We develop a framework for formalizing semantic construction within grammars expressed in typed feature structure logics, including {\sc hpsg}. The approach provides an alternative to the lambda calculus; it maintains much of the desirable flexibility of unification-based approaches to composition, while constraining the allowable operations in order to capture basic generalizations and improve maintainability.
@inproceedings{copestake:etal:2001,
author = {Ann Copestake and Alex Lascarides and Dan Flickinger},
year = {2001},
title = {An Algebra for Semantic Construction in Constraint-based
Grammars},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 39th
Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
(ACL/EACL 2001)},
pages = {132--139},
address = {Toulouse}
}