From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Fri Dec 18 14:54:16 1992 Return-Path: Received: from server.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA06823; Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:54:16 EST Received: by server.uga.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA19210; Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:54:10 -0500 Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12073; Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:54:09 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9212181954.AA12073@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Test message - Please ignore To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:54:08 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] This is a test mailing to just a few of the participants, plus a number of known invalid addresses. If no problems arise, DG will be opened for use soon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Fri Dec 18 14:59:16 1992 Return-Path: Received: from server.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA06880; Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:59:16 EST Received: by server.uga.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA19233; Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:59:15 -0500 Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12137; Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:59:14 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9212181959.AA12137@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Second test message - Please ignore To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 14:59:13 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] This is the second test message. DG is not yet open for business. -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : Verbum caro :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : factum est :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : et habitavit :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : in nobis... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. Log available by anon. FTP from ai.uga.edu, directory /ai.natural.language. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Fri Dec 18 22:17:12 1992 Return-Path: Received: from server.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA08592; Fri, 18 Dec 92 22:17:12 EST Received: by server.uga.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA20075; Fri, 18 Dec 92 22:17:11 -0500 Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12857; Fri, 18 Dec 92 22:17:10 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9212190317.AA12857@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Test mailing - Please ignore To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 22:17:09 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] This is a test of the dependency grammar mailing list. -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. Log available by anon. FTP from ai.uga.edu, directory /ai.natural.language. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun1.ai.uga.edu Sun Dec 20 22:47:33 1992 Received: from aisun1.ai.uga.edu by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA14659; Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:47:32 EST Received: by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12411; Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:47:31 EST Return-Path: Received: by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12407; Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:47:29 EST From: mcovingt@aisun1.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9212210347.AA12407@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Subject: ** New dependency grammar mailing list ** To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:47:28 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: OR A new mailing list has been set up for discussion of dependency grammar and related issues. Basic information follows. Let me know if I can assist you in any way. - Michael Covington, mcovingt@ai.uga.edu (If you received this message directly, you are already a subscriber.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic information about mailing list DG ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The mailing list "DG" is for discussion of dependency grammar and related matters. It was set up by Michael Covington at the suggestion of Richard Hudson. DG is unmoderated. Any message mailed to DG@AI.UGA.EDU will automatically be distributed to all participants. When a message arrives from DG, you have two choices: - You can reply directly to the sender (that's what happens if you hit "reply" or "r" in most mail-reading programs); - You can mail a reply to DG@AI.UGA.EDU to have it distributed to all participants. (This is usually preferable.) (Every mailing from DG ends with a footnote summarizing these two options.) To subscribe to DG, or for other assistance, email MCOVINGT@AI.UGA.EDU. Copies of all mailings sent through DG are available by anonymous FTP from AI.UGA.EDU, directory /ai.natural.language, file dg.log. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- List of subscribers as of December 20, 1992 Michael Covington Richard Hudson sag@csli.stanford.edu guy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk laurie.bauer@vuw.ac.nz norman@logcam.co.uk hajicova@cspguk11.bitnet phopkins@sol.uvic.ca uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk rcj@caen.engin.umich.edu joshi@linc.cis.upenn.edu duda@zisw.wtza-berlin.dbp.de "Mark Liberman" lobin@lili1.uni-bielefeld.de jmiller@cogsci.ed.ac.uk davidm@cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk "bneving@bbn.com" kpuba@hujivm1.bitnet panevova@cspguk11.bitnet pollard@ling.ohio-state.edu rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu rohrer@adler.ims.uni-stuttgart.de A.Rosta@ucl.ac.uk sgall@cspguk11.bitnet hls@ccl.umist.ac.uk t042270@uhccmvs.bitnet voutilainen@cc.helsinki.fi Peter Hellwig manyman@cc.helsinki.fi fddeane@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu uclynsg@ucl.ac.uk "Michael C. McCord (Phone 914-784-7808)" "Dan Maxwell" "Richard Sharman, IBM UK" "Henning Lobin" "Ted Briscoe" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun1.ai.uga.edu Sun Dec 20 22:51:44 1992 Received: from aisun1.ai.uga.edu by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA14665; Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:51:43 EST Received: by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12426; Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:51:41 EST Return-Path: Received: by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12422; Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:51:40 EST From: mcovingt@aisun1.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9212210351.AA12422@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Dependency grammar - Some questions To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 22:51:40 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: OR Here are some topics that may help us get the discussion started... (1) What, if anything, does dependency grammar (DG) have to do with Chomsky's new "minimalist" theory? (2) In recent GB theory there seems to be a determination to define all grammatical relations in terms of tree structure. To what extent has this led to the positing of tree structure that is otherwise unmotivated? (Insofar as this has happened, it's an argument that dependency grammar -- which defines the grammatical relations directly -- would be simpler.) (3) Bechraoui has pointed out that there are really two distinctions between constituency and dependency theories: (a) Do you use dependency arcs or constituency trees to represent structure? (b) Do you take structure as basic or relations and functions as basic? (4) What is the dependency analog of ID/LP rules? (5) What dependency parsing algorithms are there? (I know that Norman Fraser is doing research on this now.) Looking forward to hearing from you... -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : Verbum caro :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : factum est :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : et habitavit :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : in nobis... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Sun Dec 20 23:49:00 1992 Return-Path: Received: from server.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12614; Sun, 20 Dec 92 23:49:00 EST Received: by server.uga.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA23110; Sun, 20 Dec 92 23:48:59 -0500 Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA14792; Sun, 20 Dec 92 23:48:58 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9212210448.AA14792@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Brief scheduled outage To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 23:48:57 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] The machine that services the DG mailing list will be down for about 8 hours during the evening/night of December 21-22. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Mon Dec 21 04:17:50 1992 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12940; Mon, 21 Dec 92 04:17:50 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Mon, 21 Dec 1992 09:17:32 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <00558-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Mon, 21 Dec 1992 09:13:17 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA28708; Mon, 21 Dec 1992 09:13:15 GMT Message-Id: <9212210913.AA28708@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: DG and GB Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 09:13:15 +0000 From: "R.HudsonIBM-850" 21 December 1992 Can I pick up on Michael Covington's second question, about the possible redundancy of tree structure in GB. I've been struck recently by the similarities between GB `government' and DG `dependency'. (Notice that GB government is NOT the same as DG government, because A can GB-govern B without having any effect on B's inflectional category, i.e. without DG-governing it.) Roughly speaking, if A depends on B then B GB-governs A. The most important difference between GB-government and dependency seems to me to involve adjuncts/modifiers, which aren't GB-governed but do depend on other words. Another difference stems from the role of phrases in GB, so if A depends on B, then B GB-governs not only B but also the phrase of which it's head. A third difference is that if A GB-governs B, then A also GB-governs B's specifier. (This is a very peculiar claim, in my opinion, which seems to create at least as many problems as it solves.) Any of these differences between GB and DG deserves some attention as a possible way of distinguishing between GB and DG, but they shouldn't obscure the basic similarity between GB- government and dependency. Since GB-government is an innovation of the 80's in GB, it is clearly a major shift in the direction of DG. Now if you push behind the notation, one consequence of the recognition of GB-government is that GB already *generates* something remarkably similar to a dependency structure along with the various X- bar structures, a `government-structure'. Admittedly this structure is derived from the constituent structure, but it's formally available thanks to the definition of GB-government. And more importantly, it's referred to directly in a lot of principles of the theory, and seems to be playing an increasingly important part as the theory develops. Is it just a matter of time before someone realises that it would be possible to reverse the relations between government-structure and constituent-structure? Then the government-structures will be generated directly (e.g. as projections of lexical valencies), and constituent structures will be derivable from them. When that point is reached, GB will in effect have become (a very sophisticated version of) DG. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @uga.cc.uga.edu:PANEVOVA@CSPGUK11.BITNET Mon Dec 21 08:32:04 1992 Return-Path: <@uga.cc.uga.edu:PANEVOVA@CSPGUK11.BITNET> Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA13162; Mon, 21 Dec 92 08:32:04 EST Message-Id: <9212211332.AA13162@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1320; Mon, 21 Dec 92 08:31:37 EST Received: from CSPGUK11.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 9591; Mon, 21 Dec 92 08:31:37 EST Received: from CSPGUK11 (PANEVOVA) by CSPGUK11.BITNET (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9020; Mon, 21 Dec 92 12:26:23 CET Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 12:22:58 CET From: PANEVOVA%CSPGUK11.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu To: dg@ai.uga.edu The dependency mailing list caused great troubles in our e-mail disks. Now it seems to be O.K.(after clearing of our disks during last week). I hope now the connection will function well. Marry Christmas Jarmila Panevova --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ltb!maxwell@relay.nluug.nl Tue Dec 22 09:36:01 1992 Received: from sun4nl.nluug.nl by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA00877; Tue, 22 Dec 92 09:36:01 EST Received: from ltb by sun4nl.nluug.nl via EUnet id AA17205 (5.65b/CWI-3.3); Tue, 22 Dec 1992 15:35:56 +0100 Return-Path: X-Organisation: BSO/Language Technology BV X-Address: P.O. Box 543 X-City: NL-3740 AM Baarn X-Country: The Netherlands X-Phone: (+31) 2154 84411 X-Fax: (+31) 2154 16781 Received: from lt5 by ltb.ltb.bso.nl (5.65b/LT-1.0) id AA14001; Tue, 22 Dec 92 15:11:47 +0100 Received: by lt5.ltb.bso.nl (5.65b/LT-1.0) id AA20349; Tue, 22 Dec 92 15:11:45 +0100 From: maxwell@ltb.bso.nl Message-Id: <9212221411.AA20349@lt5.ltb.bso.nl> Subject: questions To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 15:11:43 MET X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Michael raises some questions about dependency grammar. I plead ignorance on (1), (2), and (5), but feel qualified to provide some answers to (3) and (4). "(3) Bechraoui has pointed out that there are really two distinctions between constituency and dependency theories: (a) Do you use dependency arcs or constituency trees to represent structure? I would definitely not use constituency trees, since then I think you would be doing some kind of constituency grammar. Actually some kinds of constituency grammar are not that far from dependency grammar. Carl Pollard was quoted as saying that HPSG is almost a dependency grammar, and this is to some extent true for any constituent grammar which makes use of X-bar theory. As for dependency arcs, as used in Dick Hudson's word grammar, for example, these appear to me to be a notational variant of what I'm used to working with, namely dependency trees. At least it is not obvious to me what the empirical differences between them are. (b) Do you take structure as basic or relations and functions as basic?" I think you need a combination of both: arcs or branches to indicate structure, but usually with some kind of label to indicate function. There is then less structure than in constituency trees, but somewhat more function marking. (4) What is the dependency analog of ID/LP rules? linearization rules which are based either on the governor-dependent relationship or the sibling relationship between nodes with the same governor. -- This is in constrast to ID/LP rules which make exclusive use of sibling relationships in GPSG, but in HPSG there is also a second kind of LP rule, based on a grammatical relations hierarchy. Dan Maxwell@ltb.bso.nl --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Tue Dec 22 16:29:31 1992 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA01767; Tue, 22 Dec 92 16:29:31 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:29:26 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <06680-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:29:23 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA17024; Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:29:21 GMT Message-Id: <9212222129.AA17024@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Notation Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 21:29:21 +0000 From: "R.HudsonIBM-850" Dan Maxwell raises the question, inter alia, of notation. Is there any empirical difference between dependency arcs and dependency trees? Since he mentions me as an arc-user, I should react. a. I agree that in principle there's no difference, provided we make the usual assumptions about possible dependency structures (and in particular, that no word has more than one head). E.g. \ : \ : \ ------> --------> : \ book about linguistics : : : \ or: : : \ = : : : : \ /---\ /------- : : \ | | | | : : : | V | V book about linguistics book about linguistics (Graphic substance leaves something to be desired in both notations when you're aiming at a simple DOS file!) b. However the picture changes (literally) if, like me, you think there are cases where more complex structures are needed, involving double-headed words or even inter-dependent words. Then you obviously can't use the vertical dimension to show dependency because if A and B are inter-dependent they'd each need to be higher than the other. I think this is what's needed in relative clauses, where the relative pronoun or the antecedent noun is both the head of the relative verb, and also one of its dependents. Arcs or flat arrows can show such relations, but I don't think dependency trees can. /---------- | /--------\ | --------> || /--\ || <-------- || | ||| <----- |V V ||V book I bought = book I bought The empirical question, then, is whether such analyses really are needed in order to deal with the data (in this case, relative clauses). If you're convinced they aren't, then you'll prefer dependency trees, as a more restrictive notation. That's why I do believe there's an empirical difference between the notations. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Mon Jan 4 11:51:40 1993 Return-Path: Received: from server.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA24506; Mon, 4 Jan 93 11:51:40 EST Received: by server.uga.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA13240; Mon, 4 Jan 93 11:51:37 -0500 Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA03968; Mon, 4 Jan 93 11:51:36 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9301041651.AA03968@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: New year greetings To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 11:51:36 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] There are now a total of 73 subscribers to DG, the dependency grammar mailing list. Now let's get some discussion going... Happy new year to all. -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg Tue Jan 5 04:10:18 1993 Return-Path: Received: from nuscc.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA28006; Tue, 5 Jan 93 04:10:18 EST Received: by nuscc.nus.sg (5.65/1.34) id AA01534; Tue, 5 Jan 93 17:09:34 +0800 Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 17:09:34 +0800 From: ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg (Alain Polguere) Message-Id: <9301050909.AA01534@nuscc.nus.sg> To: Subject: Translation of Tesniere Dear DGs, It seems to me that there is no English translation of Tesniere's _Elements_de_Syntaxe_Structurale_. Is that right? I would love to have one (for teaching purposes). AP --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Wed Jan 6 05:38:05 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA02622; Wed, 6 Jan 93 05:38:05 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 10:36:42 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <14146-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 10:36:39 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA44077; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 10:36:37 GMT Message-Id: <9301061036.AA44077@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Translation of Tesniere Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 10:36:37 +0000 From: "R.HudsonIBM-850" Alain Polguere seems to me to be right - there is no English translation of Tesniere, and there ought to be one (perhaps abbreviated?). I have contacts with publishers. Can anyone suggest a good person to do such a translation? The ideal person would be an experienced English-French translator who could also relate Tesniere's work to more recent developments in English-language syntactic theory. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Wed Jan 6 06:09:27 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA02654; Wed, 6 Jan 93 06:09:27 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 11:08:52 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <14621-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 11:08:48 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA98055; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 11:08:47 GMT Message-Id: <9301061108.AA98055@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Dependency statistics Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 11:08:46 +0000 From: "R.HudsonIBM-850" I've just been doing some work on the statistics of dependencies in texts, which turn out to be rather interesting. After analysing 5 different very short texts (each about 180 words +/- 60), I'm prepared to hazard the following generalisations about any written English text of at least this length: - 71% (+/- 8%) of all dependents will follow their heads; - 59% (+/- 5%) of dependents will be complements; - 8% (+/- 4% of dependents will be subjects; - 67% (+/- 3% !! ) of dependents will be next to their heads; - 79% (+/- 4% !! ) of dependents will be no more than one word away from their heads; - at no point in the chain of words will there be more than 6 `open' dependencies, i.e. dependencies for which a head or dependent is expected but not yet found on a left-right parse (this needs some explanation, but I think it makes sense; it can actually be made more interesting by weighting the dependencies as complements, adjuncts, etc.). This figure varies considerably between texts, according to their syntactic complexity. For simple texts the upper limit is 4 and most words have no more than one. Notice how precise some of these figures are - and therefore how easy it should be to refute them. I'm not sure that I really believe them myself, but that should increase your confidence in them since I was the analyst who produced them. It would be very interesting to have similar figures for other languages. I have analysed two similar texts in German and found: - contrary to expectations, a small majority of words follow their heads; - the proportion of complement and subject dependencies is within the same range as for English; - the proportion of words that are next to their heads or only one word away from their heads is about 5% less than the minimum for English - i.e. German dependencies are less closely tied to physical proximity than English ones are; - the number of open dependencies is higher than in English - i.e. processing load for the German reader is greater than for the English reader. (This is a rather mind-blowing conclusion, and needs to be checked carefully before being announced as a discovery!) Needless to say, the analyses reported are based on my own grammar (on the whole as reported in my "English Word Grammar" 1990), some of which are controvertial - e.g. I take a determiner as the head of the accompanying common noun. (I think I have some weak statistical support for this analysis, in fact.) You have to read the figures with these assumptions in mind - e.g. if you're sure that determiners depend on their common noun, then the figures for complements and head-first have to be reduced by between 10 and 20%. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has similar figures they'd be willing to share with me, or to send more details to anyone who'd like to examine other texts. I have a Prolog system for manually parsing texts and counting the results which may be helpful. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Edmund.Grimley-Evans@cl.cam.ac.uk Wed Jan 6 06:37:47 1993 Return-Path: Received: from swan.cl.cam.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA02685; Wed, 6 Jan 93 06:37:47 EST Received: from duncan.cl.cam.ac.uk (user etg10 (rfc931)) by swan.cl.cam.ac.uk with SMTP (PP-6.4) to cl; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 11:37:22 +0000 Received: by duncan.cl.cam.ac.uk (5.57/SMI-3.0DEV3) id AA01571; Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:37:09 GMT Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:37:09 GMT From: Edmund.Grimley-Evans@cl.cam.ac.uk Message-Id: <9301061137.AA01571@duncan.cl.cam.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Subject: Dependency statistics How frequent were discontinuous dependency trees? (The strongest and simplest definition of continuity that I know of is that the set of (indirect) dependents of every word should be a contiguous set of words in the sentence. I understand that there are also weaker ways of defining continuity.) ======================================================================= Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS Edmund.Grimley-Evans@cl.cam.ac.uk ======================================================================= --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @sun.central-services.umist.ac.uk:harold@language-linguistics.umist.ac.uk Wed Jan 6 06:38:47 1993 Return-Path: <@sun.central-services.umist.ac.uk:harold@language-linguistics.umist.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA02696; Wed, 6 Jan 93 06:38:47 EST Via: uk.ac.umist.central-services.sun; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 11:38:16 +0000 Received: from honshu.ccl.umist.ac.uk by cclsun.ccl.umist.ac.uk; Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:38:07 GMT From: Harold Somers Message-Id: <4100.9301061138@honshu.ccl.umist.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Translation of Tesniere To: uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk (R.HudsonIBM-850) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:38:04 GMT Cc: dg@ai.uga.edu In-Reply-To: <9301061036.AA44077@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk>; from "R.HudsonIBM-850" at Jan 6, 93 10:36 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] > > > Alain Polguere seems to me to be right - there is no English translation of > Tesniere, and there ought to be one (perhaps abbreviated?). I have contacts I would have thought that it would be better to have a detailed commentary on Elements, with extensive extracts, rather than a faithful translation. There's so much in there that is naive, wrong or out-dated. 10 years ago, when I was doing research for my PhD, I wrote [2] a short paper (11 pages) discussing in detail the parts of Elements which I thought werte directly relevant to Valnecy and Case grammar (the topic of my thesis), viz. Book A 'Preamble' Ch1-6 (pp 11-20) Book B 'Structure of the verb phrase' Ch 48-62 (pp 102-143) Book D 'Valency' (pp 238-282 partim) I ignored all the stuff on 'translation', which I - and earlier commentators like Baum [1] - took to be very similar to the early ideas of Chomsky; this wasnt of interest to me at the time, so I skipped over it. Being a fairly thorough young chap (those WERE the days), I chased up quite a lot of reviews of Elements as well (including one in Hebrew which I never managed to get translated! - sadly, I dont seem to be able to lay my hands on my bulging file of Tesniere-related stuff), and also managed to find copies of the two non-posthumous publications [3,4]. If anyone is interested in this old paper of mine (I wrote it in 1982), please let me know your surface address, and I will send it to you. > with publishers. Can anyone suggest a good person to do such a translation? > The ideal person would be an experienced English-French translator who could Better would be a French-English translator! :-) References [1] R. Baum. 1976. Dependenzgrammatik: Tesnie`re's Modell der Sprachbeschreibung in wissenschaftlicher und kritischer Sicht (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fu"r Romanische Philologie 151). Tu"bingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. [2] H.L. Somers. 1982. Lucien Tesnie`re: a review of his 'oeuvre'. Report No. 82/8, Centre for Computational Linguistics, UMIST, Manchester. [3] L. Tesnie`re. 1934. Comment construire un syntaxe. Bulletin de la Faculte' des Lettres de Strasbourg 12, 219-229. [4] L. Tesnie`re. 1953. Esquisse d'une syntaxe structurale. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @sun.central-services.umist.ac.uk:harold@language-linguistics.umist.ac.uk Wed Jan 6 06:47:24 1993 Return-Path: <@sun.central-services.umist.ac.uk:harold@language-linguistics.umist.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA02708; Wed, 6 Jan 93 06:47:24 EST Via: uk.ac.umist.central-services.sun; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 11:46:57 +0000 Received: from honshu.ccl.umist.ac.uk by cclsun.ccl.umist.ac.uk; Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:46:51 GMT From: Harold Somers Message-Id: <4143.9301061146@honshu.ccl.umist.ac.uk> Subject: valency of nouns To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:46:49 GMT X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Can anyone mail me a bibliography on the subject of nominal valency. I did some work on this a few years ago, and so have a few articles up to about 7 years ago, the latest being a manuscript by Jane Grimshaw (Nouns, Arguments and Adjuncts, May 1986). I wonder if that was ever published anywhere? A more up-to-date bibliography would be much appreciated. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From bnevin@ccb.bbn.com Wed Jan 6 09:15:50 1993 Return-Path: Received: from BBN.COM by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA03097; Wed, 6 Jan 93 09:15:50 EST Message-Id: <9301061415.AA03097@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from CCB.BBN.COM by BBN.COM id aa02577; 6 Jan 93 9:11 EST Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 09:07:15 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: determiner as head To: dg%ai.uga.edu@bbn.com Cc: bn@ccb.bbn.com I have some independent support for your analysis of the determiner as the head of the noun phrase. In operator grammar, "the" is analyzed as a noun in apposition to the following noun, by way of a reduction from "that which is": The family doctor is fast disappearing. That which is a family doctor is fast disappearing. Compare other appositional constructions, viz.: My friend John My friend who is John My friend the doctor My friend who is the doctor For discussion and supporting argument, see Z. Harris, _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_, Wiley (1982), 236-243. > From: "R.HudsonIBM-850" > Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 11:08:46 +0000 > Needless to say, the analyses reported are based on my own grammar (on > the whole as reported in my "English Word Grammar" 1990), some of > which are controvertial - e.g. I take a determiner as the head of the > accompanying common noun. (I think I have some weak statistical > support for this analysis, in fact.) You have to read the figures with Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rsharman@vnet.ibm.com Wed Jan 6 09:53:34 1993 Return-Path: Received: from vnet.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA03237; Wed, 6 Jan 93 09:53:34 EST Message-Id: <9301061453.AA03237@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from WINVMD by vnet.ibm.com (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8885; Wed, 06 Jan 93 09:51:35 EST Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 14:52:37 GMT From: rsharman@vnet.ibm.com To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Dependency Statistics After some discussions with Dick Hudson a few weeks ago I became interested in the question of how adjacent and non-adjacent words might be related, and whether it was possible to shed some light on the (thorny) question of whether a phrase-structure or a dependency-graph representation of the word associations in a sentence was better. It occurred to me that some techniques currently in use in Language Modelling for Speech Recognition might come in useful, so I proposed the following problem: The WORD PAIR ASSOCIATION problem: what is the average degree of association between pairs of words, taken over the language as a whole, when the constraint is applied that the pairs must be adjacent words? This generalises to: The GENERAL WORD ASSOCIATION problem: what is the average degree of association between pairs of words, taken over the language as a whole, when the pairs are taken at arbitrary distances (one word intervening, two words intervening, etc)? From experience in predicting words for Speech Recognition I would have expected that the further apart the words in a pair are, the less their association. But how far do associations go? what is the precise nature of the relationship? etc. Dick Hudson's figures on dependency relations seem to suggest that local dependencies are very strong, if not the dominant type of relationship. But it could be that the figures he gives have something to do with the type of grammatical analysis he has assumed. So, independently of any grammatical theory, what does one word tell you about other words in its local context? I decided to try a small experiment calculating the Mutual Information between pairs of words as an indicator of this association. (Mutual Information between two items, x and y, is defined as the log of the ratio of the joint probability of the two items occuring to the product of their separate a priori probabilities. Any textbook on Information Theory gives the details). Then average mutual information for all words taken from a corpus would give some figures for the general amount of association in a language. Here are the results for a sample corpus of 192,723 words of English Newspaper text, with a vocabulary of 22,996 unique lexical items: 1 Self-information of a word with itself 10.25 2 adjacent word pairs 3.00 3 a pair separated by 1 word 2.83 4 a pair separated by 2 words 2.73 5 a pair separated by 3 words 2.68 The measure is in bits per word. So, knowing a word is worth about 10 bits, and it tells you about 3 bits worth about the next word, and so on. In general, the hypothesis appears correct: the further words are away from each other the less related they are, INDEPENDENTLY of any assumptions about grammatical theory. Any comments? Richard Sharman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Wed Jan 6 16:12:25 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA05897; Wed, 6 Jan 93 16:12:25 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 21:09:18 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <22719-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 21:09:16 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA60538; Wed, 6 Jan 1993 21:09:13 GMT Message-Id: <9301062109.AA60538@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Re: determiner as head In-Reply-To: (Your message of Wed, 06 Jan 93 09:07:15 EST.) <9301061415.AA03097@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> X-Caution: the 'from' field may be garbled, but 'sender' is probably OK. Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 21:09:12 +0000 From: And Rosta Bruce Nevin: > I have some independent support for your analysis of the > determiner as the head of the noun phrase. In operator grammar, > "the" is analyzed as a noun in apposition to the following noun, > by way of a reduction from "that which is": > > The family doctor is fast disappearing. > That which is a family doctor is fast disappearing. > > Compare other appositional constructions, viz.: > > My friend John > My friend who is John > My friend the doctor > My friend who is the doctor > > For discussion and supporting argument, see Z. Harris, _A Grammar > of English on Mathematical Principles_, Wiley (1982), 236-243. Why is this an argument for the determiner being the head? Rather, the examples seem to show the attractiveness of treating the determiner as *coreferential* with the common noun. Or is _that which is_ actually *present* at some stage & then deleted? What are the grounds for deciding which phrase's head is the root of the restrictive appo construction? Is the funny prosody of (1a) relevant? 1 a. MY friend eLIza b. my FRIEND the DOCtor ---- And Rosta --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Wed Jan 6 16:36:50 1993 Return-Path: Received: from server.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA06270; Wed, 6 Jan 93 16:36:50 EST Received: by server.uga.edu (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA22292; Wed, 6 Jan 93 16:36:49 -0500 Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA08438; Wed, 6 Jan 93 16:36:48 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9301062136.AA08438@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Natural language software registry (announcement) To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 16:36:47 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Forwarded message: From registry@dfki.uni-sb.de Wed Jan 6 05:18:03 1993 Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 11:20:54 +0100 Message-Id: <9301061020.AA07617@disco-sun5.dfki.uni-sb.de> Organization: DFKI Saarbruecken GmbH, D-W 6600 Saarbruecken From: registry@dfki.uni-sb.de (The Software Registry) To: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Subject: NL Software Registry Reply-To: registry@dfki.uni-sb.de (Dear participants: I'm passing along the following, which seems interesting. -- Michael Covington) Remark: NATURAL LANGUAGE SOFTWARE REGISTRY The Natural Language Software Registry is a catalogue of software implementing core natural language processing techniques, whether available on a commercial or noncommercial basis. The current version includes + speech signal processors, such as the Computerized Speech Lab (Kay Electronics) + morphological analyzers, such as PC-KIMMO (Summer Institute for Linguistics) + parsers, such as Alveytools (University of Edinburgh) + knowledge representation systems, such as Rhet (University of Rochester) + multicomponent systems, such as ELU (ISSCO), PENMAN (ISI), Pundit (UNISYS), SNePS (SUNY Buffalo), + applications programs (misc.) This document is available on-line via anonymous ftp to ftp.dfki.uni-sb.de (directory:registry), by email to registry@dfki.uni-sb.de, and by physical mail to the address below. Now our request: we would like to subscribe Dependency Grammar in order to be fully informed about the activities in this area. Yours, Christoph Jung, Markus Vonerden Natural Language Software Registry Deutsches Forschungsinstitut fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz (DFKI) Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 D-W-6600 Saarbruecken Germany phone: +49 (681) 303-5282 e-mail: registry@dfki.uni-sb.de -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Thu Jan 7 03:01:57 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA08067; Thu, 7 Jan 93 03:01:57 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:00:16 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <26499-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:00:09 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA67697; Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:00:05 GMT Message-Id: <9301070800.AA67697@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Apposition Date: Thu, 07 Jan 93 08:00:05 +0000 From: "R.HudsonIBM-850" 7 January 1993 Bruce Nevin says that operator grammar recognises the common noun as a noun in apposition to the determiner; e.g. in "the family doctor", "doctor" is in apposition to "the". Splendid - just what I say in "Word Grammar" (1984: 91). But then And Rosta asks what evidence there is for the next step in the argument, for taking the common noun as a dependent of the determiner. The evidence that I would use involves uncontroversial examples of apposition like (1). (1)a The village of Trumpington lies next to the M25. b The fact that he was late is beyond dispute. In (a), "Trumpingon" is clearly in apposition to "village" (i.e. coreferential with it), but equally clearly "Trumpington" is subordinated to "village" by the preposition "of". And in (b) it is quite clear that "that (he was late)" is a dependent of "fact", because it follows the same rules for extraposition as a relative clause like "that he reported" in (2); but at the same time it is clear that it is in apposition to "fact". (2) The fact that he reported is beyond dispute. In both cases the "that" clause can be extraposed: (3)a The fact is beyond dispute that he was late. b The fact is beyond dispute that he reported. Moreover, in both (1b) and (2) the relation between "that" and the preceding noun would act as a barrier to extraction if the whole noun- phrase had been in an (otherwise) extractable position: (4)a *Who did you discuss the fact that he had contacted? b *Who did you discuss the fact that he had reported to? In other words, the argument for determiners as head would run as follows: - there are some cases of apposition in which it is clear that the second element is dependent on the first; - the semantic relation between a common noun and its preceding determiner is the same as in standard examples of apposition; - there is no clear evidence that the common noun is head of the determiner; - therefore we can treat the relation between them as a special case of the already established apposition relation. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Thu Jan 7 03:02:02 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AB08067; Thu, 7 Jan 93 03:02:02 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:01:33 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <26540-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:01:26 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA67746; Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:01:24 GMT Message-Id: <9301070801.AA67746@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Re: Discontinuous phrases Date: Thu, 07 Jan 93 08:01:24 +0000 From: "R.Hudson" 6 January 1993 Edmund Grimley-Evans asks how many discontinuous dependency trees I found in my texts. The brief answer is either (a) that I don't know, or (b) that I didn't find any, according to what theoretical assumptions you make. The most obvious place where the difference arises is in cases of `extraction' like (1), where "who" depends on "contact", so the phrase rooted in "contact" is discontinuous. (1) Who did you tell John he should contact? (a) If you assume that dependencies are by definition `deep', i.e. closely linked to semantics and valency, and that each word has only one head, then "who" has just one head, "contact". I don't know how frequent such phrases are, because I would have recorded "John" as a dependent of "did". This dependency is essential for the position of "John" (i.e. "John" takes its position from "did"), but has nothing to do with the semantic role of "John", so you won't recognise it as a proper dependency. But then you have to decide what to say about examples like (2), where "John" is a `raised' subject of "seems", and has all the characteristics of a syntactic subject (and is therefore a dependent) of "seems" without having any semantic relation to it. (2) John seems to like Mary. (b) If you allow a word to have more than one head (as I do - see for example my "English Word Grammar" 1990) then "who" can have (at least) two heads, "did" and "contact". One is responsible for its position, and the other for its semantic role. If you allow purely surface dependencies of this kind, then you find that every English sentence is built around a dependency tree that is totally continuous. The continuous trees are the only ones I recorded in my analysis, because there are a lot of other grafted-on (but easily recoverable) dependencies (of which the relation between "who" and "contact" is just one example). I felt that it was reasonable to record just the "basic skeleton" because the other dependencies are reasonably predictable from it; e.g. if you know that "who" depends on "did", and that "contact" is subordinate to "did" (i.e. indirectly dependent on it) then it is easy to work out from the grammar that "who" can also depend on "contact". This gives the grammar just a bit more power than a context-free phrase structure grammar, and ought to make it computationally tractable. However it would indeed be interesting to know what the answer to Edmund's question would be given the more standard assumptions of (a), as a measure of the difficulty of the parsing task without my extra assumptions. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg Thu Jan 7 04:34:02 1993 Return-Path: Received: from nuscc.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA08170; Thu, 7 Jan 93 04:34:02 EST Received: by nuscc.nus.sg (5.65/1.34) id AA22001; Thu, 7 Jan 93 17:33:56 +0800 Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 17:33:56 +0800 From: ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg (Alain Polguere) Message-Id: <9301070933.AA22001@nuscc.nus.sg> To: Subject: Tesniere Concerning Tesniere (1959), Harold Somers writes: > I would have thought that it would be better to have a detailed > commentary on Elements, with extensive extracts, rather than a faithful > translation. There's so much in there that is naive, wrong or > out-dated. 10 years ago, when I was doing research for my PhD, I wrote > [2] a short paper (11 pages) discussing in detail the parts of Elements > which I thought werte directly relevant to Valnecy and Case grammar > (the topic of my thesis), Thanks for your comment. You may be right, even though I am not so sure that I necessarily would agree with you on what to consider "naive, wrong or out-dated" in Tesniere's work... Nevertheless, two remarks: 1) It would be nice if all linguistics books which are translated could contain at least a quarter of what can be found AND USED in Tesniere (1959). In that respect, I think it won't lower the standards. 2) I still maintain that a full translation is more desirable; I prefer to select myself what is relevant for my own needs. By the way, I would be glad to help as a reviewer for the translation. I am very interested in having a copy of your '82 paper. I include the .signature below... - Alain POLGUERE -------------------------------------------------------- | Department of English Language and Literature | | National University of Singapore | | 10 Kent Ridge Crescent -- Republic of Singapore 0511 | | tel. (65) 772-3700 / fax (65) 773-2981 | | ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg / ellalain@nusvm.bitnet | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From bnevin@ccb.bbn.com Thu Jan 7 11:47:13 1993 Return-Path: Received: from BBN.COM by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA08967; Thu, 7 Jan 93 11:47:13 EST Message-Id: <9301071647.AA08967@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from CCB.BBN.COM by BBN.COM id ab28811; 7 Jan 93 11:45 EST Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 11:41:44 EST From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Re: determiner as head In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 06 Jan 93 21:09:12 +0000 To: dg%ai.uga.edu@bbn.com Cc: bn@ccb.bbn.com And Rosta: >Why is this an argument for the determiner being the head? Rather, >the examples seem to show the attractiveness of treating the determiner >as *coreferential* with the common noun. Or is _that which is_ actually >*present* at some stage & then deleted? Yes, _that which is_ is actually present. In fact, it never goes away. It is present overtly at an earlier stage of the derivation, and still present in phonemically zero form at the later stage. Thus, all dependencies found in the unreduced form are still present in the reduced form. >What are the grounds for deciding which phrase's head is the root of >the restrictive appo construction? The noun _friend_ is clearly the head of the construction _my friend who is the doctor_, and it is still the head when _who is_ is reduced to zero in _my friend the doctor_. The (indefinite) noun _that_ is clearly the head of the construction _that which is a family doctor_, and it is still the head when _that_ is reduced to _the_ in the environment of _which is_ being reduced to zero, yielding _the family doctor_. > Is the funny prosody of (1a) relevant? > > 1 a. MY friend eLIza > b. my FRIEND the DOCtor Contrastive stress is another matter, available in a pretty unrestricted way. It applies before the reductions, viz.: 1 a. MY friend who is eLIza b. my FRIEND who is the DOCtor For reference, I had said: > In operator grammar, > "the" is analyzed as a noun in apposition to the following noun, > by way of a reduction from "that which is": > > The family doctor is fast disappearing. > That which is a family doctor is fast disappearing. > > Compare other appositional constructions, viz.: > > My friend John > My friend who is John > My friend the doctor > My friend who is the doctor > > For discussion and supporting argument, see Z. Harris, _A Grammar > of English on Mathematical Principles_, Wiley (1982), 236-243. Co-reference is an effect of a metalinguistic assertion that two occurrences of a word are the same. In many treatments of grammar this metalinguistic assertion is in the form of subscript indices in the written representation. But the metalanguage for natural language is demonstrably statable in natural language itself (see below), and must necessarily be included in language. (The metalanguage for logic or mathematics depends upon the background vernacular of language, the metalanguage for language cannot. For discussion, see Z. Harris, _A Theory of Language and Information_ Oxford, Clarendon (1991).) The metalanguage adequate for asserting sameness of two words requires very simple vocabulary and syntax. The assertion of sameness is one of the requirements for the derivation of a relative clause from a secondary sentence: My friend the doctor arrived My friend who is the doctor arrived. My friend--a friend (prior same as mentioned) is the doctor--arrived. The intonation of the interrupting secondary sentence is retained in the relative clause and in the appositional noun phrase. (Contrastive stress on _doctor_ would be retained also.) This account clarifies the difference between "ordinary" dependency of argument words and operators ("predicative" words like verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) and dependency of adjuncts (modifiers) on heads. We have zero allomorphs in many morphophonemic alternations, viz. _John has three sheep-0_. What are commonly called cases of elision involve zero allomorphs, e.g.: I prefer that John should go. I prefer that I go. ---------- I prefer to 0 go. What does that do for dependency representations? prefer that prefer to / \ / \ / \ / \ I go I go / / I 0 The reduction to zero requires a metalinguistic assertion of sameness. The interruption is under a paratactic conjunction (represented in writing by semicolon or dash, and represented in speech by secondary intonation, which is preserved in the reduced form of the adjunct). The fact that it is an interruption means that dependency lines (or projections from nodes to the linear string of words) must cross: ; 0 / \ / \ / same as / 0 / / \ / / \ | prior mentioned | 0 0 | | | | prefer that prefer to / \ / \ / \ / \ I go I go / / I 0 In this example, the paratactic conjunction _;_ is zeroed (the entire metalinguistic assertion has zero form, and there is nothing left to receive reduced intonation). In the case of modifiers from relative clauses, it has phonemic shape still (as subordinated intonation). ; / \ / same as / / \ / prior mentioned ; / \_______________________ / \ hit is red / \ /------------/ John a ball a ball John hit a ball; a ball (prior same as mentioned) is red. In the full relative clause, the paratactic conjunction has additional phonemic content as the wh- of the relative pronoun: wh- / \ / 0 / / \ / 0 0 ; / \_______________________ / \ hit is red / \ /---------/ John a ball -ich John hit a ball which is red. I am now going to use | in place of slanted lines for the sake of compression. A vertical line does represent a dependency below, not a projection from the dependency tree to the linear string. 0 | \ | 0 | / \ ; 0 0 / \ / red hit | / \ 0 John a .. ball John hit a red ball. Graphical representations of word dependencies soon reach the limit of practicability (even without the limitations of diagramming with ASCII characters!). And one does not need them to implement a grammar. The point here is to show that adjuncts, like the adjective "red" in this example and the noun in apposition in the earlier examples, are not dependent upon their head noun, they are dependent upon the paratactic conjunction that makes an interrupting sentence into a secondary aside about a word in the main sentence. That conjunction is still present in zero form. As is the metalinguistic sameness statement. Again, for exemplification, argument, and discussion, see Z. Harris, _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From vhahn@nats4.informatik.uni-hamburg.de Wed Jan 13 04:13:11 1993 Return-Path: Received: from deneb.dfn.de by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA23919; Wed, 13 Jan 93 04:13:11 EST Received: from fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de by deneb.dfn.de (4.1/SMI-4.2) id AA26790; Wed, 13 Jan 93 10:10:52 +0100 Received: from nats4.informatik.uni-hamburg.de by fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (5.65+/FBIHH-2.26) with SMTP; id AA06275; Wed, 13 Jan 93 10:10:38 +0100 Message-Id: <9301130908.AA04723@nats4.informatik.uni-hamburg.de> Received: from [134.100.5.232] (bomac42) by nats4.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (4.1/FBIHH-2.15); id AA04723; Wed, 13 Jan 93 10:08:04 +0100 Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 10:12:41 +0100 To: dg@ai.uga.edu From: vhahn@nats4.informatik.uni-hamburg.de Subject: Sgall's answers Dear Colleagues, Using the opportunity of a short stay in Hamburg, where I can find more quiet time than at home, I would like to express my opinion on some of the questions you have been discussing, applying the advantages of my age, viz. the training in European structural grammar I went through with my Prague teachers in the years around 1950, and my owm long experience with empirical and theoretical research in dependency syntax. (i) As for Chomsky's 'minimalist theory', I cannot say anything concerning the technical shape of his new theory, but at least one point is important, and that is his emphasis on the two 'interface levels' of phonetics and of logical form. In our publications on the 'Functional Generative Description' (see esp. the book The meaning of the sentence, published with Reidel in 1986, with J. Mey as the editor) we have always worked with a single underlying level, conjoining (from a viewpoint closw to Chomsky's "Cartesian Linguistics" from the 1960's) the roles of 'initial P-markers', D-structure and logical form; in recent writings, in our group also the possibility to work without a level of surface syntax was pointed out (see my paper in Wiener Linguistischer Almanach, Sonderband 33 (Festschrift fuer Rozencvejg), Vienna 1992), so that there are clear points of convergence between the two approaches, as far as they can be compared at all. (ii)It may be claimed that dependency trees are much simpler than the usual kinds of P-markers, having a lower number of nodes, working just with a single set of symbols for syntactic relations (all of which, not only those corresponding to theta roles or arguments, but also free adverbials or adjuncts, being justified by the valency grids of the head words, in which parameters of obligatoriness, deletability, role as controllers and many others can be lexically specified). However, it should be admitted that coordination (even if not fully symmetric) is a relation of another kind, so that more than the two dimensions of the dependency tree are needed for a network that completely describes the sentence structure. Strong limitations such as R. Hudson's adjacency (projectivity) make the whole system simple enough (the unprojective consructions can be described as exceptional deviations), treatable e.g. in a linearized form with two kinds of parentheses (for dependency and for cooridnation), see the paper by Petkevic in Theoretical Linguistics 1987). (iii) An analog of the ID/LP rule dichotomy can be seen in our hypothesis of a basic ('systemic') ordering of the kinds of dependency relations (of valency slots, or of theta roles and adjuncts), which is reflected by word order with several 'deviations', the main of which consists in the elements of the topic standing more to the left than what the systemic ordering itself would determine (see Sgall and Hajicova, Ordering principle, in Journal of Pragmatics 1987); other such deviatios concern 'shallow rules' on the position of the verb, of the adjective, of the clitics, etc. (iv) A dependency based parser of English was published in our group by Z. Kirschner in two volumes, which are of an internal character, not accessible on the market, but I can send them to those who are interested; the two drawbacks there are that he used Colmerauer's Q-systems for implementation and that the lexicon used there is narrowly restricted. We are now preparing a more general version of the parser, and the contact person for this issue would be Alexandr Rosen, e-mail:rosen@Praha1.ff.cuni.cs.internet. Since I am here just for a few days, please, do not send replies on the address of this message, but rather to Prague (sgall@cspguk11.bitnet). I hope I'll be able to continue our discussions in February. Cordially Petr Sgall ===================================== ==== Walther v.Hahn ====== = Computer Science Department = = Natural Language Systems Division = = Bodenstedtstr.16 = = D - 2000 HAMBURG 50 = = Tel: (X40) 4123 4529 = = Fax (X40) 4123 6530 = ------------------------------------- vhahn@nats2.informatik.uni-hamburg.de ===================================== --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Thu Jan 14 23:41:48 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA03622; Thu, 14 Jan 93 23:41:48 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA22675; Thu, 14 Jan 93 23:41:48 EST Date: Thu, 14 Jan 93 23:41:48 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9301150441.AA22675@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Test message This is a test message to validate the entire DG mailing list. We have just upgraded our mailer to sendmail.mx and should have better success reaching overseas addresses that had caused difficulty. If you receive this message, please ignore it; if you don't receive it, I'll be notified automatically. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Fri Jan 22 11:24:49 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA27546; Fri, 22 Jan 93 11:24:49 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA05757; Fri, 22 Jan 93 11:24:47 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9301221624.AA05757@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Test message To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 11:24:47 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Test message; please ignore. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Sun Jan 24 20:38:57 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA04520; Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:38:57 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA09560; Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:38:56 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9301250138.AA09560@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Service upgrades on aisun1 (DG host) To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:38:55 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] The mailer on aisun1.ai.uga.edu (the machine that hosts DG) has just been upgraded, and we should have a much easier time reaching faraway addresses. (Some of you may be hearing from us now for the first time!) There will be further upgrades (with concomitant outages and temporary malfunctions) during the next couple of weeks. -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Tue Jan 26 22:57:52 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA25186; Tue, 26 Jan 93 22:57:52 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA13465; Tue, 26 Jan 93 22:57:50 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9301270357.AA13465@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: DG parsing vs PSG parsing To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 22:57:49 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Is there some useful mapping by which dependency grammars and D-trees can be mapped onto phrase-structure grammars and PS-trees, thereby generating dependency counterparts of well-known phrase-structure parsing algorithms? I can think of some trivial mappings that don't seem to shed any real light on the issue. Has anyone delived more deeply into this? -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rsharman@vnet.ibm.com Wed Jan 27 05:00:39 1993 Return-Path: Received: from vnet.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA26561; Wed, 27 Jan 93 05:00:39 EST Message-Id: <9301271000.AA26561@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from WINVMD by vnet.ibm.com (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9547; Wed, 27 Jan 93 04:58:35 EST Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 09:49:09 GMT From: rsharman@vnet.ibm.com To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Finding dependencies from Phrase Structures The correspondence between dependency relations and phrase structure analyses is one of the most interesting questions in practical syntactic analysis of real texts. Avoiding the debate of whether dependencies are "fundamental" and phrases "derivative", or vice versa, for the moment, it would a useful practical task to map one to the other. In particular, there is a growing amount of text labelled with phrase structures, which we call a "treebank". However I have not seen the corresponding "dependency bank" anywhere. If someone has one, or can annotate a given text with dependencies to create one, then a preoper study could be sone of the correspondence between dependencies and phrases IN THE SAME TEXT, and so a model which maps between the two could be created. In default of this, it is necessary to resort to some kind of rule-based approach, which is unfortunately beset by difficulties of interpretation, since the underlying assumptions of the phrase structure analysis, and probably also the assumptions of the dependency labelling, need to be taken into account in specifying the rules. It would, I feel, be preferable to take an existing phrase labelled treebank, and do the dependency analysis, then compare the two. This way we would learn the actual mappings, as opposed to hypothetically assumed mappings? Richard Sharman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Wed Jan 27 06:19:02 1993 Return-Path: Received: from NTC02.TELE.NOKIA.FI by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA26691; Wed, 27 Jan 93 06:19:02 EST Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 13:19:52 +0300 (EET) From: LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Message-Id: <930127131952.2581fc7d@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com> Subject: Mapping PS-structures onto D-structures To: dg@ai.uga.edu X-Vmsmail-To: INET::"dg@ai.uga.edu" In a recent posting Michael Covington asked: Is there some useful mapping by which dependency grammars and D-trees can be mapped onto phrase-structure grammars and PS-trees, thereby generating dependency counterparts of well-known phrase-structure parsing algorithms? This issue was treated by Robert F. Simmons in the book "Computations from the English" (Prentice-Hall; 1984. ISBN 0-13-164640-0). In chapter 4 (p. 57) he gives the following rules for transforming PS-structures into D-structures: "[...] VERBS govern preceding and following NPs, auxiliaries, VPs adverbials, and PPs that are not more immediately governed. NOUNS dominate articles, adjectives, modifying nouns, and PPs. ADJECTIVES dominate modifying adverbials. PREPOSITIONS are dominated by preceding nouns and verbs and dominate following nouns. [...]" In chapter 5, Simmons elaborates the rationale for doing these transformations and presents appropriate grammar rules (p. 89) to accomplish the task. The rules are DCG rules (called 'procedural grammar rules' by the author) intended for processing with HCPRVR, a Horn clause theorem prover written in Lisp (NOT Common Lisp). The grammar is claimed to be symmetric, thus allowing both parsing and generation. I can think of some trivial mappings that don't seem t shed any real [... additional text deleted] Maybe, the above rules are 'trivial' in a certain sense; they are also limited to languages, where the position of constituents (and their order) plays an important role (e.g. the Nordic languages, German, English). In Finnish, for example, ordering rules could partly be applied (i.e. WITHIN noun phrases), but decisions on which NPs are the 'subject' or the 'object' of a sentence must be made using other criteria (morphology etc.). In my present work concerning corpus-based methods in translation studies (including the practice of translation and composition) using bi/multilingual corpora of technical texts, I am facing the problem of finding a working way of comparing structures in several languages. The requirement is that the structures (parse trees, lists or whatever) should themselvs be mutually comparable (and somehow compatible). D-structures with the finite verb as the root node seem to be a 'natural' representation. I would very much appreciate additional opinions, hints and deeper discussion of this issue on the DG list. Implementational details would also be welcome. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Arne Larsson Nokia Telecommunications Translator Transmission Systems, Customer Services larsson@ntc02.tele.nokia.fi P.O. Box 12, SF-02611 Espoo, Finland Phone +358 0 5117476, Fax +358 0 51044287 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Wed Jan 27 06:43:02 1993 Return-Path: Received: from NTC02.TELE.NOKIA.FI by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA26739; Wed, 27 Jan 93 06:43:02 EST Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 13:44:01 +0300 (EET) From: LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Message-Id: <930127134401.2581fc7d@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com> Subject: DG and PSG To: dg@ai.uga.edu X-Vmsmail-To: INET::"dg@ai.uga.edu" As a follow up to Richard Sharman: Victor Sadler of B.S.O/Research (The Netherlands) has a detailed treatment of a structured parallel corpus of bilingual text, called the Bilingual Knowledge Bank (BKB) in his book "Working with Analogical Semantics (Dordrecht 1989. ISBN 90 6765 428 0.) The author proposes full alignment of dependency structures (p. 127 ff). At the time of writing there was a pilot BKB comprising "some 2,500 sentences" in English, French and Esperanto. It would be very interesting to receive information about the present status of this project (the Distributed Language Translation project), provided such information is not company confidential. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Arne Larsson Nokia Telecommunications Translator Transmission Systems, Customer Services larsson@ntc02.tele.nokia.fi P.O. Box 12, SF-02611 Espoo, Finland Phone +358 0 5117476, Fax +358 0 51044287 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg Thu Jan 28 00:57:49 1993 Return-Path: Received: from nuscc.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA03800; Thu, 28 Jan 93 00:57:49 EST Received: by nuscc.nus.sg (5.65/1.34) id AA15246; Thu, 28 Jan 93 13:57:43 +0800 Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 13:57:43 +0800 From: ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg (Alain Polguere) Message-Id: <9301280557.AA15246@nuscc.nus.sg> To: Subject: DG and Chinese I have a colleague here who would like to know if anything has been done on the description of Chinese in a DG approach. Any reference, etc. will be welcome. Thanks. AP --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Thu Jan 28 03:08:47 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun3.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA04099; Thu, 28 Jan 93 03:08:47 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Thu, 28 Jan 1993 08:02:17 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <06259-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Thu, 28 Jan 1993 08:08:30 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA71194; Thu, 28 Jan 1993 08:08:28 GMT Message-Id: <9301280808.AA71194@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: converting PSG to DG Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 08:08:28 +0000 From: RichardHudson50 I spent a couple of weeks a few years ago trying to convert a PSG tree bank into a DG one, and found that there were some insuperable problems when working from the tree-bank itself - i.e. from the list of phrase-types that were observed to occur in the corpus. The main problem is precisely that if you know that some larger phrase contains a smaller phrase, you don't know what kind of word that smaller phrase had as its head. E.g. if you know that there were some PPs, consisting of a preposition followed by a noun-phrase, you can't convert this into a dependency analysis in which a preposition heads some word-class because you don't know what word-class headed each of the NPs. Of course you could assume simply that it was a `noun', including proper nouns, common nouns, pronouns, gerunds, etc, to say nothing of coordinated NPs, but most people working on tree banks would probably want to break down word-classes into more specific classes. It is precisely because phrase-categories are so much less specific and revealing than word-classes that a DG tree-bank is likely to be much more useful than a PSG one, so it would be odd if it were easy to convert the latter into the former. These problems shouldn't arise, however, if one were working from the text itself, with PSG annotations added. In that case I feel sure it would be quite easy at least in the vast majority of cases to replace the PSG phrase tags with tags showing which words depended on which. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Thu Jan 28 11:11:14 1993 Return-Path: Received: from NTC02.TELE.NOKIA.FI by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA05308; Thu, 28 Jan 93 11:11:14 EST Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 18:12:12 +0300 (EET) From: LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Message-Id: <930128181212.2582261f@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com> Subject: cu-Prolog available To: dg@ai.uga.edu X-Vmsmail-To: INET::"dg@ai.uga.edu" Dear Colleagues, It may be of interest to the members of this group to know that MAC and MS-DOS versions of cu-Prolog from ICOT is now available using ftp from csli.stanford.edu in the directory pub/MacCup. Arne Larsson ---------Here is the readme file for your information:----------- Files: MacCupE0.78w.sit.hqx program, Bin Hexed and Stuff It-ed djcup.lzh MS-DOS program, running under DOS-extender (386/486 cpu), compressed by LHA manual.tex manual for older version of MacCup sample.p sample program a la JPSG util.p utility program ------------------------------------------------------------ Note: MacCup is Macintosh version of CU-Prolog DJCup is MS-DOS version of CU-Prolog compiled with DJ's gcc. CU-Prolog has been developed at ICOT, Japan. ------------------------------------------------------------ Brief Introduction to MacCup: MacCup is a Macintosh version of CUP, Constraint Unification Prolog, whose original version has been developed by ICOT. It looks like a usual Prolog system. However there are several differences: (1) use "" to load a program from a file instead of using []. (2) input program directly from keyboard after `_' prompt instead of using [console]. (3) use %d* to list defined predicates instead of :-listing. etc. etc. To get MacCup from MacCupXXX.sit.hqx: Load (or FTP) to your Macintosh, use BinHex to decode it to get a StuffIt archiver form file. Then use StuffIt to get MacCup program. To run MacCup: Click twice the MacCup icon, and wait about 10 seconds. You will get MacCup window, and the following message: ******** MacCup Ver. XXX ******** All Modular mode (help -> %h) To quit: Input %Q, or :-halt., or Command-Q. To load MacCup Programs: Click FILE menu and OPEN item (or use Command-O), select the program file, and OPEN it. To get command lists: Input %h. MacCup has several `commands' which are marked by `%' as in %h. Note. 1. There are several features which are not mentioned in the manual. As I am writing a new manual, you can get it in September. 2. Thanks to Dr. Emele, I found a bug in MacCupV0.63, and made MacCupV0.70. The difference between them is that the latter will deal with PSTs in constraint transformation better than the former. For example, p({c/C}) :- ab(C). q({d/D,c/{a/D}}). ab({a/1,b/0}). ab({a/0,b/1}). @ p(X),q(X). will produce different results in V0.63 and V0.70. HOWEVER, MacCup still returns incorrect answer for the following: ab({a/1,b/0}). ab({a/0,b/1}). r({c/C});ab(C). s({d/D,c/X});X={a/D}. :-r(X),s(X). Frankly speaking, there is a trade-off between efficiency and getting correct/strict answers. MacCup078S takes efficiency, and MacCup078X takes correctness. (MacCup078X is not distributed for publicity.) 3. You can interrupt MacCup by pressing COMMAND-`.'. If you click the Abort button, the interrupted process will be aborted. I'd appreciate if you give any comments and/or suggestions. ------------------------------------------------------------ Hidetosi SIRAI sirai@csli.stanford.edu, or sirai@sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp Chukyo University --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Thu Jan 28 23:15:52 1993 Received: from hiko.isct.kyutech.ac.jp by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12098; Thu, 28 Jan 93 23:15:52 EST From: shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Received: by hiko.isct.kyutech.ac.jp (5.65/6.4J.6) id AA07469; Fri, 29 Jan 93 13:17:17 +0900 Received: by hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp (5.65/6.4J.6) id AA16379; Fri, 29 Jan 93 13:26:58 +0900 Return-Path: Message-Id: <9301290426.AA16379@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Subject: more than him have Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 13:26:57 +0900 The following is the passage I found in a novel called _The Graduate_; 'How many people have done this?' 'Proposed to me?' 'Yes.' 'I don't know,' she said. 'You mean more than him have?' Since I am not a native speaker of English, I am not certain about the grammarticality (or acceptability) of the last sentence (or utterance). Will anyone tell me your opinion? I also would like to know how you would analyse it. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Makoto SHIMIZU Kyushu Institute of Technology shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ "I guess I've lost another pupil," said the professor as his glass eye rolled down the sink. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Sun Jan 31 22:33:18 1993 Received: from linc.cis.upenn.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA29501; Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:33:18 EST Received: from UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU by linc.cis.upenn.edu id AA25689; Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:33:16 -0500 Return-Path: Received: by unagi.cis.upenn.edu id AA17609; Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:33:15 EST Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:33:15 EST From: rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Owen Rambow) Posted-Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:33:15 EST Message-Id: <9302010333.AA17609@unagi.cis.upenn.edu> To: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Cc: dg@ai.uga.edu In-Reply-To: Michael Covington's message of Tue, 26 Jan 93 22:57:49 EST <9301270357.AA13465@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: DG parsing vs PSG parsing Michael Covington some days ago asked about mapping DGs onto PSGs in order to profit from parsing algorithms for PSGs. Several answers, if I have understood them correctly, have addressed the inverse problem, of mapping PSGs (and PS-trees) onto DGs (and D-trees). Thus, the question of how to map a DG onto a PSG (not simply a D-tree onto a PS-tree) remains open. One of the "trivial mappings" that Michael Covington mentions is the following, I assume: each lexical head L is mapped to a phrase-structure rule of the form LP -> (X1)P ... (Xn)P L (Y1)P ... (Yn)P, where the Xi and Yi are the lexical categories of the dependents of L, in the right order. Optional dependents require additional rules. The result is a CFG, which can be parsed using the usual instrumentarium for CFG-parsing (CYK, Early, LR etc.). The problem is that in the case of adjuncts, there may be an unbounded number of dependents, and thus we would need an unbounded number of PS rules, which would not yield a CFG. Evidence from English shows that it is impossible, in general, to write a linguistically plausible CFG with rules of the form given above for a (necessarily finite) CF grammar. The problem is the issue of "lexicalization": in the above form, every rule of the CF grammar is associated with 1 lexical item (thus allowing the easy mapping between DG and PSG). This is not the case for the common CFGs for English. However, it has been shown (Schabes 1989) that in general, CFGs cannot be transferred into a lexicalized form. One way to lexicalize a CFG is to increase the formal power of the underlying mathematical system, and to go to Tree Adjoining Grammars (TAG). In TAG, grammars consist of trees, which are combined to yield derived structures. In a recent paper, Aravind Joshi and I suggest that the fact that TAGs can be lexicalized makes them an ideal interface between PS-based grammars and DGs. So Michael Covington's question could be answered as follows: to apply parsing algorithms for PSGs to DGs, first devise a TAG for the language. A TAG parse can then easily be converted into a DG analysis. Much research has been done on TAG parsing; Early-type algorithms run in O(n^6) time worst case. Writing a TAG for a language is not, alas, a trivial matter. If done in a principled manner, it amounts to devising a theory of syntax. The connection between TAG and DG can also be exploited in the inverse: in a different paper, we propose to use a dependency parser to derive PS-trees. The dependency parser can be "compiled down" from a LR(0) version of a TAG parser. Owen Rambow rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Sun Jan 31 22:43:49 1993 Received: from linc.cis.upenn.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA29530; Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:43:49 EST Received: from UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU by linc.cis.upenn.edu id AA25912; Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:43:45 -0500 Return-Path: Received: by unagi.cis.upenn.edu id AA17703; Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:43:44 EST Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:43:44 EST From: rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Owen Rambow) Posted-Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 22:43:44 EST Message-Id: <9302010343.AA17703@unagi.cis.upenn.edu> To: uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Cc: dg@ai.uga.edu In-Reply-To: RichardHudson50's message of Thu, 28 Jan 93 08:08:28 +0000 <9301280808.AA71194@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> Subject: converting PS corpora to D-corpora Automatically converting the Penn Tree Bank, a PS-corpus, to include D-annotations would be impossible. This is because in sentences like "Yesterday, John ate", "yesterday" is tagged as an NP, and the automatic converter would not be able to determine if it is a temporal adjunct or the direct object. I am not quite sure if this is the same problem Dick Hudson mentioned. Tony Kroch has a project at the U. of Penn to annotate Old and Middle English texts. Though I don't think the representation will actually be a D-notation, it will include sufficient information to unambiguously derive a D-representation (as far as I know). Owen Rambow rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Daniel.Sleator@SPADE.PC.CS.CMU.EDU Sun Jan 31 23:57:40 1993 Return-Path: Received: from SPADE.PC.CS.CMU.EDU by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA00104; Sun, 31 Jan 93 23:57:40 EST Message-Id: <9302010457.AA00104@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> From: Daniel Sleator Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 23:56:34 EST To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: Davy Temperley Subject: DG parsing, PSG parsing, and link parsing My question to Michael Covington is: Why not parse directly in the dependency formalism? This is what Davy Temperley have done in our link grammar system. Link grammar is a lexically-based dependency-type formalism in which we have written a large and wide coverage English grammar, and for which we have invented and implemented efficient parsing algorithms. Not only that, but the entire system is available via anonymous ftp. (The anonymous ftp site is "spade.pc.cs.cmu.edu", and the directory is "usr/sleator/public", to which you must move with one "cd" command after entering ftp anonymously.) Over 500 people have taken the system. Link grammars are being developed for other languages, as is a commercial grammar checker. Link grammars have also been proposed as a grammatical alternative to the trigram model. For the moment, I'll leave a detailed description of our work to our tech reports (also available via anonymous ftp), and just give some examples. As a very superficial illustration, when our system is given the following NY Times sentence: "An increased supply of civilian goods can restrain our inflation, increase employment, improve public budgets and enhance exports." it constructs the following parsing in three seconds on a decstation 3100. +------------------ +--------------S-------------+ +--------- +--------D--------+ +-------J-------+ | +-------O- | +-----A----+--M--+ +----A---+ | | +-- | | | | | | | | | an increased.v supply.n of civilian.a goods.n can.v restrain.v our --------------------------I-------------------------------------------+ ------------+ +-------------------------------+ -----+ +-------------------------+ +---------O--------+ | -D---+ +------+-----O-----+ +-----+ +----A---+ +-- | | | | | | | | | inflation.n , increase.v employment.n , improve.v public.a budgets.n and ----+----O----+ | | enhance.v exports.n Every word in our system has a formula that describes the requirements which that word imposes on any sentence containing it (actually, it dictates what the combination of links which are required to connect to that word in order to satisfy it.) For example, the word "civilian" (as an adjective) has the following definition in our system: {Ea- or Eb+} & (A+ or ((AI- or IX+ or Ma- or AA+) & {@EV+})); Each word has a similar definition that completely describes the way that word can be used. Daniel Sleator Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science 412-268-7563 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Mon Feb 1 00:23:42 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA00209; Mon, 1 Feb 93 00:23:42 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA21720; Mon, 1 Feb 93 00:23:38 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9302010523.AA21720@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Dependency parsing To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 0:23:38 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] With regard to Daniel Sleator's challenge, "Why not parse directly in the dependency system?" my answer is -- I do! The reason I asked about mappings of dependency grammars onto PS-grammars was as one strategy for doing complexity analysis. As someone else pointed out, it is not necessarily a very promising one, because a PS-rule handles a head and all its arguments (at a particular X-bar level) at once, whereas a D-rule merely says there is *one* argument and doesn't say how many others there may be. Thanks to all for the interesting discussion. I'll be working through people's postings and replying in greater depth soon. (And apologies in advance for any outages that our machine may experience in the next month. A major operating system upgrade is coming.) -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Mon Feb 1 03:34:59 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun3.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA01114; Mon, 1 Feb 93 03:34:59 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Mon, 1 Feb 1993 08:23:02 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <00468-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Mon, 1 Feb 1993 08:34:01 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA20410; Mon, 1 Feb 1993 08:33:59 GMT Message-Id: <9302010833.AA20410@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: converting PS corpora to D-corpora Date: Mon, 01 Feb 93 08:33:58 +0000 From: RichardHudson50 Owen Rambow says that sentences like (1) can't be automatically reananlysed from a Penn-style PS analysis into a D-analysis. (1) Yesterday John ate. This is because "yesterday" is just labelled as NP, so it would have the same analysis, presumably, as (2). (2) Beans John ate. If you're only looking for semantically-interpretable dependencies, Owen is right; but it's possible to aim in the first instance at least only at the most superficial "skeleton" of dependencies, on which the rest of the depend- ency structure is built. At this level of abstraction, (1) and (2) are the same - they both contain some kind of "extractee" which has a (surface, but not semantically relevant) dependency on "ate". Interesting to hear about Tony Kroch's Old and Middle English corpus. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Thu Feb 4 00:01:38 1993 Received: from hiko.isct.kyutech.ac.jp ([150.69.2.6]) by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA25281; Thu, 4 Feb 93 00:01:38 EST From: shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Received: by hiko.isct.kyutech.ac.jp (5.65/6.4J.6) id AA02750; Thu, 4 Feb 93 14:03:21 +0900 Received: by hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp (5.65/6.4J.6) id AA14876; Thu, 4 Feb 93 14:01:24 +0900 Return-Path: Message-Id: <9302040501.AA14876@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Subject: Category Conversion Date: Thu, 04 Feb 93 14:01:23 +0900 I posted to sci.lang a writing two years ago, but I didn't receive many responses, so I would like to ask you the same question. ================================================ Hi, everybody. I've been interested in the discrepancy between the form and the function of linguistic expressions lately, such as the examples in (1) noted by Quirk et. al.(1985:658): (1) a. A: When are we going to have the next meeting? B: {On Tuesday /In March/ During the vacation/ Between 6 and 7} {will be fine/ suits me/ is what we decided/ may be convenient}. b. He picked up the gun {from under the table/ from behind the curtain}. c. We didn't meet until after the show. d. Food has been scarce since before the war. e. The weather has been fine except in the north. In (1a), for example, the distribution of the PP 'on Tuesday', is in the position of an NP. I have collected some examples myself. (2) a. Now that most of them have first-hand experience with computers, they approach computer applications without fear or superstition and with considerable understanding of how computers can serve man kind. b. At that time, a lot of American companies were looking for clever young scientists from abroad. In (2b), we see the preposition 'from', which usually requires an NP as its object, takes the lexical item 'abroad', which I would presume no dictionary. When we interpret this sentence, I suppose we anyhow regard 'abroad' as functioning as an NP. ===================================================== A few people responded to me. Rick Wojcik (rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP) gave me interesting examples; (3) Between 45 minutes and an hour will elapse before he turns. (4) The plan requires from six inches to a foot (of space) here. In (3) a PP is treated as a subject,and in (4) as an object. As far as I know, not many people have discussed this phenomenon. Jackendoff(1973) deals with the issue throughly, but I don't think most of us would regard his treatment as satisfactory because the PS rule in the paper is highly idiosyncratic. I suppose he would resort to his correspondence rule now,but I'm not certain exactly how. In Grimshaw(1982), if I understand her correctly, she changes functional schmata and assign SUBJ and OBJ to French clitics (If my memory is correct. Sorry, I don't have it here right now.) But she does not (does she?) discuss the English language, I'm not sure what to do with the examples I put above. I would like to ask you how you would analyse these examples. Any comments and opinions are welcome. I will summarize the responses. I've got another question to ask. I'm thinking of the possibility to rewrite, say, an PP into an NP with a rule similar to Meta Rule in GPSG, but someone told me Meta Rule is not popular these days. But I'm not sure why. Could anyone direct me to the relevant literature, please? \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Makoto SHIMIZU Kyushu Institute of Technology shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ What did the cannibal say to the captured missionary? "We would like very much to have you for dinner." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Thu Feb 4 11:20:43 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA27424; Thu, 4 Feb 93 11:20:43 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA28156; Thu, 4 Feb 93 11:20:39 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9302041620.AA28156@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Address needed To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Thu, 4 Feb 93 11:20:39 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Does anyone have the email address of Michel Eytan (Strasbourg, France)? The address that I have on the DG list is eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbrg.fr, and isn't working. Thanks. -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From @mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Thu Feb 4 16:48:52 1993 Return-Path: <@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk:ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk> Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA00465; Thu, 4 Feb 93 16:48:52 EST Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Thu, 4 Feb 1993 21:39:14 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <21484-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Thu, 4 Feb 1993 21:39:03 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA11542; Thu, 4 Feb 1993 21:39:01 GMT Message-Id: <9302042139.AA11542@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, Daniel Sleator X-Ungarbled_Sender: And Rosta Subject: coordination Date: Thu, 04 Feb 93 21:38:59 +0000 From: And RostaBM-850 From Daniel Sleator's Link Grammar diagram I see that in coordinate structures the conjunction is the head of the conjuncts (or, at least, all conjuncts are subordinate to (indirectly depend on) the conjunction). This approach contrasts with that of Word Grammar, where coordination is the only area of syntax that involves constituency. An example: <--s--< Sophy swam <-------------<----s----< <<< this is a shared { [ Sophy ] and [ Edgar ] } swam dependency I find both approaches appealing. Has anyone done any work on weighing up the pros and cons of each? ---- And Rosta. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mahue@linguistik.uni-erlangen.de Sun Feb 14 12:26:47 1993 Return-Path: Received: from faui45.informatik.uni-erlangen.de by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA10130; Sun, 14 Feb 93 12:26:47 EST Received: from uranus.linguistik.uni-erlangen.de by uni-erlangen.de with SMTP; id AA21931 (5.65c-5/7.3r-FAU); Sun, 14 Feb 1993 18:26:39 +0100 Received: by linguistik.uni-erlangen.de (16.7/7.3h-FAU) id AA22152; Sun, 14 Feb 93 18:26:37 +0100 Date: Sun, 14 Feb 93 18:26:37 +0100 From: Marc Huesken Message-Id: <9302141726.AA22152@linguistik.uni-erlangen.de> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Subscribe Please add me to the list. ----------------------------------+----------------------------------- Marc Huesken Ei joh! | CLD University of Erlangen Germany mahue@linguistik.uni-erlangen.de | 09131/85-9252 priv.: 09131/67209 ====================================================================== --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Tue Feb 23 00:13:35 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA05512; Tue, 23 Feb 93 00:13:35 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA12906; Tue, 23 Feb 93 00:13:33 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9302230513.AA12906@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Possible service interruption To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 00:13:33 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 537 The machine that runs the DG mailing list will be undergoing major upgrades this week, and there will be periods when messages posted to DG may be substantially delayed. Please let me know of any problems, especially if they persist. -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From murzaku@ux1sns.sns.it Tue Feb 23 07:19:39 1993 Return-Path: Received: from ux1sns.sns.it by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA06343; Tue, 23 Feb 93 07:19:39 EST Received: by ux1sns.sns.it (5.57/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA14354; Tue, 23 Feb 93 13:09:04 GMT Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 13:09:04 GMT From: murzaku@ux1sns.sns.it (Aleksander Murzaku) Message-Id: <9302231309.AA14354@ux1sns.sns.it> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Syntax checkers Do you know anything about some approach made by someone and concerning the use of DG in the construction of syntax checkers. This can be very useful, I think, especially for the free word order languages such as Russian, Albanian etc. But these languages, have also a very reach flectional system. So there must be added a special morphological parser. Is there anyone working on such languages and such problems? Thanks s in advance, Aleksander Murzaku Scuola Normale Superiore tel.+39/50/597111 Piazza dei Cavalieri 7 murzaku@ux1sns.sns.it 56126 PISA - Italy murzaku at ipisnsib Home adress: Viale Amelia 15 // 00181 ROMA - Italy // Tel. +39/6/7806295 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu Wed Feb 24 19:09:21 1993 Return-Path: Received: from aisun3.ai.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA00556; Wed, 24 Feb 93 19:09:21 EST Received: by aisun3.ai.uga.edu (4.1) id AA00361; Wed, 24 Feb 93 19:09:21 EST From: mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) Message-Id: <9302250009.AA00361@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Subject: Czech dependency grammar (Resent by M. Covington) To: dg@ai.uga.edu Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1993 19:09:20 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2757 Forwarded message: From @UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:SGALL@CSPGUK11.BITNET Wed Feb 24 11:26:57 1993 Message-Id: <9302241626.AA00894@aisun3.ai.uga.edu> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 93 17:11:19 MET From: Petr Sgall Subject: Re: Possible service interruption To: Michael Covington In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 23 Feb 1993 00:13:33 -0500 (EST) Dear Colleague, I was not successful in using the shorter address, but I would be grateful if you can distribute this message in the group. I have just a few remarks to the ongoing discussion(s): In Czech linguistics the experience with dependency syntax is rather rich, since a highly detailed and consistentversion has been used here even in school grammars for decades, with success, and has been reformulated in our research group in the shape of a formal framework - a synthetic discussion was published by Sgall, Hajicova and Panevova: The meaning of the sentence in its semantic and pragmatic aspects, ed. by J.Mey, Dordrecht, Holl.:Reidel, 1986. There you find, among other issues, a brief analysis of valency of verbs and nouns. Function words (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, aux.verb forms) are handled here, in accordance with the older tradition, just as indices or parts of the lexical occurrences (node labels), since there is no need to include them as labels of specific nodes; e.g. such groups as 'from the window' or 'since...has been written' are equivalent to word forms with affixes (endings) in many languages; neither the gramatical affixes nor function words are syntactically free enough to require specific nodes in dependency trees. Our group now also works on a dependency-based grammar checker. Be so kind and include the following two membres of our group (i.e the research group of formal and computational linguistics at Charles Univ., Prague) into your e-mail net: Petkevic@Praha1.ff.cuni.cs (internet) - V.Petkevic, specialist in issues of underlying representations in DG; Rosen@Praha1.ff.cuni.cs - A. Rosen, working in parsing English for MT etc. Best thanks and regards Petr Sgall >To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- :- Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu : ***** :- Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0358 : ********* :- The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 : * * * :- Athens, Georgia 30602-7415 U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI : ** *** ** --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mjkim@hyowon.pusan.ac.kr Wed Mar 10 16:41:04 1993 Received: from garam.kreonet.re.kr by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA21918 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 10 Mar 1993 02:44:11 -0500 Received: from hyowon.pusan.ac.kr by garam.kreonet.re.kr (4.1/GARAM-MX-1.0) id AA10444; Wed, 10 Mar 93 16:54:06 KST Received: by hyowon.pusan.ac.kr (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/hyowon-1.0) id AA19363; Wed, 10 Mar 1993 16:41:04 GMT Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 16:41:04 GMT From: mjkim@hyowon.pusan.ac.kr (Minjung Kim ) Message-Id: <9303101641.AA19363@hyowon.pusan.ac.kr> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: subscribe subscribe dg mjkim@hyowon.pusan.ac.kr --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Sat Mar 13 03:06:06 1993 Received: from hiko.isct.kyutech.ac.jp ([150.69.2.6]) by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA17303 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sat, 13 Mar 1993 03:06:06 -0500 Received: by hiko.isct.kyutech.ac.jp (5.65/6.4J.6) id AA16390; Sat, 13 Mar 93 17:06:40 +0900 From: Received: by hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp (5.65/6.4J.6) id AA12327; Sat, 13 Mar 93 17:05:54 +0900 Return-Path: Message-Id: <9303130805.AA12327@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp Subject: Summary:Category Conversion Date: Sat, 13 Mar 93 17:05:53 +0900 Sorry, it's kind of late, but here's the summary of the responses I got to the question I asked you about cateory conversion. Many thanks to those who responded. Ron Kuzar points out that the number of prepositions which can function as noun modifiers without changing its status as NP is limited. I suppose it is an important observation, but what I'm interested in right now is PP functioning like NP rather than PP modifying NP. Laurie.Bauer@vuw.ac.nz asks me if what I'm interested in is Halliday's rank shift. Partially, if my understanding is correct. I understand his rank shift means embedding such as occurring as a sentential subject. I am certainly interested in such a case. However, it's not the only type I'm interested in. PP functioning as NP, for instance, if I am correct, is not treated in Hallidayan grammar. Laurie also asks if I am concerned with instances like A: Is Lyons's lecture today? B: No, Lyons is Wednesday. At first, I thought it was an example of metonymy and it was not relevant here, but come to think of it, it does seem related to the phenomena I'm interested. Bruce E. Nevin" was so nice to write me and told me in detail how he would treat the examples. He regards the head of the PP is present as a zero allomorph, and according to him, there is not discrepancy between form and function. The following is an example of his analysis; > (1) a. A: When are we going to have the next meeting? > B: {On Tuesday /In March/ During the vacation/ > Between 6 and 7} {will be fine/ suits me/ > is what we decided/ may be convenient}. [[Our] having the next meeting] on Tuesday (etc.) will be fine (etc.) Although I wonder exactly how one could recover the expression from a sentence with a zero allomorph, it is a very interesting approach. Thank you again, Ron, Laurie, Bruce. I really appreciate your cooperation. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Makoto SHIMIZU Kyushu Institute of Technology shimizu@hakobera.isct.kyutech.ac.jp \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Well, I'm runnin' down the road Tryin' to loosen my load I've got seven women on my mind Four that wanna own me Two that wanna stone me One says she's a friend of mine Eagles Take it Easy --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From MCOVINGT@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Sun Mar 14 12:27:48 1993 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA27194 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 14 Mar 1993 20:15:17 -0500 Message-Id: <199303150115.AA27194@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5097; Sun, 14 Mar 93 20:13:13 EST Received: from UGA (NJE origin MCOVINGT@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 3769; Sun, 14 Mar 1993 20:13:13 -0500 Resent-Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 20:13:03 EST Resent-From: "Michael A. Covington" Resent-To: dg@ai.uga.edu Return-Path: <@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:mccord@WATSON.IBM.COM> Received: from UGA (NJE origin SMTP@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 9710; Sun, 14 Mar 1993 17:43:40 -0500 Received: from watson.ibm.com by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Sun, 14 Mar 93 17:43:39 EST Received: from YKTVMH by watson.ibm.com (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 7907; Sun, 14 Mar 93 17:45:31 EST Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 17:27:48 EST From: "Michael C. McCord (Phone 914-784-7808;)" To: mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu Cc: uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Subject: Tree drawing in TeX ------------------------------------------------------------- - Michael A. Covington internet mcovingt@uga.cc.uga.edu - - Asst. Director / Lab Manager bitnet MCOVINGT@UGA - - Artificial Intelligence Programs phone 706 542-0359 - - The University of Georgia fax 706 542-0349 - - Athens, Georgia 30602 mci mail MCOVINGTON - - U.S.A. amateur radio N4TMI - ------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Michael, You asked: "Has anyone written a program to draw dependency trees as LaTeX pictures? I'm working on one and will post it if there is sufficient interest." I need something like this. My dependency trees for Slot Grammar look like the following, roughly: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Who did Alice say Bob wanted to find and talk with? ,--------- obj(n) who1(1) noun o--------- top do1(2,3,4) verb `--------- subj(n) Alice1(3) noun `--------- auxcomp(binf) say1(4,3,6,u) verb | ,----- subj(n) Bob1(5) noun `-+----- obj(fin) want2(6,5,5,9) verb | ,--- preinf to2(7) preinf | ,--- lconj find1(8,5,1,u) verb `-+--- comp(inf) and(9,8,10) verb `--- rconj talk1(10,5,u,1) verb `- comp(p(with)) with1(11,1) prep ------------------------------------------------------------------- In this display, there is one line per word/node, and it has the nice property that you can get trees for very large sentences in a small amount of space, with a lot of information for each node. On each line you see: (1) a tree line, (2) the slot filled by the node, (3) the word sense predication, and (4) the feature structure. The word sense predicate is a sense name for the word. Its first argument is just the word number, which serves as an index for the node. Other arguments are the indices for the actual arguments (the first of these for a verb is the logical subject, etc.). The feature structure (like 'verb') is _abbreviated_ here, by a display option; but it could be larger, and could easily extend as far to the right as you want, a nice thing about this notation. I usually use SCRIPT for formatting and there I can make those tree lines neat -- with nice box characters. So far I've been unable to reproduce this in LaTeX, though I'm sure that with enough work you can get LaTeX to _draw_ them. It would be much easier if there were just box _characters_ of the sort I can get in other systems. I didn't know how to send this note to the whole mailing list. Could you post it? Best regards, Michael --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mccord@watson.ibm.com Mon Mar 15 02:11:03 1993 Received: from watson.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA00825 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 15 Mar 1993 07:12:31 -0500 Message-Id: <199303151212.AA00825@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from YKTVMH by watson.ibm.com (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 9973; Mon, 15 Mar 93 07:12:26 EST Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 07:11:03 EST From: "Michael C. McCord (Phone 914-784-7808;)" To: dg@ai.uga.edu Michael, Thanks for your replies. I did try 'verbatim' and with that I can get a display in LaTeX pretty much like what appeared in my note. My main problem though was to find a monospace font that has better tree-line characters than the ones in my note. The characters I use normally (with SCRIPT) are "box characters"; they are like parts of a square -- upper left corner, top edge, etc. It makes a very nice display. My parser produces the characters automatically, so there's no work in making the displays. Did you yet forward my note to the mailing list? I didn't receive it, and I thought I would if it were sent to the whole mailing list. Thanks for reminding me how to send to the list. I could do it now for that note, but I didn't want to duplicate it if you have. When notes are sent to that mailing list userid, do they automatically and immediately go out, or do you have to do something with them? Best regards, Michael --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Wed Mar 17 14:54:14 1993 Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18904 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 17 Mar 1993 09:55:41 -0500 Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Wed, 17 Mar 1993 14:54:25 +0000 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <12890-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 17 Mar 1993 14:54:18 +0000 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA35265; Wed, 17 Mar 1993 14:54:16 GMT From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9303171454.AA35265@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu X-Ungarbled_Sender: And Rosta Subject: raising-to-object in a monostratal DG Date: Wed, 17 Mar 93 14:54:14 +0000 Sender: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk I have been exploring a (monostratal) dependency analysis that distinguishes (1) & (2). 1. He persuaded her to be a syntactician. 2. He believed her to be a syntactician. I would like to know of any other work that has distinguished these two and that uses analyses (i) based on dependency, and (ii) lacking transformations. I will summarize any replies sent personally to me, though since the traffic on this list is so low I don't suppose anyone would be too put out if replies were sent to the whole list instead. ---- And Rosta --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg Fri Apr 2 21:26:32 1993 Received: from nuscc.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18950 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 00:26:36 -0500 Received: by nuscc.nus.sg (5.65/1.34) id AA04764; Fri, 2 Apr 93 13:26:32 +0800 Date: Fri, 2 Apr 93 13:26:32 +0800 From: ellalain@nuscc.nus.sg (Alain Polguere) Message-Id: <9304020526.AA04764@nuscc.nus.sg> To: Subject: A question about Mandarin I don't know whether there is any "Mandarinophone" on this list... With a colleague here, Gan Kok Wee, we try to find as many arguments as possible for determining whether a syntactic dependendy holds between TA and BENREN or SHENG and BENREN in a sentence like: "Ta benren sheng-le san ge haizi." We are particularly interested in arguments which would be based on actual characteristic properties of the Chinese grammar. (No UG please :-) ). Thanks for you help. AP --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM Fri Apr 2 03:00:37 1993 Received: from vnet.IBM.COM ([192.239.48.4]) by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA19317 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 03:00:37 -0500 Message-Id: <199304020800.AA19317@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from WINVMD by vnet.IBM.COM (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 7242; Fri, 02 Apr 93 02:59:25 EST Date: Fri, 2 Apr 93 09:00:27 BST From: rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: A Computer-readable notation for DG What is the universally accepted, computer readable, notation for dependency grammar parses? The notation used in publications, with beautiful arrows, labellings etc (e.g. Hudson's Word Grammar, and Sleator's Link Grammar) is fine for description and education, but it's not computer readable. Definitions of dependency graphs in PROLOG clauses, or LISP notation are dependent on the details of particular implementations, and so not readily interchangeable. What I need is a simple notation, using only ASCII characters, that can encode the dependency relationships of any naturally occurring sentence. This "interchange format" should also have the following characteristics: 1. enable most useful dependency information to be encoded 2. allow for extension for new types of annotation 3. allow different languages (at least in principle) 4. be acceptable to most people working with DG's. The model I would like to emulate is that of the "tree bank" of phrase structure analyses used by the Lancaster Univ. UCREL group, and by the U.Penn corpus annotators, but specifically adapted to DG's. Richard Sharman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. 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To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr Fri Apr 2 17:49:45 1993 Received: from isis.u-strasbg.fr by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA21388 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 10:49:06 -0500 Received: from monza.u-strasbg.fr by isis.u-strasbg.fr with SMTP id AA06547 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 17:48:46 +0200 Received: from [130.79.160.96] (buren.u-strasbg.fr) by monza.u-strasbg.fr (4.1/SMI-3.2-jjp/4/6/92) id AA01012; Fri, 2 Apr 93 17:49:22 +0100 Message-Id: <9304021649.AA01012@monza.u-strasbg.fr> Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1993 16:49:45 +0100 To: dg@ai.uga.edu, rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM From: eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr (Michel Eytan, LILoL) X-Sender: me@ushs.u-strasbg.fr Subject: Re: A Computer-readable notation for DG At 9:00 2/04/93 -0800, rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM wrote: [deleted] >The model I would like to emulate is that of the "tree bank" of phrase >structure analyses used by the Lancaster Univ. UCREL group, and by the >U.Penn corpus annotators, but specifically adapted to DG's. > >Richard Sharman >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. >To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. >To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard, I believe it would be of interest for several of us ignoramuses if you could provide some more info about "tree banks" or better to tell us how to get the info by e-means. Thank you, cheers -- Michel Eytan, Lab Info, Log & Lang eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr Dpt Info, U Strasbourg II V: +33 88 41 74 29 22 rue Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg FR F: +33 88 41 74 40 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mccord@watson.ibm.com Fri Apr 2 06:29:50 1993 Received: from watson.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA21875 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 11:30:01 -0500 Message-Id: <199304021630.AA21875@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from YKTVMH by watson.ibm.com (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 2027; Fri, 02 Apr 93 11:29:58 EST Date: Fri, 2 Apr 93 11:29:50 EST From: "Michael C. McCord (Phone 914-784-7808;)" To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: lappin@watson.ibm.com Subject: Notation for dependency grammar parses Folks, Richard Sharman asked for a good notation for dependency grammar parses. It should be computer-readable, simple, and should use only ASCII characters -- having this much in common with the notation of the UPenn treebank. At the UPenn DARPA workshop on grammar evaluation held a few months ago, we had a subsession on the representation of predicate argument structure. This was of interest since the existing UPenn treebank doesn't show predicate argument structure. In this session I proposed a notation I called "slot graphs" which have the properties Richard asked for. Slot graphs can be output by the Slot Grammar parser, as an option. And I think they would be a reasonable basis for a parsebank for dependency grammar parses. Slot graph analyses are dependency-oriented and assume that each phrase has a unique head word (token). Normally, there is a 1-1 correspondence between these head words and the original words (tokens) of the sentence. In the following, I'll just use "word" to include real words as well as other tokens such as punctuation symbols. To produce a slot graph for a sentence, you number the words with integers 1, 2, 3, ... . It's convenient to write down the words vertically, with their integer indices in front of them, so that there is one word (phrase/node) per line. Then on each line you show all the information you want about that node. Here are two examples, where we have just elected to show slot-filler information about each node. Alice loves Bob. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Alice 2 loves subj:1 obj:3 3 Bob ---------------------------------------------------------------- Who does Bob want Alice to love? ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 who 2 does subj:3 auxcomp:4 3 Bob 4 want subj:3 obj:5 comp:7 5 Alice 6 to 7 love subj:5 obj:1 preinf:6 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Here, for each each word J, I've shown all the slot-filler pairs Slot : I where word I (and the phrase it heads) fills slot Slot in phrase J. That's the _basic_ idea of "slot graph" -- to show the slot-filler relationships. Although I've shown only slot-filler relationships in these examples, the basic idea of the notation is flexible because you can add whatever information you want about each node on the line for that node. For instance you could show parts of speech, as in Alice loves Bob. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Alice noun 2 loves subj:1 obj:3 verb 3 Bob noun ---------------------------------------------------------------- or more complete feature information. You could also show lemma forms of words and/or _word senses_ instead of just the original words. We discussed several variants at the UPenn workshop, and there has been more discussion since.) In most of the following examples, I'll just show the slot-filler relationships, but keep in mind that the basic notation allows more information about each node. In the case of passive past participles, the logical (deep) slots could be shown, as in: Alice was awarded a prize by the committee. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Alice 2 was subj:1 pred:3 3 awarded subj:8 obj:5 iobj:1 4 a 5 prize ndet:4 6 by objprep:8 7 the 8 committee ndet:7 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The following example illustrates gapping. France reported 50 cases; Germany, 48. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 France 2 reported subj:1 obj:4 ref:7 3 50 4 cases ndet:3 5 ; lconj:2 rconj:7 6 Germany 7 , subj:6 obj:8 8 48 ---------------------------------------------------------------- In certain rare cases, in particular for gapping, abstract nodes are needed, as the following example illustrates: Alice sent Bob a letter and Charles a card. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Alice 2 sent subj:1 obj:5 iobj:3 ref:x 3 Bob 4 a 5 letter ndet:4 6 and lconj:2 rconj:x x ref:2 subj:1 obj:9 iobj:7 7 Charles 8 a 9 card ndet:8 ---------------------------------------------------------------- As a mathematical graph, the nodes of a slot graph are of course the node indices (sentence token numbers) I have been talking about (plus any abstract nodes). A labeled edge is of the form (I, Slot, J), where node I fills slot Slot in node J. In graphic form, these triples would correspond to labeled arcs. Alternatively, a slot graph may be viewed in predicate logic as a set of predications Slot(I,J). It is probably easiest to write down slot graphs in the form illustrated in the examples above, which we can call the _filler_ notation. One just takes a word at a time and writes down, next to word J, all the slot-fillers for J, i.e. all pairs Slot:I where (I,Slot,J) is in the graph (I fills slot Slot in J). Another possibility would be the _role_ notation: One writes down, next to word I, all pairs Slot:J such that I fills slot Slot in J. (These pairs are the _roles_ of I in the sentence.) For example: Who does Bob want Alice to love? ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 who obj:7 2 does top:0 3 Bob subj:2 subj:4 4 want auxcomp:2 5 Alice obj:4 subj:7 6 to preinf:7 7 love comp:4 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The information content is the same for the filler notation and the role notation; but perhaps the filler notation is more readable, especially when coordination is involved. A surface dependency tree can easily be represented as a slot graph. The tree can be specified by showing the unique mother node of each word. For each word I, we can just write down the single role mother : J where J is the mother of I. Or the role could have a more informative name, like subj : J. An arbitrary slot graph has an associated tree. The main idea in obtaining it is to compute the _major role_ of each word and build the tree by considering this as pointing to the mother. I have developed procedures for computing major roles and associated trees, but I won't describe them here. If a parsebank is given in slot graph form, and a given grammar produces only surface trees, one could always test that grammar against the trees associated with the slot graphs in the way just indicated. In other words, one could always throw away the information given by non-major roles. Some display software could make it easier for humans to write down slot graphs. For instance, the numbering of the words could be done by a program, and a screen interface would allow the human parser to enter the slot-fillers or the roles in the above sorts of display. One could imagine simple linear notations too. Best regards, Michael McCord --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM Fri Apr 2 12:01:59 1993 Received: from vnet.IBM.COM ([192.239.48.4]) by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA22072 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 12:01:59 -0500 Message-Id: <199304021701.AA22072@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from WINVMD by vnet.IBM.COM (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9354; Fri, 02 Apr 93 12:00:45 EST Date: Fri, 2 Apr 93 18:01:41 BST From: rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Treebanks A short note for all those who are unfamiliar with "treebanks", and apologies to those who know: a treebank is a collection of trees, each of which is a phrase-structure parse of a sentence, e.g. [S [N John N] [V loves [N mary N] V] . S] The notation can be turned into a tree in your implementation when you read it in. Brackets must be matched, should have labels, etc. Words can be tagged with parts-of-speech e.g. John_NP, and other tags can be added to show anaphora, co-reference, etc, as needed. It is a sort of markup language a bit like GML. It is, of course, theory specific. But the data can be used for all sorts of language analysis tasks. Now, assuming that one wanted to do the same, but using the concepts of dependency grammar, how would you do the annotations? regards, Richard Sharman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Fri Apr 2 21:53:42 1993 Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA25761 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 2 Apr 1993 15:01:40 -0500 Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Fri, 2 Apr 1993 20:53:48 +0100 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <06127-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Fri, 2 Apr 1993 20:53:44 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA21323; Fri, 2 Apr 1993 20:53:43 +0100 Message-Id: <9304021953.AA21323@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: A computer-readable notation Date: Fri, 02 Apr 93 20:53:42 +0100 From: RichardHudson50 I'd personally be very happy to accept Michael McCord's notation. Presumably one objection to it might be that you can't view much of a text on a vdu screen, in contrast with the linear notation that Richard Sharman illustrated for PSG tree-banks. But Michael's notation could presumably be converted very easily into a linear notation something like the following, without loss of information: 1:N:Alice[2,subject], 2:V:loves[0], 3:N:Bob[2,object]. I.e. word 1, a noun, namely "Alice", depends on word 2, as its subject; etc. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Sat Apr 3 15:18:18 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA05474 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sat, 3 Apr 1993 15:18:18 -0500 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA27980; Sat, 3 Apr 93 10:17:28 HST Date: Sat, 3 Apr 93 10:17:28 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9304032017.AA27980@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: dependency notation Cc: stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu I gave a paper at the 2nd Japan-Australia joint symposium on natural language processing (October 1991) called `Dependency grammar and monostratal transfer' in which I proposed the following: "I suggested at the beginning of this paper that using a constrainted dependency framework might facilitate machine translation by monostratal transfer. Now I would like to make that proposal a bit more concrete. The basic idea is that grammatical structure is encoded in words, that the structure of a sentence (including dependency counterparts of `immediate dominance' and `linear precedence' in the GPSG sense) can be fully represented in a string of words, and that (as a first approximation) the grammatical phase of machine translation (mt) might be reduced to a straightforward process of substring-to-substring lexical substitution. No additional processing would be necessary to generate a derived structure, since the derived structure would be built into the output string of words." Like McCord's notation, my notation uses indices, but it is a simple list rather than a graph, and does not refer to any abstract level of 'logical form'. The full paper is available as transfer.snd through anonymous login on host ftp.ims.uni-stuttgart.de, directory pub/lexicase. Stan Starosta --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From bnevin@ccb.bbn.com Mon Apr 5 05:52:12 1993 Received: from BBN.COM by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA19791 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 5 Apr 1993 09:57:04 -0400 Message-Id: <199304051357.AA19791@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from CCB.BBN.COM by BBN.COM id aa12855; 5 Apr 93 9:54 EDT Date: Mon, 5 Apr 93 09:52:12 EDT From: "Bruce E. Nevin" Subject: Starosta on notation To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: bn@ccb.bbn.com > The basic idea is that grammatical structure is encoded in words, > that the structure of a sentence [...] can be fully represented in > a string of words, and that (as a first approximation) the > grammatical phase of machine translation (mt) might be reduced to > a straightforward process of substring-to-substring lexical > substitution. No additional processing would be necessary to > generate a derived structure, since the derived structure would > be built into the output string of words." > >Stan Starosta This supports a claim that the metalanguage that is observably available as a sublanguage of natural language is sufficient to describe a natural language. For development of the notion that the metalanguage within language is not only sufficient but also necessary, and that any seeming alternative is based upon or derived from language, see Harris (1968, 1988, 1991), Harris et al.(1989), Ryckman (1986), Nevin (1993). Against this is the familiar claim that notations such as category labels and subscripts, or the metalanguage expressions that they represent, are in some sense innate. Even without the claim of necessity, the observation of sufficiency argues against this on grounds of economy (Ockham's razor). Notational expressions are compact graphical representations of the natural language expressions that are used to express them orally, and the information that is thought to be in them is precisely the linguistic information that is constituted by those natural language expressions that they represent. Harris shows that not only language structure but also operations deriving and constituting language structure are stateable in the intrinsic metalanguage, without recourse to metalanguage constructs supposedly external to and prior to language. The word dependencies of operator grammar are virtually identical between languages. The conditions for applying reductions are present in these dependencies. The language differences are almost entirely in the metalanguage statements (rules) deriving reduced constructions at each point at which an operator enters on its arguments. The application to MT is, as you say, obvious, but I think much more extensive than you had supposed.. Whereas certain constraints are placed on the grammar of the language as a whole due to absence of an external metalanguage, the metalanguage for the whole language is in fact external to the sublanguage, removing those constraints from sublanguage grammar (Harris 1991 chapter 10). For example, in sublanguage grammar, especially for a technical or scientific domain, information structures common to discourses of the sublanguage (i.e. in the subject matter domain) become available as elements of the grammar identified in the metalanguage, vastly simplifying many computational tasks. And whereas utterance acceptability judgements for the language as a whole are a graded property, and language is in consequence not well defined, sublanguage grammar can in many cases distinguish and reject nonsense, and science sublanguages may be well defined. This too has computational implications that have barely begun to be explored. Harris, Zellig S. 1968. _Mathematical Structures of Language_ __________. 1982. _A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles_. New York: Wiley. __________. 1988 _Language and Information_. New York: Columbia University Press. __________. 1991. _Language and Information: A mathematical approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press. __________, Michael J. Gottfried, Thomas A. Ryckman, et. al. 1989. _The Form of Information in Science: Analysis of an immunology sublanguage. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 104. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Nevin, Bruce E. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistics: Zellig Harris' work on meaning and information. _Historiographia Linguistica_ XX 2/3 (forthcoming). Ryckman, Thomas A. 1986. _Grammar and Information: An investigation in linguistic metatheory. PhD. dissertation. New York: Columbia University. Bruce Nevin bn@bbn.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From sak@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Wed Apr 7 03:25:36 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA09353 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 7 Apr 1993 03:25:36 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA22114; Tue, 6 Apr 93 21:25:34 HST Date: Tue, 6 Apr 93 21:25:34 HST From: Chhany Sak-Humphry Message-Id: <9304070725.AA22114@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: R Yes, I heard about you from Professor Starosta. I am very much interested in joining your group, and would like to know what your activities. Thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Apr 8 17:40:41 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA11072 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 8 Apr 1993 17:40:41 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA16850; Thu, 8 Apr 93 11:40:28 HST Date: Thu, 8 Apr 93 11:40:28 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9304082140.AA16850@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: DG notation Cc: stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu, yngve@cerberus.uchicago.edu Thanks to Bruce Nevin for the response to my posting on dependency notation. I think I didn't express myself clearly enough, though. The `words' I was referring to in my `string of words' suggestion for mt are words in a linguistic sense, that is, complexes of phonological, distributional, and distinctive or prototype-based referential information, and I would not try to represent this kind of information in a subset of natural language (a la Wierzbicka?) any more than I would try in physics to represent information about mass and energy in a subset of natural language. Based on BN's posting, this sounds to me like what my first linguistics teacher, Martin Joos, referred to as 'a fire in a wooden stove'. I also would not subscribe to the statement that `...whereas utterance acceptability judgements for the language as a whole are a graded property, and language is in consequence not well defined...'. This seems to me compara- ble to claiming that since real-world falling objects do not conform exactly to the physical law s = s0 - 1/2gt2, therefore the law itself is somehow not well-defined. I would rather say that informant judgements reflect a variety of interacting factors, grammaticality being only one, and that a linguistic scientist's job is to sort out these factors and design experiments to control the variables. Stan S. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM Mon May 24 12:14:38 1993 Received: from vnet.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA09398 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 24 May 1993 12:14:38 -0400 Message-Id: <199305241614.AA09398@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from WINVMD by vnet.IBM.COM (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3189; Mon, 24 May 93 12:13:23 EDT Date: Mon, 24 May 93 16:14:58 BST From: rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Classifying Parsers Dear DG-ers, Like Michael Covington I was wondering if anything had happened recently! I though Michael's classification a useful step to telling others what you are talking about. Some time ago I developed a statistically based phrase structure parser, which the classification would make: (1) Constituency (2) Continuous Phrases (3) Completely Ordered (4) Mixed, bottom up and top down. (5) All-at-once (6) Whole sentence available (7) Concurrent (8) Unlimited (9) Acive Chart (10) Likelihood maximisation to find "best" parse. I don't know if this helps to understand what it is like, and it does miss one important point: the systen is TRAINED on pre-existing data. Instead of inventing the rules "by hand" the rules are "discovered" by analysing (automatically) a large treebank. All this prompts me to ask if another section could be added to the classification covering these ideas? I am now working on a more dependency-based parser which would look like this: (1) Dependency (2) Discontinuous (3) Free linear order (4) Bottom up (5) Incremental (6) Left-to-right (7) concurrent (8) Unlimited (9) Table (like chart) (10) Likelihood maximisation It would also be trained. Does this make it clear? regards, RIchard --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM Mon May 24 13:11:54 1993 Received: from vnet.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA11679 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 24 May 1993 13:11:54 -0400 Message-Id: <199305241711.AA11679@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from WINVMD by vnet.IBM.COM (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3635; Mon, 24 May 93 13:10:38 EDT Date: Mon, 24 May 93 17:59:58 BST From: rsharman@vnet.IBM.COM To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Classification of Parsers A classification is a good thing, but of course, some criteria are more useful than others. Often the useful criteria are the hardest to evaluate, and the the easy criteria are not much use. But that's life! There is one property which I think ought to be included in a classification, however, and that is what the parser can be used for. Does the parser just create some structure from the given sentence, or is it a powerful enough model of language (theory, even) that can predict other properties? If so, then the parser would have applications in the gray area of ungrammaticallity. To my mind an ideal parser would be able to parse good sentences, and also bad ones. An essential task in the real world is to find the offending word/phrase/construction that makes a sentence odd, and suggest the best correction. Another task is to finish off an unfinished sentence. So I would like to add another item to Michael Covington's list which covered these points. A parse tree, or a dependency graph, seems to me to be an abstract property of a sentence (you can't actually observe one in nature). Since there are many abstractions, we have many theories of grammar and therefore many discussions on which is "best". A practical measure of goodness can be related to how well the abstraction helps to solve the sort of problems I indicated above. I don't think conflicts with other measures, like simplicity, plausibility, elegance, and so on. Richard --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Tue May 25 08:55:25 1993 Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18444 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 25 May 1993 02:55:40 -0400 Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-b; Tue, 25 May 1993 07:55:28 +0100 Received: from ucl.ac.uk by mail-b.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <07765-0@mail-b.bcc.ac.uk>; Tue, 25 May 1993 07:55:28 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA20572; Tue, 25 May 1993 07:55:25 +0100 Message-Id: <9305250655.AA20572@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Theory and practice Date: Tue, 25 May 93 07:55:25 +0100 From: RichardHudson I have a theoretical question for working dependency grammarians. I know a lot of dependency grammarians make a distinction between form-words and content-words, and include only the latter in their dependency analyses. Apart from the fact that Tesniere did this, is there any evidence that it's correct? In my own work, I have been impressed by the similarities between e.g. auxiliary verbs (form-words) and non-auxiliary verbs (content- words), and don't see how a grammar would work smoothly if they had to be distinguished. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From mccord@watson.ibm.com Tue May 25 10:39:24 1993 Received: from watson.ibm.com by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA22685 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 25 May 1993 14:41:34 -0400 Message-Id: <199305251841.AA22685@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from YKTVMH by watson.ibm.com (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 4749; Tue, 25 May 93 14:41:37 EDT Date: Tue, 25 May 93 14:39:24 EDT From: "Michael C. McCord (Phone 914-784-7808;)" To: dg@ai.uga.edu Dick, Read your note about form-words vs. content-words. I agree with you, and don't make any real distinction in Slot Grammar. For instance, like you, I analyze "auxiliary" verbs as higher verbs. And I don't e.g. convert what some people call form-words into features; rather I keep a 1-1 correspondence between analysis nodes and words of the sentence as much as possible. All best, Michael --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu May 27 09:40:50 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA00966 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 27 May 1993 09:40:50 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA18502; Wed, 26 May 93 15:58:38 HST Date: Wed, 26 May 93 15:58:38 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9305270158.AA18502@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: neglectable words Cc: stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu I agree with Dick. I don't see the slightest linguistic justification for leaving `function' words out of a dependency representation. This practice seems to me to be based on a prelinguistic notional grammar-influenced reverence for `content' words and contempt for words whose meanings are hard to describe in terms of `actions' or `things'. It results in a major loss in language-specific and cross-linguistic generalizations, not to mention the introduction of an otherwise spurious and unmotivated distinction between deep and surface structures. Stan Starosta --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Fri May 28 18:00:44 1993 Received: from sun2.nsfnet-relay.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA15939 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 28 May 1993 12:02:13 -0400 Via: uk.ac.bcc.mail-a; Fri, 28 May 1993 17:01:21 +0100 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <09642-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Fri, 28 May 1993 17:00:56 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA92196; Fri, 28 May 1993 17:00:45 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9305281600.AA92196@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu X-Ungarbled_Sender: And Rosta Subject: a literary dog's breakfast Date: Fri, 28 May 93 17:00:44 +0100 Sender: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk In Word Grammar the dependency relations in the phrase _a dog's breakfast_ (in its literal meaning) are as in (1a-b). <------< >-> >-> 1a. a dog 's breakfast [literal] <------------< >-------> <-< >-> b. a hairy dog 's breakfast [literal] More archaic (;-)) analyses might reverse the directions of some of these dependencies, but agree on most of the the pairings. _Dog's breakfast(s)_ can also mean "mess". When it has this idiomatic reading, one can say things like (2a). (2b-d) are similar. 2a. This is a literary [ dog's breakfast ] b. She went on a culinary [ Cook's tour ] c. I don't give a bloody [ tinker's cuss ] d. I found a green [ man's shoe ] Should the structure be as in (3)? >---------------> <------< <-<>-> 3. a literary dog 's breakfast a green man 's shoe If this is possible, one ought to be able to say _three man's shoes_. Can one? (This ought also to be possible if the bracketed phrases in (2a-d) are compounds.) How should the (2a-d) structure be restricted to these idiomatic examples? My preferred analysis would be to treat the bracketed phrases in (2a-d) as single words, whose internal structure, however, is syntactic rather than morphological. Other cases where this would also apply are: 4a. She said "What time is it?" b. Pigs Might Fly is coming up to the fourth furlong. c. Have you read _For whom the bell tolls_? d. ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carrol. Comments? Unless anyone objects (& feel free to do so), I shan't summarize any messages sent to me privately. Since the traffic on this list is so minimal, a bit of on-list discussion might be welcome. -------- And Rosta --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Distributed through DG, the international dependency grammar mailing list. To subscribe or unsubscribe, or for assistance, email mcovingt@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you REPLY to this mail, your response will go to the person who sent it. To reach the ENTIRE discussion group, MAIL your response to: dg@ai.uga.edu. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Sun Jul 18 09:33:34 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA21313 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 18 Jul 1993 09:33:34 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA04660; Sun, 18 Jul 93 03:33:31 HST Date: Sun, 18 Jul 93 03:33:31 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307181333.AA04660@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: How abstract is DG, and what is it good for? Last November, at the functional dg conference in Prague which was held in honor of Petr Sgall, Hans Uszkoreit made two statements during his presenta- tion which are of potential interest to dependency grammarians. He said 1) that DG is only useful for German and Slavic languages, and 2) that there is no workable monostratal version of DG. I wonder how the people on this mailing list would react to these statements? I have just given a talk [`Empty categories in constrained dependency grammar'] at the Institut f|r maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, Universitdt Stuttgart, in which I attempted to refute 2) by demonstrating that the lexicase version of DG is both monostratal and workable, and another [`Dependency grammar meets Asian and Pacific languages'] at the Institute for Applied Mathematics, Charles University, Prague, in which I talked about the more than 70 Asian, Pacific, Native American, African, and Indoeuropean languages that had been worked on to varying degrees in the lexicase dependency framework and some of the insights that had been derived from work on these languages. (I can upload my list (language names, authors and dates) if there is general interest.) Maybe dependency grammarians need to do a little more `public relations' work to counteract uninformed and theoretically naive statements like Uszkoreit's. Stan Starosta From hansu@coli.uni-sb.de Mon Jul 19 23:10:13 1993 Received: from iraun1.ira.uka.de by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA27987 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 19 Jul 1993 15:10:53 -0400 Received: from sbusol.rz.uni-sb.de by iraun1.ira.uka.de with SMTP (PP) id <05673-0@iraun1.ira.uka.de>; Mon, 19 Jul 1993 21:10:19 +0200 Received: from coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de by sbusol.rz.uni-sb.de (5.65+/v1.0) id AA19072; Mon, 19 Jul 93 21:10:19 +0200 Received: by coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de (4.1/SMI-4.1/CL930118) id AA04739; Mon, 19 Jul 93 21:10:13 +0200 Date: Mon, 19 Jul 93 21:10:13 +0200 From: hansu@coli.uni-sb.de (Hans Uszkoreit) Message-Id: <9307191910.AA04739@coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: How abstract is DG, and what... Let me defend Stanley Starosta's way of getting the ball rolling again in the DG discussion forum. I concede, the provocative, slightly slanderous conversation starter typical for scientific flaming in some parts of the world is not everyone's cup of tea. But it is very effective in getting people to react. It worked with me although supported by the fact that I am sitting at home immobilized by a cast around my left leg this summer instead of travelling to conferences and summer schools. What did I really say in Prague? I will summarize it here although I admit it is more boring than Starosta's rendering of my claims. I tried to state some reasons why the three basic grammar models of PSG, DG, and CG (and derivatives) have coexisted in linguistics for many decades although proponents of the different frameworks have tried every method to shoot down the competing approaches. I claimed that it was certainly not because scientists were uninformed about the virtues of the other models or theoretically too naive to see the light of truth. I claimed that the three basic grammar models each had to offer something to certain groups of researchers that the others could not provide. In this context, I pointed out that it is no coincidence... ...that dependency grammar models have traditionally been stronger among linguists working on Slavic or Germanic languages than among linguists working on English, ...that phrase structure based models have been stronger in Anglocentric parts of linguistics than in--let's say--Slavic linguistics circles, and ...that categorial grammar models have been strongest in circles more concerned with formal semantics than with syntax. I also pointed out that contemporary unification grammar frameworks usually mix strategies from the three basic models. They do this in quite different ways. The most widespread unification grammar models agree in that they all base their notion of derivation on recursion in the phrase structure. In some cases this decision is built into the formal apparatus in others it is a deliberate choice of usage. (There is, for instance, a version of FUG using variables in the feature PATTERN that could be used for doing recursion on dependency structure by letting the value of CSET be the set of dependents.) If you look at newer brands of CG such as Michael Mortgaat's model we see that here also strategies from different models are combined- -this time under the primacy of the categorial approach. I think that most contemporary grammar models combine strategies from at least two of the basic models. One might combine for instance: - phrase structure constrained by dependency structure (functional structure) as a control structure - phrase structure constrained by a categorial semantics - dependency structure extended by means for functional composition or some other form of argument raising. The reason for working with combinations is obvious, it's the large class of mismatches between functor-argument structure, functional structure, and surface order found in language. I showed that in HPSG, especially in newly emerging versions, we find a combination of strategies from all three basic models. I did not claim that monostratal versions of DG could not be constructed; quite the opposite, I indicated how a framework such as the functional dependency model of the New Prague School could be based on monostratal representations utilizing the same formal descriptive tools that are used to define the grammatical framework of HPSG. I also pointed out the most problematic part of such a move, i.e., the modular formulation of principles that relationally constrain the mapping between dependency structure and phonological form. There might be other, much more elegant monostratal versions of DG. If there exists a true DG model (a model with derivation by recursion on the dependency structure) that is monostratal and that does neither require a very complex notion of mapping from dependency structure to phonology nor several CG-like mechanisms for argument raising (raising of dependents) in the lexicon or in the derivation, please let me know immediately! I think Starosta is right when he says that DG grammarians need to improve their PR. But then isn't this true for the proponents of all non-GB grammar theories? A constructive final remark: It would be nice if DG grammarians would join in the very promising dialogue between CG and HPSG that has recently been emerging. Hans Uszkoreit From rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu Tue Jul 20 07:25:16 1993 Received: from LINC.CIS.UPENN.EDU by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA03874 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 20 Jul 1993 11:25:19 -0400 Received: from UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU by linc.cis.upenn.edu id AA15468; Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:25:17 -0400 Return-Path: Received: by unagi.cis.upenn.edu id AA09251; Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:25:16 EDT Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:25:16 EDT From: rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Owen Rambow) Posted-Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:25:16 EDT Message-Id: <9307201525.AA09251@unagi.cis.upenn.edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: DG / PSG As a quick follow-up to Stan Starosta and Hans Uszkoreit's very interesting postings: in a paper presented at the workshop on Meaning-text Theory (MTT) in Darmstadt last summer, Aravind Joshi and I argue that, in the past, the main dividing line between the linguistic traditions has been the issue of the lexicon. DG linguists are naturally interested in the lexicon, while in a 70s-style Chomskyan theory, the lexicon is relegated to a secondary and tenuous position. There is now a general appreciation of the role of the lexicon beyong DG linguists, as witnessed by theories such as HPSG, LFG, TAG-based linguistic theories, and GB and Minimalism (Chomsky's newest). But none of these systems are formally context-free grammars; rather, they are formally more powerful (or, as in the case of Chomsky's theories, not formalized at all any more). The use of CFGs as the prototype of PSGs in the 60s introduced the notion that PS-based approaches are incompatible with lexicon-based approaches, but this need not be true if more powerful PS systems are used. So why have PS at all? Let me suggest the following (in Hans Uszkoreit's spirit of conversation starters): it seems to me that a theory of syntax (taken very narrowly as a theory of surface word order) cannot be formulated (in a principles-and-parameters type methodological framework) in a DG. Take for example verb-second in German. In a DG, can we do anything more than state the facts in German? The complimentary distribution of the overt complementizer and the V2 effect in subordinate clauses is then a mere observation. In a PSG, we can suggest that the complementizer and the finite verb in second position must be in the same position (there being no other possibilities for the finite verb). The complementary distribution then follows as a verified prediction. What is crucial in this explanation is the notion that not only can we position dependents with respect to their head, but we can also, independently, position heads with respect to some other structure -- in this case PS. (I would be interested in hearing of any DG-based analyses of V2.) Of course, while this very narrow area of syntax is exactly what Chomsky considers "syntax" to be, MTT linguists (I have been told) consider it a very small and rather unintersting problem, tackled prematurely. This may well be true. Owen Rambow From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Jul 22 08:33:25 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18510 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 22 Jul 1993 08:33:25 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA02952; Thu, 22 Jul 93 02:33:23 HST Date: Thu, 22 Jul 93 02:33:23 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307221233.AA02952@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: The abstractness and typology-specificity of dg again It seems that my conversation-starter has started a conversation. I'll limit my current turn to addressing the following four points. 1. History: What did Hans Uszkoreit (hereafter `HU') `really' say at the Prague conference? My quotes of HU were taken from my notes and recollection, and the objections I raised in my posting were the same ones I raised at the end of HU's conference presentation: as I had stated in my own presentation a day or so before, the lexicase version of DG has been applied to many languages (at that time I though the figure was only about 45) and it is both monostratal and workable. His reply, as I recall, was only that he had heard my paper. I took this to imply that he had simply dismissed my claims. This question of attribution is of course not something that can be meaningfully debated. Those on this net who attended the conference know more or less who said what, and the rest will have to take their pick from the two versions now on the table. 2. The inadequacy of DG "I claimed that the three basic grammar models each had to offer something to certain groups of researchers that the others could not provide." [HU, 21 June DG email] So just what is it that DG can't provide? This is a very important claim, one that I have heard before at other conferences, and I would very much like to respond to it, but I don't quite see what it is that DG is supposedly unable to provide. 3. The typology-specificity of DG "I pointed out that it is no coincidence... ...that dependency grammar models have traditionally been stronger among linguists working on Slavic or Germanic languages than among linguists working on English, ...that phrase structure based models have been stronger in Anglocentric parts of linguistics than in-- let's say--Slavic linguistics circles, and ...that categorial grammar models have been strongest in circles more concerned with formal semantics than with syntax." [HU, 21 June DG email] `pointed out' seems to be an inappropriate turn of phrase in this context; an unsupported assertion is not the same thing as `pointing out'. When something is pointed out, the hearer's attention is called to something which thereupon is seen to be clearly true. When something is asserted, on the other hand, the hearer waits for the supporting evidence or argumentation. I don't see that evidence or argumentation here, and I didn't see it in Prague in November. The phrase `it is no coincidence' also seems infelicitous here. This phrase is a rhetorical device by which the speaker either 1) tells the audience that they should be able to deduce from the information given so far *why* it is no coincidence (I can't), or 2) alerts the audience to the fact that he is about to *tell* them why it is no coincidence. (As far as I can tell, he hasn't.) Finally, if `categorial grammar models have been strongest in circles more concerned with formal semantics than with syntax', and if that means, as I infer from this statment, that these circles have ignored syntactic facts and problems in their work, is there any reason why syntacticians should pay any attention to them? 4. The virtues of unification grammar Maybe this is my chance to ask a question I have been longing to ask for several years: what are the linguistic advantages of UG? Which outstanding problem of syntactic description does UG solve that PSG and DG can't solve? Which construction in which language can be described more economically and more insightfully in UG than in other frameworks? HU states that: "The reason for working with combinations is obvious, it's the large class of mismatches between functor- argument structure, functional structure, and surface order found in language." [HU, 21 July DG email] Once again, what is obvious to HU and perhaps to others is not obvious to me. If `functor-argument structure' and `functional structure' are separate abstract levels of structure which are distinct from `surface order', then the suspicion arises that the `mismatches' are merely an artifact of assuming a multi- stratal analysis. Concrete examples would help here. Possibly HU feels that he has already answered my concerns in statements such as: "There is, for instance, a version of FUG using variables in the feature PATTERN that could be used for doing recursion on dependency structure by letting the value of CSET be the set of dependents." "I also pointed out the most problematic part of such a move, i.e., the modular formulation of principles that relationally constrain the mapping between dependency structure and phonological form." [HU, 21 June DG email] Unfortunately, these statement mean nothing to me; I am not familiar with the literature in this area. To become familiar with it would require a major effort on my part, and before I expend that much effort, I would like to have a reason to believe it is worth my while. One thing that might convince me that it is worth my while would be clear and concrete answers to the points I have raised above: i) Exactly which syntactic problems is DG unable to handle, and how can UG or CG solve these problems ? ii) Precisely what syntactic properties are common to German and Slavic languages which are not shared by English, and how do these shared syntactic properties explain why it is not a concidence that DG has been associated with the former and not the latter? An attempt by a UG or CG' adherent to address these questions, citing real data from real languages and providing full, detailed, and explicit syntax-to-phonology analyses might be as `effective in getting people to react' as my inflammatory/defamatory rhetoric has been. "It would be nice if DG grammarians would join in the very promising dialogue between CG and HPSG that has recently been emerging. [HU, 21 July email] If this dialogue involves real language data and explicit analyses, count me in. Stan Starosta From Bert=Peeters%GST%LW@cc3.kuleuven.ac.be Fri Jul 23 02:46:51 1993 Received: from cc3.kuleuven.ac.be by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA27878 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 23 Jul 1993 02:46:51 -0400 Message-Id: <199307230646.AA27878@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: by cc3.kuleuven.ac.be with VINES ; Fri, 23 Jul 93 08:47:42 CET Date: Fri, 23 Jul 93 08:43:31 CET From: Bert=Peeters%GST%LW@cc3.kuleuven.ac.be Subject: DG in French? To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: Could anyone on the list come up with a French name for DG (grammaire des dependances??) and possibly some literature in French? Thanks. Please reply privately - I fear there is not enough interest to pollute the net. My (temporary) account is as follows (until end November) bp%gst%lw@cc3.kuleuven.ac.be Bert Peeters From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Sat Jul 24 08:39:08 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA05777 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sat, 24 Jul 1993 08:39:08 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA23794; Sat, 24 Jul 93 02:39:00 HST Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 02:39:00 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307241239.AA23794@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Unification grammar vs.(?) dependency grammar? If unification is just `a way of handling arguments' (Michael Covington's last posting), then I should revise one of the questions I asked of Hans Uszkoreit, and ask a further question of those on this net who use unification notation. Revised question: i) Exactly which syntactic problems is DG unable to handle, and how can PSG or CG solve these problems ? Further question: iii) Does the use of unification notation entail any claims about the nature of human language, or could it be replaced by some other mechanism for `handling arguments on nodes' (e.g. the index copying used in lexicase DG) without affecting the level of descriptive or explanatory adequacy achieved by the grammatical theory in which the notation is embedded? Stan Starosta From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Sat Jul 24 16:57:29 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA05939 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sat, 24 Jul 1993 10:57:38 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <23523-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Sat, 24 Jul 1993 15:57:33 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA130269; Sat, 24 Jul 1993 15:57:30 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9307241457.AA130269@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, Stanley Starosta Subject: Re: Unification grammar vs.(?) dependency grammar? In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sat, 24 Jul 93 02:39:00 K.) <9307241239.AA23794@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 15:57:29 +0100 Stan Starosta: > i) Exactly which syntactic problems is DG unable to handle, > and how can PSG or CG solve these problems ? What about gerunds, as in _Him teasing her upsets her_. It's like a noun with respect to its head, and like a verb with respect to its dependents. A PSG could handle this with: NP -> VP So the gerund looks like: [NP [VP him teasing her]] upset her. (Not that DG can't handle this: according to Dick Hudson the _ing_ is a nominal clitic on which the verb _teas(e)_ depends; according to me, _teasing_ is both a noun and a verb. But both analyses have their problems, whereas PSG can manage it easily.) ------ And From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Tue Jul 27 08:21:17 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA24884 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 27 Jul 1993 08:21:17 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA21404; Tue, 27 Jul 93 02:19:43 HST Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 02:19:43 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307271219.AA21404@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Gerunds vs.(?) DG Gerunds are a nice example of the difference between PSG and DG. First of all, they clearly demonstrate that PSG in its original form is more powerful than (unaugmented) DG. As shown in And Rosta's rule NP --> VP, PSG allows an NP which does not contain a head N, and in general allows a whole class of such `headless' constructions, but DG does not. This PSG analysis is also impossible in X-bar PSG imitations of DG, since it violates the basic X-bar configuration of Xn --> YP Xm, m<=n. (Of course if the X-bar system is augmented with empty categories, anything becomes possible and the analysis becomes devoid of theoretical interest.) Dick Hudson's solution of treating the _-ing_ of gerunds such as `teasing' in `Him teasing her upsets her' as 'a nominal clitic on which the verb _teas(e)_ depends' solves this formal problem, but raises further problems: 1) jury-rigging a `nominal clitic' for English just to solve this formal difficulty when there is no other such creature in English NPs and no evidence that _teasing_ is a sequence of two words seems quite ad hoc. (The possessive _'s_ might be a candidate for such an analysis, but of curse _'s_ attaches to a whole NP, not an N.) 2) _ing_ must be a suffix rather than a syntax-level clitic, since it carries over in derivation: Gerund a) Snapping twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. `Mixed nominalizations' b) The snapping of twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. c) The campers were kept awake by the snappings of twigs and other sounds made by the nocturnal warthogs. d) The shootings of the hunters were claimed to be justified. (Cf. meeting, wedding, christening, opening, ending.) 3) If the _-ing_ is said to be a nominal clitic at some more abstract level, then DG's great theoretical advantage of limited expressive power is forfeited. I think And Rosta's suggestion that gerunds are both nouns and verbs is closer to a viable solution. However, from a DG point of view, they have to be more noun than verb, since they have a crucial distributional property of nouns: they function as heads of noun phrases, with all the privileges and responsibilities accruing thereto. I analyze them as abstract mass nouns which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: | | | upsets | | |4ndex | | | teasing | | |+V | her | |2ndex | | |2[+Nom]| |5ndex| His |+N | her |5[+Acc]| |+N | |1ndex| |+mass | |3ndex| |+Acc | |+Det | |1[+Det]| |+N | |3[+Acc]| As mass nouns, they can't take the indefinite count determiner _a(n)_ or be pluralized (though they can when they are further derived into the Chomsky's class of `mixed nominalizations'). Note that they can take definite determiners, though: e) His teasing her upsets her. f) This teasing your sister has got to stop. which is not accounted for by Rosta's NP --> VP rule, though it is by Schachter's version: NP --> (DET) VP, as I recall. My analysis however so far fails to account for the following facts: 1) Why can't gerunds take a _the_ determiner? g) *The teasing her upsets her. 2) If gerunds are mass nouns, why can't they take _some_? h) *Some teasing her upsets her. 3) Why can they be preceded by an accusative NP? i) Him teasing her upsets her. A partial explanation for this point comes from something which I would claim, based on looking at a lot of languages, to be universal: nouns do not allow nominative dependents, period. However, I still have no way of explaining a pre-head slot for an accusative NP in English; it doesn't happen for other NPs, and it doesn't carry over from verbs (unless we want to posit an NP-internal topic slot, which would have some other bad consequences). Any suggestions which don't increase the expressive power of simple DG would be welcome. -- Stan Starosta From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Wed Jul 28 03:09:28 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA29886 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 27 Jul 1993 21:09:37 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <18205-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 28 Jul 1993 02:09:32 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA106347; Wed, 28 Jul 1993 02:09:28 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9307280109.AA106347@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, Stanley Starosta Subject: Re: Gerunds vs.(?) DG In-Reply-To: (Your message of Tue, 27 Jul 93 02:19:43 K.) <9307271219.AA21404@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 93 02:09:28 +0100 Stan Starosta writes: > Dick Hudson's solution of treating the _-ing_ of gerunds such as `teasing' > in `Him teasing her upsets her' as 'a nominal clitic on which the verb > _teas(e)_ depends' solves this formal problem, but raises further problems: > 1) jury-rigging a `nominal clitic' for English just to solve this formal > difficulty when there is no other such creature in English NPs and no > evidence that _teasing_ is a sequence of two words seems quite ad hoc. > (The possessive _'s_ might be a candidate for such an analysis, but of curse > _'s_ attaches to a whole NP, not an N.) [The silence from Dick is due to him/his being on holiday.] The Word Grammar view is that 'S is a determiner. It's only phonologically a clitic; in other respects. it's like any other word. Dick's gerund ing clitic, by contrast must be attached to its verbal complement. So indeed there is nothing else in English like this gerund ing, as far as I am aware. (But the analysis is nonetheless ingenious.) > 2) _ing_ must be a suffix rather than a syntax-level clitic, since it carries > over in derivation: > Gerund > a) Snapping twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. > `Mixed nominalizations' > b) The snapping of twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the > bear. > c) The campers were kept awake by the snappings of twigs and other > sounds made by the nocturnal warthogs. > d) The shootings of the hunters were claimed to be justified. > (Cf. meeting, wedding, christening, opening, ending.) Two different ings, in Dick's view (I may be wrong on this); it's coincidental that the nominalizing morpheme is phonologically identical to the gerund morpheme. > 3) If the _-ing_ is said to be a nominal clitic at some more abstract level, > then DG's great theoretical advantage of limited expressive power is > forfeited. It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). > I think And Rosta's suggestion that gerunds are both nouns and verbs is > closer to a viable solution. Not surprisingly I think Stan is correct in thinking this... > However, from a DG point of view, they have > to be more noun than verb, since they have a crucial distributional property > of nouns: they function as heads of noun phrases, with all the privileges > and responsibilities accruing thereto. In my view, 'noun' is a category useful only for determining its members' behaviour as dependents. For example, the object of some verbs must be a noun, but can be any kind of noun. But as heads there are no common properties that all nouns have. All common nouns share certain properties as heads (e.g. modification by relative clause) but as this property shows, gerunds are not common nouns: *him teasing her that upset her surprised me > I analyze them as abstract mass nouns > which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: > | > | > | upsets | > | |4ndex | | > | teasing | | |+V | her > | |2ndex | | |2[+Nom]| |5ndex| > His |+N | her |5[+Acc]| |+N | > |1ndex| |+mass | |3ndex| |+Acc | > |+Det | |1[+Det]| |+N | > |3[+Acc]| > > As mass nouns, they can't take the indefinite count determiner _a(n)_ or be > pluralized (though they can when they are further derived into the Chomsky's > class of `mixed nominalizations'). Note that they can take definite > determiners, though: > e) His teasing her upsets her. > f) This teasing your sister has got to stop. > which is not accounted for by Rosta's NP --> VP rule, though it is by > Schachter's version: NP --> (DET) VP, as I recall. > > My analysis however so far fails to account for the following facts: > 1) Why can't gerunds take a _the_ determiner? > g) *The teasing her upsets her. > 2) If gerunds are mass nouns, why can't they take _some_? > h) *Some teasing her upsets her. > 3) Why can they be preceded by an accusative NP? > i) Him teasing her upsets her. > A partial explanation for this point comes from something which I would > claim, based on looking at a lot of languages, to be universal: nouns do not > allow nominative dependents, period. However, I still have no way of > explaining a pre-head slot for an accusative NP in English; it doesn't > happen for other NPs, and it doesn't carry over from verbs (unless we want > to posit an NP-internal topic slot, which would have some other bad > consequences). Any suggestions which don't increase the expressive power of > simple DG would be welcome. Okay: (1) Determiners are heads in NPs. Most determiners subcategorize for a common noun as complement. Exceptionally, possessive determiners also select the gerund clitic _ing_ (Hudson's analysis) or an ing-participle (my analysis). _The_ selects only common nouns. (2) Same reason as (1). (3) In (i) _him_ is just the subject. It's not just a characteristic of gerunds - cf: (ii) Him teasing her terribly, she got upset. Verbs in general can have subjects, and gerunds/ing-participles are no exception. Note that as a head, the gerund behaves as a verb (provided we take determiners as heads of the following noun). As for 'him' rather than 'he', 'he' is only ever subject of a tensed/finite verb. The evidence for saying that English has nominative/accusative case, as opposed to five personal pronouns that take a different form when subject of a tensed verb, is pretty slender (- to be more precise, I'm not aware of any evidence at all). [It's good to be talking to people who aren't baffled by the very notion of dependency grammar.] ------- And Rosta From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Jul 29 08:38:32 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA12546 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:38:32 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA05633; Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:37:30 HST Date: Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:37:30 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307291237.AA05633@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: more English gerunds Cc: .@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Key: > Stan Starosta's previous mailing un-angled and unindented: And Rosta's reactions {Indented: Stan Starosta's re-actions} -- > 2) _ing_ must be a suffix rather than a syntax-level clitic, since it carries > over in derivation: > Gerund > a) Snapping twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. > `Mixed nominalizations' > b) The snapping of twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the > bear. > c) The campers were kept awake by the snappings of twigs and other > sounds made by the nocturnal warthogs. > d) The shootings of the hunters were claimed to be justified. > (Cf. meeting, wedding, christening, opening, ending.) Two different ings, in Dick's view (I may be wrong on this); it's coincidental that the nominalizing morpheme is phonologically identical to the gerund morpheme. {But if the similarity is coincidental, then it is unexplained. The analysis which claims that the gerundival -_ing_ is an affix then has the advantage that it explains the similarity: the -_ing_'s are identical in form because they are etymologically the same; the -_ing_ in the mixed nominalizations and in _wedding_, etc., is the gerundival -_ing_ which was part of an abstract noun which underwent a subsequent syntactic and semantic lexical derivation process.} > 3) If the _-ing_ is said to be a nominal clitic at some more abstract level, > then DG's great theoretical advantage of limited expressive power is > forfeited. It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). {I'm delighted to see that Word Grammar is resisting the temptation to `go underlying'.} > I think And Rosta's suggestion that gerunds are both nouns and verbs is > closer to a viable solution. Not surprisingly I think Stan is correct in thinking this... > However, from a DG point of view, they have > to be more noun than verb, since they have a crucial distributional property > of nouns: they function as heads of noun phrases, with all the privileges > and responsibilities accruing thereto. In my view, 'noun' is a category useful only for determining its members' behaviour as dependents. {Of course; what more could a dependency grammarian want? So then any word which a regent (`head') word regards as a noun is a noun, right? Some other properties shared by nouns as dependents: i) all nouns, including gerunds, have case forms (Nominative, Accusative, etc.) which may or may not be morphologically marked. When they *are* morphologically marked for case (would that be true of Latin gerunds?), then this is more than just `behaviour as a dependent'. ii) All nouns, including gerunds, either bear a case relation (`thematic relation' in Chomskyan terms) or function as predicates; no non-noun bears a case relation. iii) All English nouns are grammatically either singular or plural, and either first, second, or third person. (Again, to the extent that this category is morphologically marked (as in Latin?), this is more than `mere' behavior as a dependent.) Note in this connection that agreement facts are unambiguous in revealing English gerunds to be third person singular: c) Mildred's behaving like an idiot shocks/*shock her mother. d) This/*These teasing your sister must stop instantly!} For example, the object of some verbs must be a noun, but can be any kind of noun. But as heads there are no common properties that all nouns have. {This may be right; I wonder if the situation is any different for verbs, especially if we consider auxiliary verbs, which I believe count as verbs in Word Grammar (as they should).} All common nouns share certain properties as heads (e.g. modification by relative clause) but as this property shows, gerunds are not common nouns: *him teasing her that upset her surprised me {I can use them with non-restrictive clauses, I think: e) His teasing her, which was getting on everyone's nerves, finally went to far. f) I finally tried teasing her, which I hadn't attempted before. The fact that they don't take restrictive relative clauses indicates something about their semantics (maybe they are lexically specific or or something like that) rat thabout their syntax, I suspect.} > I analyze them as abstract mass nouns which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Jul 29 08:48:15 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA12576 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:48:15 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA06161; Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:47:17 HST Date: Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:47:17 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307291247.AA06161@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: more English gerunds Cc: .@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Key: > Stan Starosta's previous mailing un-angled and unindented: And Rosta's reactions {Indented: Stan Starosta's re-actions} -- > 2) _ing_ must be a suffix rather than a syntax-level clitic, since it carries > over in derivation: > Gerund > a) Snapping twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. > `Mixed nominalizations' > b) The snapping of twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the > bear. > c) The campers were kept awake by the snappings of twigs and other > sounds made by the nocturnal warthogs. > d) The shootings of the hunters were claimed to be justified. > (Cf. meeting, wedding, christening, opening, ending.) Two different ings, in Dick's view (I may be wrong on this); it's coincidental that the nominalizing morpheme is phonologically identical to the gerund morpheme. {But if the similarity is coincidental, then it is unexplained. The analysis which claims that the gerundival -_ing_ is an affix then has the advantage that it explains the similarity: the -_ing_'s are identical in form because they are etymologically the same; the -_ing_ in the mixed nominalizations and in _wedding_, etc., is the gerundival -_ing_ which was part of an abstract noun which underwent a subsequent syntactic and semantic lexical derivation process.} > 3) If the _-ing_ is said to be a nominal clitic at some more abstract level, > then DG's great theoretical advantage of limited expressive power is > forfeited. It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). {I'm delighted to see that Word Grammar is resisting the temptation to `go underlying'.} > I think And Rosta's suggestion that gerunds are both nouns and verbs is > closer to a viable solution. Not surprisingly I think Stan is correct in thinking this... > However, from a DG point of view, they have > to be more noun than verb, since they have a crucial distributional property > of nouns: they function as heads of noun phhe privileges > and responsibilities accruing thereto. In my view, 'noun' is a category useful only for determining its members' behaviour as dependents. {Of course; what more could a dependency grammarian want? So then any word which a regent (`head') word regards as a noun is a noun, right? Some other properties shared by nouns as dependents: i) all nouns, including gerunds, have case forms (Nominative, Accusative, etc.) which may or may not be morphologicamarked. When they *are* morphologically marked for case (would that be true of Latin gerunds?), then this is more than just `behaviour as a dependent'. ii) All nouns, including gerunds, either bear a case relation (`thematic relation' in Chomskyan terms) or function as predicates; no non-noun bears a case relation. iii) All English nouns are grammatically either singular or plural, and either first, second, or third person. (Again, to the extent that this category is morphologically marked (as in Latin?), this is more than `mere' behavior as a dependent.) Note in this connection that agreement facts are unambiguous in revealing English gerunds to be third person singular: c) Mildred's behaving like an idiot shocks/*shock her mother. d) This/*These teasing your sister must stop instantly!} For example, the object of some verbs must be a noun, but can be any kind of noun. But as heads there are no common properties that all nouns have. {This may be right; I wonder if the situation is any different for verbs, especially if we consider auxiliary verbs, which I believe count as verbs in Word Grammar (as they should).} All common nouns share certain properties as heads (e.g. modification by relative clause) but as this property shows, gerunds are not common nouns: *him teasing her that upset her surprised me {I can use them with non-restrictive clauses, I think: e) His teasing her, which was getting on everyone's nerves, finally went to far. f) I finally tried teasing her, which I hadn't attempted before. The fact that they don't take restrictive relative clauses indicates something about their semantics (maybe they are lexically specific or or something like that) rather than about their syntax, I suspect.} > I analyze them as abstract mass nouns which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Jul 29 08:50:54 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA12607 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:50:54 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA06311; Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:50:03 HST Date: Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:50:03 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307291250.AA06311@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: more English gerunds Cc: .@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Key: > Stan Starosta's previous mailing un-angled and unindented: And Rosta's reactions {Indented: Stan Starosta's re-actions} -- > 2) _ing_ must be a suffix rather than a syntax-level clitic, since it carries > over in derivation: > Gerund > a) Snapping twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. > `Mixed nominalizations' > b) The snapping of twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the > bear. > c) The campers were kept awake by the snappings of twigs and other > sounds made by the nocturnal warthogs. > d) The shootings of the hunters were claimed to be justified. > (Cf. meeting, wedding, christening, opening, ending.) Two different ings, in Dick's view (I may be wrong on this); it's coincidental that the nominalizing morpheme is phonologically identical to the gerund morpheme. {But if the similarity is coincidental, then it is unexplained. The analysis which claims that the gerundival -_ing_ is an affix then has the advantage that it explains the similarity: the -_ing_'s are identical in form because they are etymologically the same; the -_ing_ in the mixed nominalizations and in _wedding_, etc., is the gerundival -_ing_ which was part of an abstract noun which underwent a subsequent syntactic and semantic lexical derivation process.} > 3) If the _-ing_ is said to be a nominal clitic at some more abstract level, > then DG's great theoretical advantage of limited expressive power is > forfeited. It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). {I'm delighted to see that Word Grammar is resisting the temptation to `go underlying'.} > I think And Rosta's suggestion that gerunds are both nouns and verbs is > closer to a viable solution. Not surprisingly I think Stan is correct in thinking this... > However, from a DG point of view, they have > to be more noun than verb, since they have a crucial distributional property > of nouns: they function as heads of noun phrases, with all the privileges > and responsibilities accruing thereto. In my view, 'noun' is a category useful only for determining its members' behaviour as dependents. {Of course; what more could a dependency grammarian want? So then any word which a regent (`head') word regards as a noun is a noun, right? Some other properties shared by nouns as dependents: i) all nouns, including gerunds, have case forms (Nominative, Accusative, etc.) which may or may not be morphologically marked. When they *are* morphologically marked for case (would that be true of Latin gerunds?), then this is more than just `behaviour as a dependent'. ii) All nouns, including gerunds, either bear a case relation (`thematic relation' in Chomskyan terms) or function as predicates; no non-noun bears a case relation. iii) All English nouns are grammatically either singular or plural, and either first, second, or third person. (Again, to the extent that this category is morphologically marked (as in Latin?), this is more than `mere' behavior as a dependent.) Note in this connection that agreement facts are unambiguous in revealing English gerunds to be third person singular: c) Mildred's behaving like an idiot shocks/*shock her mother. d) This/*These teasing your sister must stop instantly!} For example, the object of some verbs must be a noun, but can be any kind of noun. But as heads there are no common properties that all nouns have. {This may be right; I wonder if the situation is any different for verbs, especially if we consider auxiliary verbs, which I believe count as verbs in Word Grammar (as they should).} All common nouns share certain properties as heads (e.g. modification by relative clause) but as this property shows, gerunds are not common nouns: *him teasing her that upset her surprised me {I can use them with non-restrictive clauses, I think: e) His teasing her, which was getting on everyone's nerves, finally went to far. f) I finally tried teasing her, which I hadn't attempted before. The fact that they don't take restrictive relative clauses indicates something about their semantics (maybe they are lexically specific or or something like that) rather than about their syntax, I suspect.} > I analyze them as abstract mass nouns which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Jul 29 08:56:02 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA12674 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:56:02 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA06565; Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:55:08 HST Date: Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:55:08 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307291255.AA06565@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: more on English gerunds (full version) Cc: .@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Key: > Stan Starosta's previous mailing un-angled and unindented: And Rosta's reactions {Indented: Stan Starosta's re-actions} -- > 2) _ing_ must be a suffix rather than a syntax-level clitic, since it carries > over in derivation: > Gerund > a) Snapping twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the bear. > `Mixed nominalizations' > b) The snapping of twigs alerted the hunter to the approach of the > bear. > c) The campers were kept awake by the snappings of twigs and other > sounds made by the nocturnal warthogs. > d) The shootings of the hunters were claimed to be justified. > (Cf. meeting, wedding, christening, opening, ending.) Two different ings, in Dick's view (I may be wrong on this); it's coincidental that the nominalizing morpheme is phonologically identical to the gerund morpheme. {But if the similarity is coincidental, then it is unexplained. The analysis which claims that the gerundival -_ing_ is an affix then has the advantage that it explains the similarity: the -_ing_'s are identical in form because they are etymologically the same; the -_ing_ in the mixed nominalizations and in _wedding_, etc., is the gerundival -_ing_ which was part of an abstract noun which underwent a subsequent syntactic and semantic lexical derivation process.} > 3) If the _-ing_ is said to be a nominal clitic at some more abstract level, > then DG's great theoretical advantage of limited expressive power is > forfeited. It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). {I'm delighted to see that Word Grammar is resisting the temptation to `go underlying'.} > I think And Rosta's suggestion that gerunds are both nouns and verbs is > closer to a viable solution. Not surprisingly I think Stan is correct in thinking this... > However, from a DG point of view, they have > to be more noun than verb, since they have a crucial distributional property > of nouns: they function as heads of noun phrases, with all the privileges > and responsibilities accruing thereto. In my view, 'noun' is a category useful only for determining its members' behaviour as dependents. {Of course; what more could a dependency grammarian want? So then any word which a regent (`head') word regards as a noun is a noun, right? Some other properties shared by nouns as dependents: i) all nouns, including gerunds, have case forms (Nominative, Accusative, etc.) which may or may not be morphologically marked. When they *are* morphologically marked for case (would that be true of Latin gerunds?), then this is more than just `behaviour as a dependent'. ii) All nouns, including gerunds, either bear a case relation (`thematic relation' in Chomskyan terms) or function as predicates; no non-noun bears a case relation. iii) All English nouns are grammatically either singular or plural, and either first, second, or third person. (Again, to the extent that this category is morphologically marked (as in Latin?), this is more than `mere' behavior as a dependent.) Note in this connection that agreement facts are unambiguous in revealing English gerunds to be third person singular: c) Mildred's behaving like an idiot shocks/*shock her mother. d) This/*These teasing your sister must stop instantly!} For example, the objeFrom stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Jul 29 08:57:16 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA12685 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 29 Jul 1993 08:57:16 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA06670; Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:57:11 HST Date: Thu, 29 Jul 93 02:57:11 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9307291257.AA06670@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: truncated English gerunds file [I'm having uploading problems; I'll try again tomorrow.] Stan Starosta ct of some verbs must be a noun, but can be any kind of noun. But as heads there are no common properties that all nouns have. {This may be right; I wonder if the situation is any different for verbs, especially if we consider auxiliary verbs, which I believe count as verbs in Word Grammar (as they should).} All common nouns share certain properties as heads (e.g. modification by relative clause) but as this property shows, gerunds are not common nouns: *him teasing her that upset her surprised me {I can use them with non-restrictive clauses, I think: e) His teasing her, which was getting on everyone's nerves, finally went to far. f) I finally tried teasing her, which I hadn't attempted before. The fact that they don't take restrictive relative clauses indicates something about their semantics (maybe they are lexically specific or or something like that) rather than about their syntax, I suspect.} > I analyze them as abstract mass nouns which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: From Bert=Peeters%GST%LW@cc3.kuleuven.ac.be Thu Jul 29 11:36:59 1993 Received: from cc3.kuleuven.ac.be by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA14036 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 29 Jul 1993 11:36:59 -0400 Message-Id: <199307291536.AA14036@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: by cc3.kuleuven.ac.be with VINES ; Thu, 29 Jul 93 17:38:08 CET Date: Thu, 29 Jul 93 17:31:19 CET From: Bert=Peeters%GST%LW@cc3.kuleuven.ac.be Subject: Dependency grammar in French To: dg@ai.uga.edu Cc: A few days ago I asked whether there was literature in French and/or a French name for dependency grammar. Two replies were received, from Stan Starosta and Hugues de Mazancourt, respectively. The French term seems to be "grammaire de de'pendance". The following references were supplied: 1) Lucien Tesniere, Elements de syntaxe structurale, Paris, Klincksieck 1959 2) Helmut Schumacher, Valenzbibliographie, Mannheim, Institut fur deutsche Sprache -> index entries "Franzoesisch" and "Dependenzgrammatik" 3) French translations (done or at least revised by the author himself) of works by Igor Mel'cuk. Thanks for the info, which I was asked quite explicitly to share with the entire readership of the list. Bert Peeters From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Fri Jul 30 08:16:44 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18732 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 30 Jul 1993 08:16:44 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA20312; Fri, 30 Jul 93 02:16:40 HST Date: Fri, 30 Jul 93 2:16:39 HST From: Stanley Starosta To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: more on English gerunds, part 2 Message-Id: > I analyze them as abstract mass nouns which acquire some verbal valence slots in the process of lexical derivation: = = = = = [Continued from my posting of yesterday] . . > My analysis however so far fails to account for the following facts: > 1) Why can't gerunds take a _the_ determiner? > g) *The teasing her upsets her. > 2) If gerunds are mass nouns, why can't they take _some_? > h) *Some teasing her upsets her. > 3) Why can they be preceded by an accusative NP? > i) Him teasing her upsets her. > A partial explanation for this point comes from something which I would > claim, based on looking at a lot of languages, to be universal: nouns do not > allow nominative dependents, period. However, I still have no way of > explaining a pre-head slot for an accusative NP in English; it doesn't > happen for other NPs, and it doesn't carry over from verbs (unless we want > to posit an NP-internal topic slot, which would have some other bad > consequences). Any suggestions which don't increase the expressive power of > simple DG would be welcome. Okay: (1) Determiners are heads in NPs. Most determiners subcategorize for a common noun as complement. Exceptionally, possessive determiners also select the gerund clitic _ing_ (Hudson's analysis) or an ing-participle (my analysis). _The_ selects only common nouns. (2) Same reason as (1). {Yes, I can do that too, without assuming the `determiners as heads' analysis, just by marking gerunds as nouns which don't allow article dependents; either way, it is just a stipulation, not an explanation, and not very confidence-inspiring.} (3) In (i) _him_ is just the subject. {In my analysis (though not in Chomsky's), _him_ can't be a subject because it is not a noun. We know that it is not a noun but a determiner because it alternates with _my_, _your_, _her_, _our_, and _their_, which can never be the sole N of an NP in English. (It would be interesting to see how a determiner-as-noun analysis accounts for this distributional gap. Stipulation?} It's not just a characteristic of gerunds - cf: (ii) Him teasing her terribly, she got upset. {Can you really say this? If I force myself, I can only get it as a kind of `ablative absolute', where the second clause is the main finite clause and the first is a subordinate participle phrase, e.g. g) The moon being full, Caesar's landing craft sailed in on the full tide.} Verbs in general can have subjects, {if they are not impersonal or infinitives, of course} and gerunds/ing-participles are no exception. {I'm not yet convinced of that.} Note that as a head, the gerund behaves as a verb (provided we take determiners as heads of the following noun). {Then would the non-restrictive relative clauses depend on the determiners?} As for 'him' rather than 'he', 'he' is only ever subject of a tensed/finite verb. {Of course; not every language has tense as a grammatical category, of course, but I hereby claim as a universal generalization that only finite clauses can contain subjects at all, and that *every* subject must be nominative. Analyses which claim the contrary, such as Chomsky's exceptional case marking analysis, can all (I claim; counterexamples gladly considered) be shown to be inferior to analyses which maintain this generalization.} The evidence for saying that English has nominative/accusative case, as opposed to five personal pronouns that take a different form when subject of a tensed verb, {And what label would you assign to these five pronouns to distinguish them from their subject-selected counterparts? Universal considerations seem to dictate `Accusative'.} is pretty slender (- to be more precise, I'm not aware of any evidence at all). {Nominative and Accusative are of course not lexically marked categories in English except for those five conservative pronouns; rather, nouns are assigned case by their regents, as shown in my stemma for `His teasing her upsets her'. The evidence for this analysis comes from universal grammar; in order to make maximally simple cross-linguistic generalizations about unbounded dependencies, word order, subject- verb agreement, morphological markedness, NP omissibility, and case relation assignment, especially generalizations that apply across accusative and ergative typologies, it is necessary to assume as a minimum assumption that every noun in every language is grammatically identified as either Nominative or not Nominative. The above statement is of course `evidence' only in a nascent sense. To make it real evidence, we need alternatives to compare it with. We might start a competition on the net: one person would propose a universal generalization about subjects, infinitives, unbounded dependencies, clause-level word order, subject-verb agreement, or ergativity which did not assume universal +/-Nom marking on nouns, say, and then someone else would provide data from some natural language demonstrating that the generalization was invalid, and/or try to propose an alternative which did assume universal +/-Nom marking and which was superior in terms of the number and quality of the language- internal and/or cross-linguistic generalizations it was able to capture. Tennis, anyone?} {Stan Starosta} From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Sat Jul 31 08:37:10 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA26656 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sat, 31 Jul 1993 08:37:10 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA20601; Sat, 31 Jul 93 02:37:07 HST Date: Sat, 31 Jul 93 2:37:06 HST From: Stanley Starosta To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: DG, PSG, and German V2s Message-Id: reply by Stan Starosta to: Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:25:16 EDT From: rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Owen Rambow) Subject: DG / PSG Key: unindented text: Owen Rambow {indented and stemma: Stan Starosta} So why have PS at all? Let me suggest the following (in Hans Uszkoreit's spirit of conversation starters): it seems to me that a theory of syntax (taken very narrowly as a theory of surface word order) cannot be formulated (in a principles-and-parameters type methodological framework) in a DG. Take for example verb-second in German. In a DG, can we do anything more than state the facts in German? {Let me take a shot at it. The analysis of the German verb-second phenomenon that I would like to place on the table for discussion is something like the following: 1) German finite clauses are either root or non-root (cf. Emonds 1976). 2) Non-root clauses are verb-final. (I have no synchronic explanation for this fact or for point 3); I would assume that this has a historical explanation rather than a synchronic explanation.) 3) Root clauses are verb-initial except for allowing for a preverbal Theme (`topic') dependent in non-interrogative clauses [where `interrogative' refers to polar interrogatives, i.e. yes-no questions]. The Theme must be linked with some complement or adjunct valence slot provided by the verb, and the subject slot (?[+Nom]) is one such valence slot which is available for linking. In this respect German root clauses are like clauses in verb-initial Philippine languages such as Tagalog. 4) German differs from Tagalog in the requirement that non-interrogative root clause requires a topic, rather than just allowing one. 5) The explanatory force of this proposal then lies in the claim that external Themes (`topics') are associated with the root clause, a claim that can be supported with data from many languages, including e.g. Chinese and Japanese, I think. Here is the formal statement of this analysis, somewhat simplified for our purposes:} {Subcategorization rules: SR-1. [+V] --> [+/-fint] ;verbs are finite or non-finite SR-2. [+fint] --> [+/-root] ;finite verbs are root or non-root. SR-3. |+fint| --> [+/-ntrg] ;finite root verbs are interrogative or |+root| not. Redundancy rules: RR-1. [+fint] --> |?[+Nom] | ;finite verbs require a subject, and allow |?(|+Nom|)| the subject to be encoded as a dependent | |+N | | noun. RR-2. |+root| --> |?[+them] | ;non interrogative root verbs must have a |-ntrg| |?(|+them|) | theme; they allow this theme to be encoded | |+N | | as a dependent noun. |@>?(|+them|)| ;The dependent theme noun if any must | |+N | | precede the root verb. |@ |@>?(|+Nom|)| ;The dependent subject noun if any must | |+N | | precede the non-root finite verb. {Here is a concrete stemma illustrating this solution. Intended gloss: `Fritz knows that ice is frozen water.' 1 2 3 4 7 5 6 (Please correct my German if necessary.): | | ________________________________________ | weiss, | | | |2ndex | | | Fritz |+V | dass | |1ndex| |+fint | |3ndex| | |+N | |1[+Nom] | |+P | | | ist |?(|+Nom|) | | | |7ndex | | |+N | | Eis Wasser |+V | |+root | |4ndex| | |6ndex| |+fint | |-ntrg | |+N | | |+N | |4[+Nom] | |1[+them] | eingrefrorenes |4(|+Nom|) | |1(|+them|) | |5ndex| | |+N | | | |+N | | |+Adj | |-root | |2>1(|+them|)| |7>4(|+Nom|)| | |+N | | | |+N | | |@); Sun, 1 Aug 1993 10:27:08 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA07189; Sun, 1 Aug 93 04:27:05 HST Date: Sun, 1 Aug 93 04:27:05 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9308011427.AA07189@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: DG, PSG, and German V2s; P.S. reply by Stan Starosta to: Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 11:25:16 EDT From: rambow@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Owen Rambow) Subject: DG / PSG Key: unindented text: Owen Rambow {indented and stemma: Stan Starosta} So why have PS at all? Let me suggest the following (in Hans Uszkoreit's spirit of conversation starters): it seems to me that a theory of syntax (taken very narrowly as a theory of surface word order) {I think that is too narrow; sentences are not strings of words, but *structured* strings of words. The question we are concerned with here is whether that structure should be represented in terms of constituency or dependency.} {Stan Starosta} From ellalain@leonis.nus.sg Mon Aug 2 16:46:56 1993 Received: from leonis.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA04688 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 1 Aug 1993 20:47:01 -0400 Received: from localhost (ellalain@localhost) by leonis.nus.sg (8.2/8.2) id IAA24080; Mon, 2 Aug 1993 08:46:56 +0800 Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1993 08:46:56 +0800 From: Alain Polguere Message-Id: <199308020046.IAA24080@leonis.nus.sg> To: Subject: About MTT and linear order DG folks, Some comments about Meaning-Text (MTT) treatment of linear order have been made recently in the midst of a discussion between Rambow and Starosta. I have not much to say about linear order and dependencies in German but I just want to mention the following facts: 1) MTT, as any linguistic approach to language description, acknowledges the need to account for linear order (which is ONE of the means for expressing syntactic dependencies); 2) For a tentatively exhaustive account of the correspondence between surface-syntactic dependencies and linear order in ------------ English, see one of the very few DG grammars ever published: Mel'cuk and Pertsov. 1987. _Surface_Syntax_of_English_, Benjamins (ISBN 90 272 1515 4). MTT grammars of French and Russian also exist as technical reports of the machine translation project ETAP-2 (in Russian). Thanks for this interesting discussion anyway, and sorry to interrupt :-). A. Polguere. From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Mon Aug 2 18:53:35 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA08089 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 2 Aug 1993 12:53:55 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <15541-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Mon, 2 Aug 1993 17:53:39 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA30303; Mon, 2 Aug 1993 17:53:35 +0100 Message-Id: <9308021653.AA30303@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: V2, surface syntax and the need for constituent structure Date: Mon, 02 Aug 93 17:53:35 +0100 From: RichardHudson50 Having missed two weeks of DG fun through being away, I'd like to take up a couple of the issues that have been raised here. 1. Verb-second in Germanic Owen Rambow suggests that DG can't explain why complementisers and V2 are alternatives in German, e.g. (I assume) why (1) and (2) are ok, but (3) and (4) aren't. (1) Ich weiss, er trinkt Kaffee. `I know he drinks coffee' (2) Ich weiss, dass er Kaffee trinkt. (3) *Ich weiss, dass er trinkt Kaffee. (4) *Ich weiss, er Kaffee trinkt. In contrast, he says that PSG can explain this by saying that the complementiser "dass" is in the same position as "trinkt" when the latter is V2 (i.e. as in (1)). This is a very odd claim, which at least needs some explanation; at first sight it seems blatantly untrue. He also asks how V2 might be handled in a DG-based analysis. This is surely easy, provided that we have some mechanism which will allow just one if the verb's dependents (any old dependent) to precede it. It can be done in Word Grammar by allowing just one `predependent' arc, which then combines with some other kind of dependent, which may be subject, object, extractee, etc.; e.g. in "er trinkt Kaffee" the word "er" is both subject and predependent, while in "Kaffee trinkt er" it is just subject, and "Kaffee" is now dependent+object, and in "Kaffee glaube ich, dass er trinkt", `Coffee I think that he drinks', "Kaffee" is predependent of "glaube" and object of "trinkt". The V2 effect follows from the fact that no finite verb can have more (or less) than one predependent. This corresponds to a transformational PSG analysis in which each verb has an empty specifier which has to be filled by some phrase moved into it from a later position; but it can be expressed as a monostratal analysis in DG whereas so far as I know this is impossible if phrase-structure is assumed. The real problems arise in explaining examples like (5): (5) Trinken wird er das Kaffee. drink will he the coffee. Hans Uszkoreit has discussed these facts very interestingly, and the world is still worrying about them. The problem being, of course, that one (or more) of the dependents of "trinken", the subordinate verbs, positions itself as though it was a dependent of "wird". 2. The supposed need to combine PSG with DG More generally, I see no reason to accept Owen's assumption that DG is inherently less suitable for describing surface word order facts than PSG is. On the contrary, for some grammarians the big attraction of DG is precisely that it's a **better** basis for surface syntax, including word-order facts, than PSG is. Like Stan Starosta, I think we're short of evidence that DG on its own is inadequate. (My own view is that PSG is indeed needed for coordination, while all other parts of grammar are left to DG, but that's not what people like Hans mean when they claim that DG alone won't do.) And And Rosta is right to bring up gerunds as a problem for DG, but as Stan says, they're a problem for X-bar PSG as well; and I assume that's really the kind of PSG that Hans has in mind when he calls for composite theories. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 From ellalain@leonis.nus.sg Wed Aug 4 22:51:28 1993 Received: from leonis.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA19749 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 4 Aug 1993 02:51:33 -0400 Received: from localhost (ellalain@localhost) by leonis.nus.sg (8.2/8.2) id OAA17148; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 14:51:28 +0800 Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1993 14:51:28 +0800 From: Alain Polguere Message-Id: <199308040651.OAA17148@leonis.nus.sg> To: Subject: ground level questions Hi DG, As there is not so many things happening on this list I was re-reading with more attention some previous exchanges and I came across the following: [And Rosta] It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). [Stan Starosta] {I'm delighted to see that Word Grammar is resisting the temptation to `go underlying'.} Well, I realize that I just no longer know what a "level" is. My problem: 1) I believe that a "level" is a "level of something". In the context of grammatical studies I thought that it was a level of representation of utterances. Am I wrong? If I am not, how can the text be the "only level of representation of itself". If DG grammarians represent the structure of an utterance with something (anything) like a set of connections between words, this representation is not the text itself and functions at another level -- a deeper or more hidden one. But I must have missed the point somewhere. 2) Whether I am right or wrong in 1), I would still like to know what is so bad with levels. The only objection I can see is that language is probably not used in a very stratificational way -- i.e. producing utterances out of meanings by going through intermediate steps (syntax, morphology...). Is that right? What else? Thanks for your help, Alain. From SGALL%CSPGUK11.BITNET@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Wed Aug 4 11:40:45 1993 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA22113 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 4 Aug 1993 11:40:45 -0400 Message-Id: <199308041540.AA22113@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8089; Wed, 04 Aug 93 11:41:32 EDT Received: from CSPGUK11 (NJE origin MAILER@CSPGUK11) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 3017; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 11:41:32 -0400 Received: from CSPGUK11.BITNET (SGALL) by CSPGUK11RSCSV2 .BITNET (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6146; Wed, 04 Aug 93 17:39:44 MET Date: Wed, 04 Aug 93 17:39:03 MET From: Petr Sgall To: dg@ai.uga.edu Dear DG Colleagues, At last I have found a free while to join your discussion again. I cannot help you much with the E. gerunds, (although I believe that your discussion, especially Stan's and Dick's arguments, show that DG des not encountermore dangerous difficulties in this point tha PS does). It is similar with the G. V2 issue: yes, probably only a historical explanation can be found for the fact that G. behaves in this way, thus differing from other languages; and a description of the fact is well possible in DG. Moreover, the word order issues are intrinsically connected with the topic-focus articulation, for which DG appears to offer a more adequate description framework than any other approach (note especially that neither topic nor focus is a single constitutent in the general case, as has been stated in several published texts); it is also necessary to take into account the placment of the sentence stress (e.g. if the preverbal sentence part in G. is stressed, it is (a part of) the focus, not the theme). I would like to comment briefly on 'dg and typology', on the issue of levels, and, of course, add a remark on function words. (a) It is no mere chance that the old European tradition of syntactic dependency (combined with constituency as for the dichotomy of subject and predicate) was interrupted (and abolished in favor of constituency) in English speaking countries; E. differs from most Continental languages in it does not render the syntactic relations by endings (with few exceptions), so that such phenomena as agreement and government (in the traditional sense of G. Rektion) are severely restricted here, and prepositions and the word order express most syntactic relations. This is a specific situation - I realize that E. is not alone, since French, the Scandinavian languages and some others belong to the same 'analytic' type, and also the type to which e.g. Chinese or Vietnamese belong exhibits a grammaticalized word order. However, eben so the prototypical situation is that word order renders first of all the topic-focus ("given"-"new") articulation and grammar is expressed by function morphs (function words, affixes, endings, alternations). This situation makes it natural that every language can be described by a dependency based grammar (with coordination having its own dimension in a network) and that the usefulness of constituency is rather limited (no language seems to be fully 'configurational', but E. comes close to this and thus is a good candidate for a PS description, although the PS framework even here is not sufficient - it was no mere chance that such dg elements as X-bar or theta roles have emerged also with Chomsky). Also the fact that Categorial Grammar is used first of all by semanticians is easy to explain: it was formulated ba logicians aiming at a description of the structure of formal languages, and the research in semantics nowadays is a domain of symbiosis of linguists and logicians; especially the latter tend to use the apparatus useful in their own domain, without much looking around if other approaches might not be more adequate for natural language. (b) As for the levels, I believe now that a single level of syntactic representations of sentences is necessary (neither surface nor underlying, but an interface level of language and the domain of cognition). The dependnecy based networks of this level contrast substantially with the string shape of morphemic representations (the 'surface' word order being present only on the latter level), and then comes the difference between this morphemic level (with such items as Accusative, Plural, Feminine, Preterit, Comparative,...) and the outer (phonetic, graphemic) shape of sentences (with individual morphs corresponding to the just quoted items). What was assumed to be a level of surface syntax or of phonemics, probably can be dispensed with. (c) Function words appear as words in the outer shape of sentences, but this does not tell us immediately if they are to be understood as nodes of a syntactic tree or network. The outer shape cannot be accepted as the only decisive criterion (even if one does not distinguish between surface and underlying syntax); already such items as the French au, du, des, or the German im, beim, where the article merges with a preposition, show that when describing the structure of the language, we cannot rely on the outer shape. Similar are the E. contracted forms with negation, and other phenomena in other languages. It is then necessary to look for a deeper criterion, and this can be seen in the dichotomy of lexicon and grammar, which is necessary for every linguistic despription. Grammatical functions are expressed in various ways in languages of different types, but lexical units always have the shape of words (lexical morphs). There is no necessary or intrinsic difference between the functions of affixes, endings and function words. In fact, in the Princ & Param. approach all of them are handled in the same way, having nodes as their counterparts (Aux, Compl, Infl, Agr). This means that an analytic metalanguage is being used. I still believe that an agglutinative metalanguage is to be preferred, with complex labels at the nodes, where the grammatical functions (morphological meanings such as Plural, Preterite, etc., and syntactic relations) appear in the shape of indices attached to the lexical items. This means the dependency tree does not get overburdened by nodes for items which cannot be freely expanded syntactically: an article or a preposition are always accompanying a noun, auxiliaries and conjunctions accompany verbs, etc. (I know that there are exceptions there, but these are present everywhere in natural language and we can only describe them as such, as marginal phenomena). Hoping that these remarks may be useful for further discussions, Petr Sgall From KPUBA%HUJIVM1.BITNET@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Wed Aug 4 16:19:00 1993 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA23730 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 4 Aug 1993 16:19:00 -0400 Message-Id: <199308042019.AA23730@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0706; Wed, 04 Aug 93 16:19:47 EDT Received: from VM1.HUJI.AC.IL (NJE origin MAILER@HUJIVM1) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 4372; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 16:19:47 -0400 Received: by HUJIVM1 (Mailer R2.07) id 2817; Wed, 04 Aug 93 23:18:52 IST Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1993 23:16 IST From: Anat Ninio Subject: Typology-specificity indeed.. To: Re the supposed typology-specificity of DG: Stanley Starosta could have added Arab and Hebrew linguistics of several hundred years, all in the Dependency tradition, to his list of Slavic and German languages that according to critics, "naturally" lend themselves to DG. I'd love to see anyone explain -that- away on the grounds of similarity. From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Wed Aug 4 22:23:59 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA23756 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 4 Aug 1993 16:24:08 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <05939-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 21:24:04 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA60790; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 21:24:00 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9308042024.AA60790@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, Alain Polguere Subject: Re: ground level questions In-Reply-To: (Your message of Wed, 04 Aug 93 14:51:28 U.) <199308040651.OAA17148@leonis.nus.sg> Date: Wed, 04 Aug 93 21:23:59 +0100 Alain Polguere: > Well, I realize that I just no longer know what a "level" is. > My problem: > > 1) I believe that a "level" is a "level of something". In the > context of grammatical studies I thought that it was a level > of representation of utterances. Am I wrong? If > I am not, how can the text be the "only level of > representation of itself". If DG grammarians > represent the structure of an utterance with something > (anything) like a set of connections between words, > this representation is not the text itself and functions > at another level -- a deeper or more hidden one. > But I must have missed the point somewhere. I don't think I know what a level is either. But I do think the set of connections between words is part of the text itself. If I say "She is", the first bit of the utterance belongs to the categories "pronoun" and "subject of the second bit of the utterance" (as well as to other categories of course). This is just part of the nature of these bits of the utterance. This doesn't follow from a dependency analysis; one could equally say that the first bit of that utterance consitutes the whole of an NP and the second bit the whole of a VP, & together they form an S, & this is part of their nature, just as bricks in a wall are both bricks & part of a wall. When I said that what-you-see-is-what-you-get I meant that grammatical structures don't have a derivational history, so one can't say "X is the subject of Y & it used to be the object of Y, but it is no longer the object of Y", or "at one level X is the subject but not the object of Y and at another level X is the object but not the subject of Y". I.e. I was asserting monostratalism. -------- And Rosta From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Wed Aug 4 22:44:36 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA23907 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 4 Aug 1993 16:44:46 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <06185-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 21:44:39 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA78922; Wed, 4 Aug 1993 21:44:37 +0100 Message-Id: <9308042044.AA78922@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: function words Date: Wed, 04 Aug 93 21:44:36 +0100 From: RichardHudson I'd be interested to hear more discussion about the status of function-words after the interesting contribution from Petr Sgall, putting a view which I think is very widely shared in Europe but much less attractive to those of us who have had a foot firmly in the American tradition. Petr says that auxiliary verbs are function words which depend on main verbs. Because of this, they're not shown as independent words in the syntactic dependency structure, but as features attached to the main verb. I'd be interested to know what evidence there is for this analysis. I gather from his remarks that one piece of evidence is that auxiliary verbs have a `function' which is similar to that of an affix in other languages (where presumably `function' means something like `meaning'). But say we accept that English "have" has the same function, in this sense, as the Latin perfect inflections. How can we then explain e.g. why "have" itself has a tense (past or present), why the main verb appears in a participial inflection, without any subject agreement, why "have" does have subject agreement, why "have" may itself be in a non-finite form when preceded by another auxiliary such as "will", and so on? I've always assumed that by far the simplest and most elegant analysis of a sequence like "will have gone" is to recognise each word as a separate word in every respect, with dependency relations between them. Why is this wrong? Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Thu Aug 5 08:36:18 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA27218 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 5 Aug 1993 08:36:18 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA22657; Thu, 5 Aug 93 02:36:15 HST Date: Thu, 5 Aug 93 02:36:15 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9308051236.AA22657@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Re: Alain Polguere's ground level questions Key: Alain Polguere (unindented text and hanging paragraphs) {Stan Starosta (indented, bracketed)} As there is not so many things happening on this list I was re-reading with more attention some previous exchanges and I came across the following: [And Rosta] It's not a nominal clitic at some more abstract level - it's a nominal clitic at the only level there is (which, roughly speaking, is what is there on the page). [Stan Starosta] {I'm delighted to see that Word Grammar is resisting the temptation to `go underlying'.} Well, I realize that I just no longer know what a "level" is. My problem: 1) I believe that a "level" is a "level of something". In the context of grammatical studies I thought that it was a level of representation of utterances. Am I wrong? If I am not, how can the text be the "only level of representation of itself". If DG grammarians represent the structure of an utterance with something (anything) like a set of connections between words, this representation is not the text itself and functions at another level -- a deeper or more hidden one. But I must have missed the point somewhere. {I think And and I were not expressing ourselves clearly enough. I agree with Alain that a grammatical representation of a sentence has to be more than just a string of words (though dividing an utterance into words is not a trivial task in itself). What I meant, and what I assume that And meant as well, is that a dependency representation should not include empty categories or other invisible elements, and that its terminal elements should be unanalyzed chunks which are in a one-to-one correspondence with the words in the sentence, and in the same order. I would go farther (and probably so would And?) in saying, following usual dependency practice (cf. e.g. John Anderson, as I remember), that the number of `nodes' in a dependency representation should also not exceed the number of words. (In the stemmae I use, the `mast' I use above each word, plus the word below it and the upper end where other edges are attached, count as a single node.) Thinking of such a representation in X-bar terms, a DG representation should allow only one bar level.} 2) Whether I am right or wrong in 1), I would still like to know what is so bad with levels. The only objection I can see is that language is probably not used in a very stratificational way -- i.e. producing utterances out of meanings by going through intermediate steps (syntax, morphology...). Is that right? What else? {In my view, the number of levels allowed in a grammatical representation is part of the determination of whether the associated theory has any empirical content or not. A grammar which allows abstract devices such as underlying structures and empty categories allows many different kinds of representations to be associated with a given sentence, and makes it difficult or impossible to choose between them in a principled way. Thus all representations are equally good; there is no `right' representation, and so the grammar cannot be tested; that is, it has no empirical content. The content of a grammatical theory are its constraints, e.g. the limitation to a single level of representation, and a grammar which allows everything says nothing. Any comments from those of you who utilize multiple levels?} {Stan S.} From ellalain@leonis.nus.sg Fri Aug 6 17:28:53 1993 Received: from leonis.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA02052 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 5 Aug 1993 21:29:32 -0400 Received: from localhost (ellalain@localhost) by leonis.nus.sg (8.2/8.2) id JAA06013; Fri, 6 Aug 1993 09:28:53 +0800 Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1993 09:28:53 +0800 From: Alain Polguere Message-Id: <199308060128.JAA06013@leonis.nus.sg> To: Subject: levels + aux. verbs Dear DGs: Thanks a million for your answers about levels of representation. Some more stuff on it + something about auxiliary verbs (following R. Hudson's last message). Starting with levels: S. Starosta says: {In my view, the number of levels allowed in a grammatical representation is part of the determination of whether the associated theory has any empirical content or not. A grammar which allows abstract devices such as underlying structures and empty categories allows many different kinds of representations to be associated with a given sentence, and makes it difficult or impossible to choose between them in a principled way. Thus all representations are equally good; there is no `right' representation, and so the grammar cannot be tested; that is, it has no empirical content. The content of a grammatical theory are its constraints, e.g. the limitation to a single level of representation, and a grammar which allows everything says nothing. Any comments from those of you who utilize multiple levels?} I don't think that there is a necessary correlation between using so-called underlying levels and introducing abstract categories. You can use deeper levels of syntactic representation in order to do exactly the opposite: you can trim the tree, so to speak. In that sense, the deeper you go, the less nodes you have. May I illustrate this with the particular case of the auxiliary verbs in English? If you allow yourself several levels of syntactic repre- sentation, there is no problem to consider that (1) "Joe is jumping the gun." has the following superficial structure (names between parenthesis indicate dependency relations -- I simplify) (2) BE[pres.ind.] / \ (subjective) / \ (auxiliary) / \ JOE JUMP[pres.part] | | (dir.objective) | GUN[sing] | | (determinative) | THE This structure accounts for all syntactic dependencies holding between word-forms in (1). Of course, I do not pretend that this is the only way of modeling the internal syntactic structure of (1). Beside (1), I may want to consider a deeper structure NOT IN ORDER TO INTRODUCE ADDITIONAL ABSTRACT NODES, but precisely in order to get rid of everything which is not to the actual central semantic content of (1). For instance, I will consider the following: - the present progressive form is an inflectional variation of of the verb; the auxiliary in (1) is nothing else but a component of the grammatical tool I have to use in English in order to express a given grammatical meaning; - 'JUMP THE GUN' is one single lexical element -- a dictionary entry in my English lexicon --; it happens to be an idiomatic expression (in other words, it is a phraseme of English). Therefore, my deeper representation, will be simpler than (2): (3) 'JUMP THE GUN'[pres.,prog.asp.] / / (1st.actant) / JOE I am sure someone is going to tell me that (3) is not needed at all. But what can I do? Personally it helps me a lot in making the connection between (1) and the meaning of (1). Must be because I am not a native speaker; but shouldn't a grammatical modeling make things clearer for outsiders? Cheers, Alain. From LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Fri Aug 6 16:01:13 1993 Received: from ntc02.tele.nokia.fi by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA03847 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 6 Aug 1993 04:59:42 -0400 Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1993 12:01:13 +0400 (EET-DST) From: LARSSON@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Message-Id: <930806120113.22203965@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com> Subject: Function words and logical form To: dg@ai.uga.edu X-Vmsmail-To: INET::"dg@ai.uga.edu" This is a posting I misplaced by sending it to owner-dg@ai.uga.edu instead of dg@ai.uga.edu. My apologies for the delay. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a recent posting RichardHudson said: I'd be interested to hear more discussion about the status of function-words after the interesting contribution from Petr Sgall, putting a view which I think is very widely shared in Europe but much less attractive to those of us who have had a foot firmly in the American tradition. Petr says that auxiliary verbs are function words which depend on main verbs. Because of this, they're not shown as independent words in the syntactic dependency structure, but as features attached to the main verb. I'd be interested to know what evidence there is for this analysis. I gather from his remarks that one piece of evidence is that auxiliary verbs have a `function' which is similar to that of an affix in other languages (where presumably `function' means something like `meaning'). But say we accept that English "have" has the same function, in this sense, as the Latin perfect inflections. Let us compare an utterly trivial Finnish sentence (1) T"am"a olisi selv"a. with the equally trivial English 'equivalent' (2) This would have been obvious. (where "a is used in a non-standard way for a with diaeresis, which can not be rendered on the Internet), we will find the following correspondances: (3) T"am"a ol|COND-isi selv"a. This be|COND-would-have obvious. (not providing any analysis for the initial and final words in the sample sentences) How can we then explain e.g. why "have" itself has a tense (past or present), why the main verb appears in a participial inflection, without any subject agreement, why "have" does have subject agreement, why "have" may itself be in a non-finite form when preceded by another auxiliary such as "will", and so on? From the rudimentary analysis in (3), we might propose the following logical forms for the verbs (4) cond(isi(aux(olla))) cond(would-have(aux(be))) The forms in (4) could additionally be decorated with more intricate feature structures, and such a representation could be very practical, e.g. for the purpose of some specific text processing task. I've always assumed that by far the simplest and most elegant analysis of a sequence like "will have gone" is to recognise each word as a separate word in every respect, with dependency relations between them. Why is this wrong? However, we migth feel that the verbal structures in sentences (1) and (2) would call for different logical forms, somewhat along the lines of (5) for the Finnish and (6) for the English. (5) cond(isi(aux(olla))) (6) aux(would), aux(have), aux(be) Here I have refrained from any deeper thoughts as to the status of the pair 'be' and 'olla' themselves, for the sake of simplicity (or simplemindedness). My questions are: 1) How can we avoid imposing differences (or similarities) between languages due more to our choice of formalism than to real evidence (and what would count as REAL EVIDENCE in this context). 2) Do we not have to assume the existence of non-surface level(s), if we want to assert that the 'function' or 'meaning' of some items in different languages are the 'same' or 'equivalent'. For example, a substition test would tell us that the Finnish suffix '-isi' in (1) have the same function as the English 'would have' in (2). But, since the actual morphemes themselves are different, our judgement of sameness must be guided by a mental comparison on a different level (i.e. a non-surface level). Traditionally, the criteria for this kind of comparison seem to have had something to do with the distribution of items in discourse (i.e. we would expect 'would have' in approximately the same positions as '-isi' in English and Finnish discourse, respectively). Arne Larsson *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Arne Larsson Nokia Telecommunications Translator Transmission Systems, Customer Services larsson@ntc02.tele.nokia.fi P.O. Box 12, SF-02611 Espoo, Finland larsson@ntcclu.ntc.nokia.com Phone +358 0 5117476, Fax +358 0 51044287 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* From SGALL%CSPGUK11.BITNET@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Fri Aug 6 10:02:17 1993 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA04782 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 6 Aug 1993 10:02:17 -0400 Message-Id: <199308061402.AA04782@aisun1.ai.uga.edu> Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4782; Fri, 06 Aug 93 10:03:01 EDT Received: from CSPGUK11 (NJE origin MAILER@CSPGUK11) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 8044; Fri, 6 Aug 1993 10:02:58 -0400 Received: from CSPGUK11.BITNET (SGALL) by CSPGUK11RSCSV2 .BITNET (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7010; Fri, 06 Aug 93 16:01:40 MET Date: Fri, 06 Aug 93 15:55:48 MET From: Petr Sgall Subject: function words and levels revisited To: dg@ai.uga.edu I can only agree with Allain and Arne. I would not say that Dick's analysis is wrong, but we need one the one hand something more complex (to cope with the relationships beteween languages and between sound & meaning) and on the other side something more economical (the relation between a lexical verb and an auxiliary is not that of syntactic depend- ency: no other complementations of the aux are possible; in this E. have is similar to E. -ed, and Perfect to Preterite; with other kinds of function words it is even clearer that no nodes in a dependency tree are needed for them). Nice to see how the discussion proceeds; I am sorry to have to leave now; I'll be back on e-mail in 10 days from now, for a while. Petr Sgall From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Fri Aug 6 20:27:14 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA06771 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 6 Aug 1993 14:27:22 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <20647-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Fri, 6 Aug 1993 19:27:17 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA112474; Fri, 6 Aug 1993 19:27:15 +0100 Message-Id: <9308061827.AA112474@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: auxiliaries and levels Date: Fri, 06 Aug 93 19:27:14 +0100 From: RichardHudson I welcome Alain Polguere's surface analysis of "John is jumping the gun", with "is" as the root of the sentence. Let me also satisfy his prediction that someone will tell him he doesn't need the deeper one, with "jump the gun" as the root. He doesn't need it. Either it is the semantic analysis, in which case the issue is simply what to call it (semantics or deep syntax); or it isn't, in which case the issue is whether it is easier to relate the surface syntax to the semantic structure in a single step or in two, via his deeper level. That's a technical question without any obvious answer, and it depends very much on the nature of the semantic structure we're assuming; but all my money is on the simpler answer, namely that it's simpler to go in one step than in two. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Fri Aug 6 23:17:30 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA07550 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 6 Aug 1993 17:17:39 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <23001-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Fri, 6 Aug 1993 22:17:33 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA27319; Fri, 6 Aug 1993 22:17:30 +0100 Message-Id: <9308062117.AA27319@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Function words and levels Date: Fri, 06 Aug 93 22:17:30 +0100 From: RichardHudson50 In reply to Arne Larsson: I certainly wouldn't deny the need for a non-surface level of analysis at which semantic functions can be shown. The issue is simply what this level should be called. I would call it the level of semantics (`logical form', if you prefer). If you agree on this, then we're left with just a single level of syntax, namely the surface level where (as Stan Starosta put it), the number of nodes is precisely the same as the number of words. (Well, I think it may be a bit more complicated than that because of clitics, compounds and coordination, but I agree with the spirit of what Stan says; the main point is that there are *at least* as many nodes in syntax as there are words.) In order to make comparisons between languages, as Arne wants to, you then compare the (surface) syntactic structures in the different languages which correspond to the same semantic structures. Whatever the semantic structure for "would have" is, it must also be the structure for Finnish "-isi" if this is a good translation of "would have" as Arne says it is. In reply to Petr Sgall: If the relation between "have" and "gone" in "have eaten" is not dependency, what about the relation between "get" and "eaten" in "get eaten"? The essential point is that "get" is not an auxiliary verb (at least not by any of the standard syntactic tests - e.g. it doesn't invert with the subject or take "-n't" as a negator, unlike "have"). Moreover, if "have" does not count as a separate node in the syntax, what is it that carries its tense ("has" or "had")? Is the answer different from the one you'd give for non-auxiliary "have", as in "He has a bicycle"? My claim is that the simplest way to relate the morphology of the individual words (e.g. the difference between "has" and "had", and between "eat" and "eaten") to the semantic structure of the whole sentence is by respecting the integrity of the words in the syntactic analysis, whilst allowing two words to contribute to a single semantic structure. If Petr is right, I must be wrong - and vice versa! Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Sun Aug 8 10:23:07 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA15273 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 8 Aug 1993 10:23:07 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA25288; Sun, 8 Aug 93 04:23:05 HST Date: Sun, 8 Aug 93 04:23:05 HST From: Stanley Starosta Message-Id: <9308081423.AA25288@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Sgall on multistrata and PSG Comments on Petr Sgall's posting of Wed, 04 Aug 93 17:39:03 MET Key: Sgall: unindented {Starosta: indented and bracketed} (a) It is no mere chance that the old European tradition of syntactic dependency (combined with constituency as for the dichotomy of subject and predicate) was interrupted (and abolished in favor of constituency) in English speaking countries; E. differs from most Continental languages in it does not render the syntactic relations by endings (with few exceptions), so that such phenomena as agreement and government (in the traditional sense of G. Rektion) are severely restricted here, and prepositions and the word order express most syntactic relations. {Again I'm having trouble interpreting a `no mere chance' statement. I'm not sure whether this is meant as a comment on the vicissitudes of European intellectual history or on intrinsic capabilities of dependency representation; Petr's subsequent comments suggest the former. At any rate, DG grammars of `isolating' languages are still superior to PS grammars of such languages in terms of capturing generalizations and limiting expressive power. (I'm still waiting for someone to challenge this assertion and back up the challenge with a formal and explicit bit of PSG we can compare with a DG counterparet.)} This situation makes it natural that every language can be described by a dependency based grammar (with coordination having its own dimension in a network) {I'm not prepared to concede this point yet. It can be disproven by a dependency analaysis of coordination which does not require a resort to an additional dimension and/or PS mechanisms. I have some ideas about how this may be done, and I think Peter Hellwig and Henning Lobin have gone well beyond me in working out the analysis.} and that the usefulness of constituency is rather limited (no language seems to be fully 'configurational', but E. comes close to this and thus is a good candidate for a PS description, although the PS framework even here is not sufficient {Here I wish Petr had been more concrete. What does it mean for a language to be `configurational'? Does it mean anything more than a claim that a la VP node? And can anyone on this net give me any evidence at all for supposing that a VP node is any more appropriate for English than it is for German or Chinese?} it was no mere chance that such dg elements as X-bar or theta roles have emerged also with Chomsky). {Again, why is it `no mere chance? I am having trouble following the logic in these statements. Is Petr just saying that Chomsky `borrowed' these elements from DG? Who can doubt it? But if so, what does this have to do with the claim that PSG is more suitable for English than DG is?} (b) As for the levels, I believe now that a single level of syntactic representations of sentences is necessary (neither surface nor underlying, but an interface level of language and the domain of cognition). The dependnecy based networks of this level contrast substantially with the string shape of morphemic representations (the 'surface' word order being present only on the latter level), and then comes the difference between this morphemic level (with such items as Accusative, Plural, Feminine, Preterit, Comparative,...) and the outer (phonetic, graphemic) shape of sentences (with individual morphs corresponding to the just quoted items). What was assumed to be a level of surface syntax or of phonemics, probably can be dispensed with. {I claim that it is possible to provide all of this information in a single `surface' level of dependency representation. If I can in fact do this, then it is the `intermediate structure' which is redundant.} (c) Function words appear as words in the outer shape of sentences, but this does not tell us immediately if they are to be understood as nodes of a syntactic tree or network. {This is only a meaningful question if you have already assumed that there should be more than one level. If you don't make this a priori assumption, then of course function words can and must be nodes in the dependency representation.} The outer shape cannot be accepted as the only decisive criterion (even if one does not distinguish between surface and underlying syntax); already such items as the French au, du, des, or the German im, beim, where the article merges with a preposition, show that when describing the structure of the language, we cannot rely on the outer shape. {I take Petr's point here; has anyone else found a way to account for these in a constrained monostratal representation?} Similar are the E. contracted forms with negation, {I tried to show in my 1977 `Affix Hopping' paper that English negative contraction' is synchronically negative inflection, and therefore does not support a polystratal representaiton. I think Geoff Pullum and possibly others have reached the same conclusion. I also have a monostratal analysis for English `contracted' auxiliaries.} and other phenomena in other languages. {Phenomena different in kind from the German, French, and English examples? If not, can we conclude that the only motivation for assuming a polystratal representaion is the existence of such two- word fusions, and that if someone finds a way to account for them monostratally, there will be no more reason for assuming more than one level of representation?} It is then necessary to look for a deeper criterion, and this can be seen in the dichotomy of lexicon and grammar, which is necessary for every linguistic despription. {As a devotee of lexicon-driven dependency grammar, I must of course take exception to this statement. I would claim exactly the opposite: the lexicon *is* the grammar. Once the valence features of each word have been adequately specified, the sentences of the language have been generated: each word is a `node admissibility condition' on a dependency representation, and a well-formed sentence is any string of words which has a corresponding dependency representation in which each node is admissible. We of course need some kind of conventions as to how to draw the dependency trees projected from the lexical entries, but no additional grammatical rules as such are necessary.} Grammatical functions are expressed in various ways in languages of different types, but lexical units always have the shape of words (lexical morphs). There is no necessary or intrinsic difference between the functions of affixes, endings and function words. In fact, in the Princ & Param. approach all of them are handled in the same way, having nodes as their counterparts (Aux, Compl, Infl, Agr). This means that an analytic metalanguage is being used. {Is this necessary or desirable? I would claim not.} I still believe that an agglutinative metalanguage is to be preferred, with complex labels at the nodes, where the grammatical functions (morphological meanings such as Plural, Preterite, etc., and syntactic relations) appear in the shape of indices attached to the lexical items. {Agreed; in a constrained dependency representation, a node is a word, so this statement is a proposal for marking all grammatical information on words, which I heartily endorse.} This means the dependency tree does not get overburdened by nodes for items which cannot be freely expanded syntactically: an article or a preposition are always accompanying a noun, auxiliaries and conjunctions accompany verbs, etc. {If people like Haj Ross, Dick Hudson, Geoff Pullum, and myself are correct in claiming that `auxiliares' are the main verbs of their clauses, then by the criterion of expandability, it would be a serious error to leave them out of the dependency representation.} (I know that there are exceptions there, but these are present everywhere in natural language and we can only describe them as such, as marginal phenomena). {So in the absence of any *syntactic* motivation other than word fusion for the extra levels, is the only motivation then for encoding words then an esthetic one? A representation for a sentence which provides a node for each word, including `function words', is no more `overburdened' than the sentence it represents. I personally find this isomorphy more esthetically pleasing than assigning one or more non- isomorphic representations to a sentence in addition to the isomorphic one that every adequate syntactic theory must provide.} {Stan Starosta} From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Sun Aug 8 21:53:18 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA16356 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 8 Aug 1993 15:53:27 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <09944-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Sun, 8 Aug 1993 20:53:21 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA121771; Sun, 8 Aug 1993 20:53:18 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9308081953.AA121771@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, Stanley Starosta Subject: Re: Sgall on multistrata and PSG In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sun, 08 Aug 93 04:23:05 K.) <9308081423.AA25288@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Date: Sun, 08 Aug 93 20:53:18 +0100 > comments on Petr Sgall's posting of Wed, 04 Aug 93 17:39:03 MET > Key: > Sgall: unindented > {Starosta: indented and bracketed} > > The outer shape cannot be accepted as the only > decisive criterion (even if one does not distinguish between > surface and underlying syntax); already such items as the > French au, du, des, or the German im, beim, where the > article merges with a preposition, show that when describing > the structure of the language, we cannot rely on the outer > shape. > {I take Petr's point here; has anyone else found a way to account for > these in a constrained monostratal representation?} What is striking about them is the way they do seem to transgress normal constraints, so any theory that can accommodate them is probably going to be less constrained than one that can't. I was thinking recently about _au, du, des, aux_ etc., & also English _my_, _mine_ (which I should like to take as _me_ + _'s_). I reckoned that for a monostratal theory the best approach is to take them as two words (DE & LE, ME & 'S), such that the head word is a special version of DE, 'S, or whatever & has a different orthographic/phonological structure ( rather than , rather than <'s>). Then the sound/spelling of the dependent word (LE, ME) is either nothing or identical with that of its head. The constraint that this analysis transgresses is either allowing a word to have zero sound/spelling or allowing the sound/spelling of one word to be the sound/spelling of another word. (I prefer the latter transgression.) NB when I say De & LE have the same sound/spelling, I mean that one set of actual marks on paper or sounds coming from the mouth represent both words simultaneously. (I'm not sure why it's _de l'hopital_ rather than _du hopital_, but an easy solution is to say that _le_ is a different article from _l'_ and the complement of the DE spelt must be LE rather than L'.) > This means the dependency tree does > not get overburdened by nodes for items which cannot be > freely expanded syntactically: an article or a preposition > are always accompanying a noun, auxiliaries and conjunctions > accompany verbs, etc. > {If people like Haj Ross, Dick Hudson, Geoff Pullum, and myself are > correct in claiming that `auxiliares' are the main verbs of their > clauses, then by the criterion of expandability, it would be a serious > error to leave them out of the dependency representation.} How widespread is the notion that expandability is a necessary condition for dependency? ---- And Rosta From ellalain@leonis.nus.sg Mon Aug 9 19:40:26 1993 Received: from leonis.nus.sg by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA17679 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Sun, 8 Aug 1993 23:40:31 -0400 Received: from localhost (ellalain@localhost) by leonis.nus.sg (8.2/8.2) id LAA26936; Mon, 9 Aug 1993 11:40:26 +0800 Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 11:40:26 +0800 From: ellalain@leonis.nus.sg (ellalain) Message-Id: <199308090340.LAA26936@leonis.nus.sg> To: Subject: Semantics vs Deep-Syntax DGs, From Dick Hudson: > I welcome Alain Polguere's surface analysis of "John is jumping the gun", > with "is" as the root of the sentence. Let me also satisfy his prediction > that someone will tell him he doesn't need the deeper one, with "jump the > gun" as the root. He doesn't need it. Either it is the semantic analysis, > in which case the issue is simply what to call it (semantics or deep > syntax); or it isn't, in which case the issue is whether it is easier to > relate the surface syntax to the semantic structure in a single step or in > two, via his deeper level. That's a technical question without any obvious > answer, and it depends very much on the nature of the semantic structure > we're assuming; but all my money is on the simpler answer, namely that it's > simpler to go in one step than in two. Well, I don't think that a one-step modeling is necessarily "simpler" than a two-step one. In fact, I know that there is a bunch a badly wired human beings -- among them, myself -- who consider that things become simpler when they are decomposed. But this is all about psychology and I really don't understand much about that. Therefore, I cannot justify the psychological/simplicity-based relevance of the axiom: "separate whatever seems to be autonomous [I didn't say "independent"] and seems to possess some unique characteristics." If you accept this axiom -- at least for the five minutes that it will take you to read my message -- I can proceed with an explanation of why the deep-syntactic structure proposed earlier is not, and cannot be, a semantic representation. I agree with Richard Hudson's remark about the deep-syntactic representation of "Joe is jumping the gun.", which seems to be useless as it is pretty close to a semantic representation, something like: 'jump the gun'( 'joe' ) But this example was given to illustrate the need for a distinction between what I have presented as surface vs deep syntax. (Nothing original here, I am just serving you with pre-cooked Meaning-Text stuff.) As Richard Hudson doesn't reject the validity of this dichotomy, but (as expected :-) ) attack the syntactic nature of the deeper representation, it remains to be explained why deep-syntactic dependency structures (which do not feature "grammatical words", which are based on very general universal dependencies, etc.) are not semantic representations. Firstly, predicates do not necessarily realize their valence in a direct way. Which means that a semantic structure such as: 'p'( 'a1' , 'a2' ) is not necessarily expressed with the following dependencies: P / \ I / \ II / \ A1 A2 Take the semantic structure: (1) 'speak3'( 'Joe' , 'Tom' ) where 'speak3' is the meaning of "speak" expressed in sentences such as: (2) "Don't disturb Joe now; he's speaking with his students." The diathesis of the lexeme SPEAK3 presents at least the following options: (3) (3') 'speak3'( X , Y ) ====> (3'') SPEAK3 / \ I / \ II / \ X Y ====> (3''') SPEAK3 | I | | X | COORD | | AND | II | | Y [You may prefer a different representation of coordinated structures, where the coordinating lexeme (here, AND) is the head.] (3) shows that there are at least two different deep-SYNTACTIC structures which can express the English meaning (3'). (3'') will give rise to sentences such as: (4) "Joe is speaking with Tom." and (3'') to sentences such as: (5) "Joe and Tom are speaking." (4) and (5) have the same "propositional" meaning. Only the communicative structure of the message they express may vary. Therefore, the representation of this propositional meaning should be unique, even though (4) and (5) present very different systems of syntactic dependencies. I therefore NEED this distinction between semantic and deep-syntactic structures in order to encode properly in a dictionary of English the diathesis of SPEAK3 (this is just one example among millions which can be found in natural languages). Notice that SPEAK4 (roughly, 'to give a speech'), for instance, does not have the same diathesis: (6) "Listen! The President is speaking to his employees now." * "Listen! The President and his employees are speaking now." \ \(another meaning!) Secondly, the following "texts" are also cases of a identical propositional meanings expressed with different communicative perspectives: (7) a. "...the red blackbird..." b. "The blackbird is red." The common representation of the propositional meaning of (7a) and (7b) ------------- could be something like (I simplify): (8) 'red'( 'blackbird' ) But of course, the deep-syntactic structures are very different; something like: (9) a. BLACKBIRD b. BE <-- [Notice that the copula is | / \ not considered here as a ATTR | I / \ II real gram. word as it appears | / \ in deep-syntax -- different RED BLACKBIRD RED from the auxiliary BE] Again, this is an example among others; but I believe it can demonstrate why deep-syntactic structures -- as presented in my previous message -- cannot be regarded as semantic structures. If I return to Richard Hudson's message, I could therefore reject deep-syntactic structures only on the basis that they make things more "complicated". But, using And Rosta's rhetoric (sorry :-) ), I feel that deep syntactic phenomena, as opposed to superficial ones, DO exist somewhere between the speaker's two ears. I find it simpler to describe them separately. All the best to the DG group, Alain Polguere. From stanley@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Mon Aug 9 00:07:33 1993 Received: from uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA17771 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 9 Aug 1993 00:07:33 -0400 Received: by uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (4.1/Sun690) id AA08486; Sun, 8 Aug 93 18:07:31 HST Date: Sun, 8 Aug 93 18:07:30 HST From: Stanley Starosta To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Lots more on function words and levels Message-Id: Lots more on function words and levels Key: Unindented, unbracketed: authors of postings {Stan Starosta's comments} == Comments on Alain Polguere, `levels + aux. verbs' I don't think that there is a necessary correlation between using so-called underlying levels and introducing abstract categories. You can use deeper levels of syntactic representation in order to do exactly the opposite: you can trim the tree, so to speak. In that sense, the deeper you go, the less nodes you have. May I illustrate this with the particular case of the auxiliary verbs in English? If you allow yourself several levels of syntactic repre- sentation, there is no problem to consider that (1) "Joe is jumping the gun." has the following superficial structure (names between parenthesis indicate dependency relations -- I simplify) (2) BE[pres.ind.] / \ (subjective) / \ (auxiliary) / \ JOE JUMP[pres.part] | | (dir.objective) | GUN[sing] | | (determinative) | THE This structure accounts for all syntactic dependencies holding between word-forms in (1). {Except linear precedence of course. If you don't account for that in `superficial structure', where do you account for it? Or is word order not part of syntax??} Of course, I do not pretend that this is the only way of modeling the internal syntactic structure of (1). Beside (1), I may want to consider a deeper structure NOT IN ORDER TO INTRODUCE ADDITIONAL ABSTRACT NODES, but precisely in order to get rid of everything which is not to the actual central semantic content of (1). {Why would anyone want to do that? Such a level is completely redundant, since it contains nothing that is not present in the `superficial representation', and adds nothing to it.} For instance, I will consider the following: - the present progressive form is an inflectional variation of of the verb; {What evidence is there for such a claim? Are we going back to the classical European tradition of regarding all languages as deviations from Latin? Would it be legitimate to state that `the Latin present participle is a portmanteau variation of the English copula plus present participle'?} the auxiliary in (1) is nothing else but a component of the grammatical tool I have to use in English in order to express a given grammatical meaning; {That is true of every element of grammar, be it a `content word', a `function word', an affix, or a grammatically significant feature of word order. What does that tell us about levels of representation?} - 'JUMP THE GUN' is one single lexical element -- a dictionary entry in my English lexicon --; it happens to be an idiomatic expression (in other words, it is a phraseme of English). {In some sense that is of course true, but it is still a phrase and still requires representaion as three words. The special status of this collocation can be accounted for in a monostratal representation by treating JUMP as a word JUMP2 which is different in distribution and meaning from the ordinary JUMP1. In particular, JUMP2 requires as its dependent the unique and semantically empty word GUN2, which in turn requires THE as a dependent. The difference in meaning between JUMP1 and JUMP2 of course resides in the lexical matrices of these two words, and it is not necessary to create a separate level of structure to account for it.} Therefore, my deeper representation, will be simpler than (2): {That is cheating; the fair way to reckon relative complexity is to compare i) a monostratal analysis (e.g. (2) with linear precedence incorporated) with ii) a combination of (2) and (3) plus whatever mechanism is adduced to accommodate linear precedence.} (3) 'JUMP THE GUN'[pres.,prog.asp.] / / (1st.actant) / JOE I am sure someone is going to tell me that (3) is not needed at all. {Quite right.} But what can I do? Personally it helps me a lot in making the connection between (1) and the meaning of (1). Must be because I am not a native speaker; but shouldn't a grammatical modeling make things clearer for outsiders? {The first responsibility of a scientific model is to model the phenomenon under investigation in a maximally economical way (Occam's Razor). If you think you need to create extra alternative representations to make things clearer, that is a matter of practical pedagogy, but I personally think that if the ultimate goal is to impart a fundamental and correct understanding to `outsiders', then it is better to teach something the way it is rather than to teach an alternative view with no scientific support.} {Stan S.} == Comments on Arne Larsson, `Function words and logical form' Let us compare an utterly trivial Finnish sentence (1) T"am"a olisi selv"a. with the equally trivial English 'equivalent' (2) This would have been obvious. (where "a is used in a non-standard way for a with diaeresis, which can not be rendered on the Internet), we will find the following correspondances: (3) T"am"a ol|COND-isi selv"a. This be|COND-would-have obvious. (not providing any analysis for the initial and final words in the sample sentences) From the rudimentary analysis in (3), we might propose the following logical forms for the verbs {For what purpose? Basic rationale not clear.} (4) cond(isi(aux(olla))) cond(would-have(aux(be))) The forms in (4) could additionally be decorated with more intricate feature structures, and such a representation could be very practical, e.g. for the purpose of some specific text processing task. {Would this be more practical than Dick's `a word is a word is a word' approach? If so, how, and for which specific text processing task? What is the evidence for this claim? I would like to see some logical motivation for such `logical form' paraphrases.} . . . However, we might feel that the verbal structures in sentences (1) and (2) would call for different logical forms, somewhat along the lines of (5) for the Finnish and (6) for the English. (5) cond(isi(aux(olla))) (6) aux(would), aux(have), aux(be) {Feelings are fine as a starter, but more than feelings are needed to justify an analysis and an alternative theory. Precisely what do we gain by adding this `logical form' paraphrase to a monostratal syntactic representation?} . . . My questions are: 1) How can we avoid imposing differences (or similarities) between languages due more to our choice of formalism than to real evidence (and what would count as REAL EVIDENCE in this context). {The representations should be as similar to and as different from each other as the languages themselves are. Real evidence is relatively easy to recognize when we confine ourselves to linear precedence and word-word dependency relations, and much less so when we move away from the physical facts and intersubjectively verifiable native speaker reactions.} 2) Do we not have to assume the existence of non-surface level(s), if we want to assert that the 'function' or 'meaning' of some items in different languages are the 'same' or 'equivalent'. For example, a substition test would tell us that the Finnish suffix '-isi' in (1) have the same function as the English 'would have' in (2). But, since the actual morphemes themselves are different, our judgement of sameness must be guided by a mental comparison on a different level (i.e. a non-surface level). {Why? If lexical meaning can be represented in terms of features on lexical items, then I see no reason why `would have' might not share the same semantic features as the set of Finnish words affixed with `-isi'.} {Stan S.} == Comments on Petr Sgall's `function words and levels revisited' I can only agree with Allain and Arne. I would not say that Dick's analysis is wrong, but we need one the one hand something more complex (to cope with the relationships between languages and between sound & meaning) {For example? If the question is whether some particular phenomenon can or cannot be accounted for in a monostratal analysis, then the best way to answer it convincingly is to look as some of these phenomena and see whether the monostratalists on the net can handle them monostratally. I think we need to be much more concrete in our discussions if we want to avoid vacuity. Arne Larsson's Finnish data have set us a good example in this respect. The people on this net know a lot of languages, and I personally would love to see more of them (languages, not people) scrolling down my screen.} and on the other side something more economical (the relation between a lexical verb and an auxiliary is not that of syntactic depend- ency: {I claim that it is *exactly* that of syntactic dependency. Now we have two contrasting positions, and the next step in the debate is for Petr and others to give us supporting evidence and arguments for this claim, and for others of us to attempt to rebut it.} no other complementations of the aux are possible; in this E. have is similar to E. -ed, and Perfect to Preterite; {This looks like evidence, but I'm afraid I don't follow it.} with other kinds of function words it is even clearer that no nodes in a dependency tree are needed for them). {It's not clear to me. I think in cases like this where some of us are coming to DG from different directions, we will need to make our assumptions and reasoning more explicit.} {Stan S.} From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Mon Aug 9 09:14:39 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18470 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 9 Aug 1993 03:14:48 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <00359-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Mon, 9 Aug 1993 08:14:42 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA74462; Mon, 9 Aug 1993 08:14:40 +0100 Message-Id: <9308090714.AA74462@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: French and Date: Mon, 09 Aug 93 08:14:39 +0100 From: RichardHudson50 Following up the interesting discussion triggered by Petr Sgall, there's a very easy way to handle these `portmanteau words', where a single spelling-word (and phonological word) corresponds to two syntactic ones. Like And Rosta, I think consists of three syntactic nodes, A + LE + VILLAGE, where the capital letters are meant to show that we are talking about syntactic nodes plus lexical and inflectional analysis. If we assume that each word is actually described by a collection of feature- equations, one of these for VILLAGE will be "spelling of VILLAGE is ". Now we introduce into the grammar a spelling rule for the sequence A + LE: "spelling of A + LE is ". By the general principles of default inheritance, or of phonology, or any other system for handling exceptions, this takes priority over the rules for just A and just LE, because the sequence A + LE is more specific than either A or LE alone. I've toyed with the idea of doing the same for English lexical suppletive examples like THIS + DAY = TODAY. If this analysis is successful, it means that etc are irrelevant to the number of levels needed for syntax. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 From uclyrah@ucl.ac.uk Mon Aug 9 10:06:27 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA18610 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 9 Aug 1993 04:06:35 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <00877-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Mon, 9 Aug 1993 09:06:30 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA126484; Mon, 9 Aug 1993 09:06:27 +0100 Message-Id: <9308090806.AA126484@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Levels Date: Mon, 09 Aug 93 09:06:27 +0100 From: RichardHudson50 Re Alain Polguere on deep syntax, I'm still not convinced that you need a level of deep syntax, in addition to surfac% syntax and semanti#s. I agree that a one-step relation between the two isn't necessarily simpler than a two-step one; taking an extra step can in some circumstances simplify everything considerably. But this has to be demonstrated, and the burden of proof lies on those who recommend the extra level. So it's good to have some specific examples (provided by Alain) to talk about. 1. SPEAK/3 = x speak with y has same meaning as or = x and y speak Alain says these differences show the need for two different deep structures corresponding to one semantic structure, therefore his deep structures can't also be semantic structures (contrary to what I had suggested for his example "Joe jumped the gun"). Ok - but why do you need deep structures when the surface structures will make precisely the same distinction? (Incidentally, the second valency of SPEAK/3 shouldn't mention coordination, but plurality - a coordinated subject is just a particular case of a subject with a set as referent, e.g. "they".) 2. "the red blackbird" vs "the blackbird is red". Alain says these have the same propositional meaning but different deep syntax; so again deep syntax must be different from meaning. But again I can't see why you need deep syntax in addition to surface syntax, since these phrases will certainly be distinguished in the surface. (Incidentally the examples must surely also have different propositional meanings, though their meanings have several features in common?) ****************************************************** By the way, I'm assuming that valency, as defined in the lexical entry for a verb, is just an **extract** of surface structure - e.g. it just mentions grammatical functions of dependents without saying more about their word order, inflections etc. E.g. SPEAK/3 takes a subject and a dependent "with". I think this may be a source of misunderstanding among us. I wonder if those who advocate a distinction between deep and surface syntax are working with a model in which surface syntax is by definition fully specified for all surface features? Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (071) 387 7050 ext 3152 From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Tue Aug 10 01:36:53 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA24360 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 9 Aug 1993 19:44:28 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <17323-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Tue, 10 Aug 1993 00:36:55 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA89830; Tue, 10 Aug 1993 00:36:53 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9308092336.AA89830@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu Subject: Re: Levels In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 09 Aug 93 09:06:27 N.) <9308090806.AA126484@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 00:36:53 +0100 Dick Hudson says: > 2. "the red blackbird" vs "the blackbird is red". > > Alain says these have the same propositional meaning but > different deep syntax; so again deep syntax must be different > from meaning. But again I can't see why you need deep syntax in > addition to surface syntax, since these phrases will certainly be > distinguished in the surface. (Incidentally the examples must > surely also have different propositional meanings, though their > meanings have several features in common?) I agree that the examples have different meanings: red(the blackbird) [at least assuming non-restrictive modification] is(red(the blackbird)) But I cannot see that the semantic relation between the blackbird & the red is any different in the 2 examples. ---- And Rosta From ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk Tue Aug 10 01:50:31 1993 Received: from mail-a.bcc.ac.uk by aisun1.ai.uga.edu with SMTP id AA24383 (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 9 Aug 1993 19:52:28 -0400 Received: from link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk by mail-a.bcc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <17408-0@mail-a.bcc.ac.uk>; Tue, 10 Aug 1993 00:50:34 +0100 Received: by link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA108170; Tue, 10 Aug 1993 00:50:32 +0100 From: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Andrew Rosta) Message-Id: <9308092350.AA108170@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> To: dg@ai.uga.edu, RichardHudson50 Subject: Re: French and In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 09 Aug 93 08:14:39 N.) <9308090714.AA74462@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 00:50:31 +0100 Dick Hudson writes: > Following up the interesting discussion triggered by Petr Sgall, there's > a very easy way to handle these `portmanteau words', where a single > spelling-word (and phonological word) corresponds to two syntactic ones. > Like And Rosta, I think consists of three syntactic nodes, > A + LE + VILLAGE, where the capital letters are meant to show that we are > talking about syntactic nodes plus lexical and inflectional analysis. If > we assume that each word is actually described by a collection of feature- > equations, one of these for VILLAGE will be "spelling of VILLAGE is > ". Now we introduce into the grammar a spelling rule for the > sequence A + LE: "spelling of A + LE is ". By the general principles > of default inheritance, or of phonology, or any other system for handling > exceptions, this takes priority over the rules for just A and just LE, > because the sequence A + LE is more specific than either A or LE alone. For "A + LE" to be an exception, we would need a category "linear sequence of two words". Then "A + LE" would be an exceptional member because its phonology is not a mere concatenation of its parts. But it is preferable to avoid such an alien category, & instead use an exceptional instance of A or LE (or of both) as the means to state the A + LE = rule. > I've toyed with the idea of doing the same for English lexical suppletive > examples like THIS + DAY = TODAY. If _today_ suppletes _this day_, it is only when _this day_ is adverbial & refers to today. Even then, is it actually *ungrammatical* to say "This day I shall visit the museum"? Is this not just a matter of usage? - We all naturally conform to the prevailing usage patterns, & in this case _today_ prevails. ---- And Rosta