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Towards an ISO Standard for the Annotation of Quantification

This paper presents an approach to the annotation of quantification that is being developed in preparation of the specification of a quantification annotation scheme, as part of an effort of the International Organisation for Standardisation ISO to define interoperable semantic annotation schemes. The paper focuses on the theoretical basis for an ISO standard annotation scheme for quantification phenomena. It is argued that the combination of Generalized Quantifier Theory, neo-Davidsonian event-bases semantics, Discourse Representation Theory, and the ISO Principles of semantic annotation forms a powerful and solid foundation for defining annotations of quantification phenomena with an abstract and a concrete syntax and a compositional semantics. The coverage of the proposed annotation scheme includes both count and mass NP quantifiers, as well as quantification by NPs with syntactically and semantically complex heads with internal quantification and scoping structures, such as inverse linking by prepositional phrases and relative clauses.