The paper "Interpretation as Abduction" by Jerry R. Hobbs, Mark Stickel, Paul Martin, and Douglas Edwards, published in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International, introduces an approach to abductive inference developed in the TACITUS project. This approach simplifies the conceptualization of text interpretation and extends its capabilities to solve various local pragmatics problems, including reference resolution, compound nominal interpretation, syntactic ambiguity, and metonymy resolution. The authors describe how abductive inference can be used to derive the logical form of a sentence and the constraints imposed by predicates on their arguments, allowing for coercions. They also present a scheme for abductive inference that integrates syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and discuss the use of a type hierarchy to control abduction and prevent inconsistencies. The paper includes examples to illustrate the application of their method and outlines future directions for research, such as extending the interpretation processes to handle lexical ambiguity, quantifier scope ambiguity, and metaphor interpretation.The paper "Interpretation as Abduction" by Jerry R. Hobbs, Mark Stickel, Paul Martin, and Douglas Edwards, published in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International, introduces an approach to abductive inference developed in the TACITUS project. This approach simplifies the conceptualization of text interpretation and extends its capabilities to solve various local pragmatics problems, including reference resolution, compound nominal interpretation, syntactic ambiguity, and metonymy resolution. The authors describe how abductive inference can be used to derive the logical form of a sentence and the constraints imposed by predicates on their arguments, allowing for coercions. They also present a scheme for abductive inference that integrates syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and discuss the use of a type hierarchy to control abduction and prevent inconsistencies. The paper includes examples to illustrate the application of their method and outlines future directions for research, such as extending the interpretation processes to handle lexical ambiguity, quantifier scope ambiguity, and metaphor interpretation.