[developers] Some more information about properties in transfer (idiom) rules

[Woodley Packard]

Hi Francis,

I'm afraid I'm unqualified to speak about the LKB behavior, but regarding FLAGS.EQUAL, in ACE at least, it is enforced for the type at the location specified, but not for substructure, so asking for EQUAL on PNG.PN makes more sense in this application than on ARG0 (which would perhaps demand that the variable is an `x' but not that it is 3p).  It's probably not necessary in this situation to begin with since the ungrammatical variants specialize PNG.PN to 3s, which is not unifiable with 3p.

-Woodley


On Mar 4, 2015, at 6:01 PM, Francis Bond <bond at ieee.org> wrote:

> G'day,
> 
> while we are discussing transfer rules, I would like to point out that there are some differences between the implementations in ACE and the LKB/LOGON.    What combination of things would work and why when dealing with properties has always been mysterious to me, currently the ACE implementation seems to behave more as I would expect. 
>  
> The following rules show a clear difference between the behaviour for ACE and the LKB:
> 
> I am trying to make an entry for the idiom "hold one's horses".
> 
> If I make an idiomatic verb:
> hold_v1_poss_i := v_np_refl-idm_le &
>  [ ORTH < "hold" >,
>    SYNSEM [ LKEYS.KEYREL.PRED "_hold_v_ones_i_rel",
>             PHON.ONSET con ] ].
> 
> And an idiom rule like such:
> 
> hold+ones+horses_ir := v_reflnp_idiom_mtr &
>     [ INPUT.RELS.LIST < [ PRED "_hold_v_ones_i_rel" ],
>                         [ PRED "_horse_n_1_rel"], ... > ].
> 
> Then I get idiomatic readings for:
> Kim holds her horses.  (<360.gif>)
> Kim holds her horse.   (<33D.gif>)
> And not for:
> Kim holds my horse. (<360.gif>)
> 
> I would like to only allow the idiomatic reading for the plural case.
> 
> I have tried:
> ----------
> hold+ones+horses_ir := v_reflnp_idiom_mtr &
>    [ INPUT.RELS.LIST < [ PRED "_hold_v_ones_i_rel" ],
>                        [ PRED "_horse_n_1_rel",  ARG0.PNG.PN 3p & #pn], ... >,
>      FLAGS.EQUAL < #pn > ].
> 
> Which blocks both singular and plural in the LKB but allows only plural for ACE.
> ----------------
> hold+ones+horses_ir := v_reflnp_idiom_mtr &
>    [ INPUT.RELS.LIST < [ PRED "_hold_v_ones_i_rel" ],
>                        [ PRED "_horse_n_1_rel",  ARG0 #x & [PNG.PN 3p ]], ... >,
>      FLAGS.EQUAL < #x > ].
> 
> Which allows both singular and plural in the LKB but allows only plural for ACE.
> -------------
> In fact, you don't even need the FLAGS.EQUAL for ACE:
> 
> hold+ones+horses_ir := v_reflnp_idiom_mtr &
>    [ INPUT.RELS.LIST < [ PRED "_hold_v_ones_i_rel" ],
>                        [ PRED "_horse_n_1_rel",  ARG0.PNG.PN 3p], ... > ].
> 
> Which allows both singular and plural in the LKB but allows only plural for ACE.
> -----------------
> 
> If anyone has an explanation for this behaviour, I would love to hear it :-).
> 
> 
> -- 
> Francis Bond <http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/fcbond/>
> Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies
> Nanyang Technological University

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