foma finite-state toolkit, which is available here. Foma is also available in the official repositories of recent versions of Ubuntu and some other Linux distros, and can be installed via apt-get or other package managers. For example, on Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install foma-bin

Once you have foma installed, it can be invoked to read and interact with the models. The source command loads a file from disk into foma.

$ foma
(some text will appear here)
foma[0]: source rooth.fst
(some more text)
foma[0]: regex Example11;
3.3 kB. 78 states, 169 arcs, 3648 paths.
foma[1]: view
foma[1]: print dot > example11.dot
foma[1]: exit

The view command opens up a graphics window that displays the FSM. This requires the appropriate packages to be installed, depending on your system (see the foma GitHub page for more details).

Files

There are a few different files included in this repository. Each file stands alone as an example implementation of finite state semantics, with a focus on a particular concept.

• rooth.fst - a re-implementation of Rooth's original finite state intensional semantics
• presupposition.fst - an implementation of some basic presuppositions
• plurals.fst - an implementation of finite state semantics with presupposition that allows for the representation of plurals and plural definites