[developers] Difference between neg_rel/modifiers and modals

[Emily M. Bender]

Thanks, Ann, for the quick reply!  This connects to other things I've been
curious about recently, including how we decide if something like
"unexpectedly"
is scopal or not. Also, in (3), unexpectedly could be a sentence-initial
discourse
adverb (scopal?) or an adverb extracted from lower in the clause...

Emily

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 2:11 AM, Ann Copestake <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> I think the idea is to represent the contrast between:
>
> 1   We could unexpectedly close the window.
>
> either ability to close or actual closure is unexpected
>
> 2   We did not unexpectedly close the window.
>
> only the closure (if it had happened) would be unexpected.
>
> I don't think this is actually the best analysis.  For instance, for me,
>
> 3   Unexpectedly we did not close the window.
> has another reading, which we are not capturing in MRS.  Claudia
> Maiernborn would (perhaps) treat this as a sentential situation rather than
> an event modification and it may be that analysis is also available for 1
> instead of the modal modification analysis.
>
> I'm afraid I don't have time to discuss this properly at the moment,
> though.  I feel such a discussion has taken place, but don't remember the
> venue.
>
> All best,
>
> Ann
>
>
>
> On 10/05/2017 01:13, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I'm curious about the different in analysis between neg_rel and (other)
> scopal adverbial
> modifiers on the one hand and modals on the other in the treatment of the
> INDEX:
>
> In (1) and (2), the INDEX of the whole MRS points to the ARG0 of
> _sleep_v_rel:
>
> (1) Kim doesn't sleep.
> (2) Kim probably sleeps.
>
> ... where in (3) and (4) it points to the ARG0 of _can_v_rel and
> _would_v_rel respectively:
>
> (3) Kim can sleep.
> (4) Kim would sleep.
>
> I'm wondering what difference we intend to model here.  (This question
> comes up now
> because we're looking at negation in my grammar engineering class, and the
> out-of-the-box
> analysis for languages which express negation with an auxiliary has
> neg_rel falling
> in the latter class.)
>
> Thanks,
> Emily
>
>
> --
> Emily M. Bender
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>
>
>


-- 
Emily M. Bender
Professor, Department of Linguistics
Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.delph-in.net/archives/developers/attachments/20170511/f7ad4499/attachment.html>