[developers] More SEM-I enhancements

[goodman.m.w at gmail.com]

I have added one more proposal to http://moin.delph-in.net/SemiRfc#Proposals

This one is about encoding the hierarchies of the relations for HCONS
and ICONS. Maybe like this example for the ERG:

    constraints:

      hcons.
      qeq < hcons.

      icons.
      info-str < icons.
      non-topic < info-str.
      non-focus < info-str.
      focus < non-topic.
      topic < non-focus.


On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:26 PM goodman.m.w at gmail.com
<goodman.m.w at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi developers,
>
> The 2016 enhancement to the semantic interface (SEM-I) was a big improvement over the previous iteration, and I have made use of it for my MT dissertation work and for Indexed-MRS support in PyDelphin. Thanks again for all the efforts put into it.
>
> I would like to discuss further enhancements to the SEM-I. I have outlined these proposals here: http://moin.delph-in.net/SemiRfc#Proposals
>
> (1)--(4) are proposals that were raised previously. Of these, I would most like to see (3) resolved. Specifically, I would like to stop the dual-use of 'i' variables as unexpressed 'x' variables as well as the supertype of 'e' and 'x'. I think the following illustrates this:
>
>     _blue_a_1 : ARG0 i, ARG1 i.
>
> The first 'i' is underspecified ("blue [e] car" vs "blue [x] is a color") and the second 'i' is optionally unexpressed. Relatedly, it was suggested that the use of square brackets for optionality in the current SEM-I (e.g., "ARG0 i, [ ARG1 i ]") should be ignored.
>
> (5) is a new proposal I added as I am thinking about semantic composition. You could think of this as moving some information from the MRS fingerprints of the Erg Semantics wikis into the SEM-I. As an example, consider the ERG's SEM-I entries for _try_v_1 (comments added):
>
>     _try_v_1 : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i.     ; Kim tried an apple.
>     _try_v_1 : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 h.    ; Kim tried to sleep.
>
> Could we change the latter to capture the subgraph constraints of "try"'s subject-control? For instance:
>
>     _try_v_1 : ARG0 e, ARG1 i:INDEX #1, ARG2 h:XARG #1.
>
> That is, the XARG of the fragment at _try_v_1's ARG2 is linked up with the INDEX of its ARG1 (certainly there are better ways of encoding this; its just for illustration). For comparison, this is what the ErgSemantics wiki has:
>
>     [ARG0 e1, ARG1+ x2, ARG1+ h3]
>     h4:[ARG0 e5, ARG1+ x2]
>     { h3 =q h4 }
>
> --
> -Michael Wayne Goodman



-- 
-Michael Wayne Goodman