[developers] "Quite" problematic: MRS -> EDS conversion

Fri Jul 27 13:50:05 CEST 2018

"Browne was hired a day in January"
- there's a PP-attachment ambiguity here (for "in January")
- but in both cases, we have loc_nonsp between _hire_v_1 and _day_n_of
- we have _in_p_temp between mofy(Jan) and either _hire_v_1 or _day_n_of
- in neither case do we have a link between _in_p_temp and loc_nonsp (which
is what we have in the buggy it-cleft analysis)

"it was a day in January that Browne was hired"
- the correct analysis just adds _be_v_itcleft (to the case where "in
January" attaches to "day")
- the 1214 ERG has both the correct analysis *and* the buggy analysis which
adds a loc_nonsp (so in this case there are *two* instances of loc_nonsp)

If this bug is fixed, I don't think there's any need to look at TENSE.

2018-07-27 7:51 GMT+01:00 Michael Wayne Goodman <goodmami at uw.edu>:

> Thanks, Emily,
>
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 6:37 PM, Emily M. Bender <ebender at uw.edu> wrote:
>
>> Sorry - I don't think I have anything to contribute to a discussion of
>> the analysis of it clefts, not having been involved in it.
>>
>
> I thought you might know from your work on the ErgSemantics wikis, but I
> see that the "it-cleft" section is not yet filled out.
>
>
>>   Regarding (1) v. (2):
>>
>> (1) It was in January that Browne arrived.
>> (2) It was a (cold dark) day in January that Browne arrived.
>>
>> If (2) is accepted, I'd expect loc_nonsp, since there is no overt
>> preposition. That seems orthogonal to the question of how the clefted
>> constituent in cleft constructions is linked up in the composition with the
>> clause it notionally belongs to.  (At a guess, I'd hope that the usual
>> analysis of long distance dependencies could do the trick, but like I said,
>> I haven't touched this in the grammar or otherwise and I'm sure there are
>> complexities I'm not aware of.)
>>
>
> For comparison, "It was on Kim we relied" (an example from the ERG's TDL
> comments) seems to work, but the "on" is part of the _rely_v_on predicate,
> not a separate _on_p ("It was on Kim we landed" has the same problem as the
> "in January" example). Guy's "Browne was hired" vs "It was Browne that was
> hired" differ from the "in January" example in that the clefted constituent
> is an argument of the main verb, whereas for "in January" the main verb is
> an argument of the clefted constituent. I'm not sure if this makes things
> more difficult, though.
>
>
>> Emily
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 1:07 PM, Michael Wayne Goodman <goodmami at uw.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for explaining, Guy. I misunderstood in your previous email:
>>> simply removing loc_nonsp does not help me resolve whether _in_p_temp or
>>> _hire_v_1 is the representative EP, but it certainly helps if the latter is
>>> the ARG1 of the former. Unfortunately no output of the ERG (niether 1214
>>> nor trunk) gives such an MRS. I'm hoping Dan or Emily (when they have a
>>> chance to catch up with this thread) can shed some light onto whether the
>>> analysis we have is correct or if the (more intuitive) one you propose is
>>> what we should get.
>>>
>>> Note that the cleft form is similar to "It was a day in January that
>>> Browne was hired", which has a stronger case for the loc_nonsp. But this
>>> might help explain why it's used in the original sentence (without "a
>>> day"), e.g., in case the "in" is hidden under that "was" and for technical
>>> reasons cannot be linked up with "hired".
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 7:59 AM, Guy Emerson <gete2 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Browne was hired in January"
>>>> - in the 1214 ERG, the ARG1 of _in_p_temp is the ARG0 of _hire_v_1.
>>>> - we can therefore choose _hire_v_1 as the representative EP
>>>>
>>>> "it was in January that Browne was hired"
>>>> - we need to add something to mark the cleft construction (presumably
>>>> now in ICONS)
>>>> - otherwise, nothing else needs to change in the semantics
>>>> - if nothing else changes, we can choose _hire_v_1 as the
>>>> representative EP, for the same reason as above
>>>> - in the 1214 ERG, there is a loc_nonsp that mediates between
>>>> _in_p_temp and _hire_v_1, but I think this is a bug
>>>>
>>>> As explained in that wiki page, loc_nonsp is used for implicit
>>>> locatives, but there's nothing implicit here, because we have an explicit
>>>> "in".  For example, compare:
>>>> "Browne was hired"
>>>> "it was Browne that was hired"
>>>> - in the 1214 ERG, the only difference between the two is the
>>>> _be_v_itcleft (which presumably is going to move to ICONS), and I think
>>>> this is correct
>>>> - whatever difference we have here should also be the only difference
>>>> between "Browne was hired in January" and "it was in January that Browne
>>>> was hired"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Am 25.07.2018 20:19 schrieb "Michael Wayne Goodman" <goodmami at uw.edu>:
>>>>
>>>> Forgot to CC the list...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 10:53 AM, Michael Wayne Goodman <
>>>> goodmami at uw.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 2:21 AM, Guy Emerson <gete2 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> For "It was in January that Browne was hired", is the MRS correct?  I
>>>>>> was surprised to see both _in_p_temp and loc_nonsp mediating between
>>>>>> mofy(Jan) and _hire_v_1.  Is there a reason to have both?  It would seem
>>>>>> more consistent to have just _in_p_temp, which takes the intrinsic variable
>>>>>> of _hire_v_1 as its ARG1.  This would match the MRS for "Brown was hired in
>>>>>> January".  Adding the it-cleft seems to have the side effect of adding
>>>>>> loc_nonsp.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, good point (this is relevant, for those following along:
>>>>> http://moin.delph-in.net/ErgSemantics/ImplicitLocatives). I think
>>>>> this version of the ERG is simply unable to link up the ARG1 of _in_p_temp
>>>>> to the index of _hire_v_1. Notice that the ARG1 of _in_p_temp is
>>>>> underspecified, so the loc_nonsp is required, then, to establish the
>>>>> relationship. Other analyses that do not have loc_nonsp don't actually get
>>>>> us a _in_p_temp that hooks up with _hire_v_1; rather, the "in January" is
>>>>> modifying the "was" (i.e., not an it-cleft analysis). Also, if I
>>>>> remove the loc_nonsp and change the ARG1 of _in_p_temp to select the ARG0
>>>>> of _hire_v_1, the MRS no longer generates. I'm not sure if the
>>>>> original selected analysis is an underspecification of some valid ambiguity
>>>>> or a technical compromise to deal with limitations in our rules of
>>>>> composition.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> The reason this is relevant is that, without the loc_nonsp, there
>>>>>> would be no need to look at TENSE.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not following here. What would change in the graph to make
>>>>> _hire_v_1 stand out as the representative EP?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> 2018-07-24 23:18 GMT+01:00 Michael Wayne Goodman <goodmami at uw.edu>:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Answering one of my own questions; see below...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:49 PM, Michael Wayne Goodman <
>>>>>>> goodmami at uw.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If anyone has read this far, I have a question: both the ERG and
>>>>>>>> Jacy have a [ TENSE untensed ] property, but is this a more widespread
>>>>>>>> convention? I'm reluctant to rely on it because I want to avoid
>>>>>>>> parametrizing my semantic conversion functions for grammar-specific values.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I surveyed some grammars, and noted that the following use [ TENSE
>>>>>>> untensed ]: ERG, Jacy, gg, SRG
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The following do not: NorSource, Semitic Grammar (HeGram), BURGER,
>>>>>>> HaG, KRG, INDRA, Zhong
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Also note:
>>>>>>> * HaG has [ TAM untensed ] exported in the VPM, but not [ TENSE
>>>>>>> untensed ]
>>>>>>> * Zhong does not use the TENSE property at all
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So I think it's safe to say that it's *not* a widespread convention
>>>>>>> among medium-sized or larger grammars.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One alternative to this specific tense property is the pos field of
>>>>>>> predicates, which is part of MRS and not grammar-defined. The idea is that
>>>>>>> predicates of certain pos values are more likely to modify others, such as
>>>>>>> verbs modifying nouns ("sleeping dog"), adpositionals modifying verbs ("ran
>>>>>>> quickly", "ran in the park"), degree modifiers on adpositionals ("ran very
>>>>>>> quickly", "the cat was very much in the bag"), etc. Abstract predicates
>>>>>>> (which do not formally have a pos) would come last, I suppose. But I'm not
>>>>>>> certain that such a gradation is not language-specific, and there are
>>>>>>> probably counter-examples.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Emily M. Bender
>> Professor, Department of Linguistics
>> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>>
>
>
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