<div dir="ltr">Just a quick and belatedly reply to say that from where I sit your analysis<div>of the situation makes a lot of sense.</div><div><br></div><div>Emily</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 2:12 AM, Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cam.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Thanks! and thanks all! I've come to a view on this which I think
is consistent with what everyone has been saying.<br>
<br>
First of all, note that in the MRS syntax, we do not distinguish
between terminated and non-terminated lists/bags. If we think about
it from the perspective of typed feature structures, it is clear
that there is a distinction - for instance a type `list' is the most
general type of list, and the type `e-list' (empty list) is usually
a maximally specific type. Coming back to the notation I used in
an earlier message, there is a distinction between { ... }
(analogous to list in a TFS) and {} (cf e-list). <br>
<br>
Now, there are two possible interpretations of ICONS as it arises
from a DELPH-IN grammar (i.e., as it is output after parsing):<br>
1. information structure<br>
2. information structure as it arises from morphosyntax<br>
<br>
In the `normal' sentences of the `Kim chased the dog' type, no
information structure elements arise from morphosyntax. We can,
however, expect that various contexts (e.g., discourse) give rise to
information structure in association with such a sentence. Hence,
with respect to interpretation 1, ICONS is not strictly empty but
underspecified (and similarly a one element ICONS may be
underspecified with respect to a two-element ICONS and so on). I
think this is consistent with what Sanghoun and Emily are saying.
Under this interpretation, an MRS with no specification of ICONS
should indeed generate all the variants sentences we've been
discussing. And so on.<br>
<br>
However, with respect to interpretation 2, the ICONS emerging from
the parse of such a sentence is terminated. Once we've finished
parsing, we're guaranteeing no more ICONS elements will arise from
morphosyntax, whatever someone does in discourse. Under this
interpretation, if I say I want to generate a sentence with an empty
ICONS, I mean I want to generate a sentence with no ICONS
contribution from morphosyntax. This is also a legitimate use of
the realiser, considered as a stand-alone module.<br>
<br>
Since ICONS is something which I have always thought of as on the
boundary of morphosyntax and discourse, I want to be able to enrich
ICONS emerging from parsing with discourse processing, so
interpretation 1 makes complete sense. However, I believe it is
also perfectly legitimate to be able to divide the world into what
the grammar can be expected to do and what it can't, and that is
consistent with interpretation 2.<br>
<br>
As a hypothetical move, consider an additional classification of
ICONS elements according to whether or not they arise from
morphosyntax. Then we can see that a single ICONS value could
encompass both interpretations. i.e., what would arise from a parse
would be a terminated list of morphosyntactic-ICONS elements but the
ICONS as a whole could be non-terminated.<br>
<br>
I think there may be reasons to be able to distinguish ICONS
elements according to whether they are intended as grammar-derived
or not, though I do see this might look messy. But anyway, I want
to first check that everyone agrees with this analysis of the
situation before trying to work out what we might do about it in
terms of notation. <br>
<br>
Incidentally - re Dan's message - my overly brief comment about
Sanghoun's use of DMRS earlier was intended to point out that if
DMRS had the necessary links for demonstrating ICONS, then in
principle this was something we know how to extract. But right now,
I'm not clear whether or not we do need all the underspecified
elements, and that's something I would like Dan to comment on before
we go further.<br>
<br>
All best,<br>
<br>
Ann<div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
<div>On 06/02/2016 17:59, Sanghoun Song
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">My apologies for my really late reply!<br>
<br>
I am not sure whether I fully understand your discussion, but I
would like to leave several my ideas on using ICONS for
generation. <br>
<br>
First, in my analysis (final version), only expressions that
contribute to information structure introduce an ICONS element
into the list. For example, the following unmarked sentence (a
below) has no ICONS element (i.e. empty ICONS). <br>
<br>
a. plain: Kim chases the dog.<br>
b. passivization: The dog is chased by Kim.<br>
c. fronting: The dog Kim chases.<br>
d. clefting: It is the dog that Kim chases.<br>
<br>
Using the type hierarchy for information structure in my
thesis, I can say the followings<br>
<br>
(i) The subject Kim and the object the dog in a plain active
sentence (a) are in situ. They may or may not be focused
depending on which constituent bears a specific accent, but in
the sentence-based processing their information structure values
had better remain underspecified for flexible representation.<br>
<br>
(ii) The promoted argument the dog in the passive sentence (b)
is evaluated as conveying focus-or-topic, while the demoted
argument Kim is associated with non-topic. <br>
<br>
(iii) In (c), the fronted object the dog is assumed to be
assigned focus-or-topic in that the sentence conveys a meaning
of either "As for the dog, Kim chases it". or (d), while the
subject in situ is evaluated as containing neither topic nor
focus (i.e. background). (Background may not be implemented in
the ERG, I think.)<br>
<br>
(iv) The focused NP in (d) carries focus, and the subject in the
cleft clause Kim is also associated with bg. <br>
<br>
Thus, we can create a focus specification hierarchy amongst
(a-d) as [clefting > fronting > passivization > plain].<br>
<br>
What I want to say is that a set of sentences which share some
properties may have subtle shades of meaning depending on how
focus is assigned to the sentences. Paraphrasing is made only in
the direction from the right to the left of [clefting >
fronting > passivization > plain], because paraphrasing in
the opposite direction necessarily causes loss of information.
For example, a plain sentence such as (a) can be paraphrased
into a cleft construction such as (d), but not vice versa.<br>
<br>
In a nutshell, a more specific sentence might not better to be
paraphrased into a less specific sentence in terms of
information structure. <br>
<br>
Second, I provided many dependency graphs in my thesis. The main
reason was that nobody outside of the DELPH-IN can fully
understands the complex co-indexation in ICONS/MRS. At that
time, I didn't work on DMRS with respect to ICONS. If there is a
way to represent ICONS in DMRS (direct from TFS or via MRS), I
am interested in the formalism. <br>
<br>
<br>
Sanghoun<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 1:26 AM, Ann
Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cam.ac.uk</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Briefly (more this
evening maybe) - I don't see a particular problem with
filling in the ICONS since what you describe are
relationships that are overt in the *MRS anyway, aren't
they? I thought, in fact, that these are pretty clear
from the DMRS graph - which is why Sanghoun uses it to
describe what's going on. <br>
<br>
I believe we can build the DMRS graph direct from the TFS,
incidentally - don't need to go via MRS ...<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Ann
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
<div>On 05/02/2016 23:40, Dan Flickinger wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="font-size:12pt;color:#000000;background-color:#ffffff;font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
<p>As I understand the Soon and Bender account, an
MRS for a sentence should include in the ICONS
list at least one element for each individual
(eventuality or instance) that is introduced.
In the ERG this would mean that the value of
each ARG0 should appear in at least one ICONS
entry, where most of these would be of the
maximally underspecified type `info-str', but
possibly specialized because of syntactic
structure or stress/accent or maybe even
discourse structure.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>I see the virtue of having these overt ICONS
elements even when of type `info-str', to enable
the fine-grained control that Stephan notes that
we want for generation, and also to minimize the
differences between the ERG and grammars being
built from the Matrix which embody Sanghoun's
careful work.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>If the grammarian is to get away with not
explicitly introducing each of these ICONS
elements in the lexical entries, as Sanghoun
does in the Matrix, then it would have to be
possible to predict and perhaps mechanically add
the missing ones after composition was
completed. I used to hope that this would be
possible, but now I'm doubtful, leading me to
think that there is no good alternative to the
complication (maybe I should more kindly use the
term `enrichment') of the grammar with the overt
introduction of these guys everywhere. Here's
my reasoning:</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>I assume that what we'll want in an MRS for an
ordinary sentence is an ICONS list that has
exactly one entry for each pair of an individual
`i' and the eventuality which is the ARG0 of
each predication in which `i' appears as an
argument. Thus for `the cat persuaded the dog
to bark' the ICONS list should have four
elements: one for cat/persuade, one for
dog/persuade, one for bark/persuade, and one for
dog/bark. Now if I wanted to have the grammar
continue to only insert ICONS elements during
composition for the non-vanilla info-str
phenomena, and fill in the rest afterward, I
would have to know not only the arity of each
eventuality-predication, but which of its
arguments was realized in the sentence, and even
worse, which of the realized syntactic arguments
corresponded to semantic arguments (so for
example not the direct object of `believe').
Maybe I give up too soon here, but this does not
seem doable just operating on the MRS resulting
from composition, even with access to the SEM-I.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>So if the necessary ICONS elements have to be
introduced overtly by the lexicon/grammar during
composition, then I would still like to explore
a middle ground that does not result in the full
set of ICONS elements Soon and Bender propose
for a sentence. That is, I wondered whether we
could make do with adding to the ERG the
necessary introduction of just those ICONS
elements that would enable us to draw the
distinctions between `unmarked', 'topic', and
'focus' that we were used to exploiting in the
days of messages. But since pretty much any
preposition's or adjective's or verb's
complement can be extracted, and any verb's
subject can be extracted, and most verbs' direct
and indirect objects can be passivized, I think
we'll still end up with an ICONS entry for each
eventuality/argument pair for every
predication-introducing verb, adjective, and
preposition in a sentence, and maybe also for
some nouns as in "who is that picture of?".
This still lets us exclude ICONS elements
involving adverbs and maybe also the arguments
of conjunctions, subordinators, modals. If we
went this route, I think it would be possible to
make modest additions to certain of the
constructions, and not have to meddle with
lexical types, to get these ICONS elements into
the MRS during composition.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Such a partial approach does not have the
purity of Soon and Bender's account, but might
be more practical, at least as a first step, for
the ERG. It would at least enable what I think
is a more consistent interpretation of the ICONS
elements for generation, and should give us the
fine-grained control I agree that we want. Thus
to get the generator to produce all variants
from an MRS produced by parsing a simple
declarative, one would have to remove the
info-str ICONS element whose presence excludes
the specialization to focus or topic because of
our friend Skolem.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Counsel?</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> Dan<br>
</p>
<br>
<div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%">
<div dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000" face="Calibri, sans-serif"><b>From:</b>
<a href="mailto:developers-bounces@emmtee.net" target="_blank">developers-bounces@emmtee.net</a>
<a href="mailto:developers-bounces@emmtee.net" target="_blank"><developers-bounces@emmtee.net></a>
on behalf of Ann Copestake <a href="mailto:aac10@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:aac10@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank"><aac10@cam.ac.uk></a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, February 5, 2016 1:43
PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Emily M. Bender; Stephan Oepen<br>
<b>Cc:</b> developers; Ann Copestake<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [developers] ICONS and
generation</font>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div>Thanks!<br>
<br>
<div>On 05/02/2016 21:30, Emily M. Bender
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Not sure if this answers the
question, but a couple of comments:
<div><br>
</div>
<div>(a) I do think that written English
is largely underspecified for
information structure.</div>
<div>It's part of what makes good writing
good that the information structure is
made apparent</div>
<div>somehow.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
OK. should I understand you as saying that
composition (as in, what we do in the
grammars) leaves it mostly underspecified, but
that discourse level factors make it
apparent? or that it really is
underspecified?<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>(b) I think the "I want only the
unmarked form back" case might be
handled by either</div>
<div>a setting which says "no ICONS beyond
what as in the input" (i.e. your ICONS {
}) or</div>
<div>a pre-processing/generation fix-up
rule that takes ICONS { ... } and
outputs something</div>
<div>that would be incompatible with
anything but the unmarked form. Or
maybe the</div>
<div>subsumption check goes the wrong way
for this one?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Yes, I think the ICONS {} might be a possible
way of thinking about it. I should make it
clear - I don't think there's a problem with
constructing an implementation that produces
the `right' behaviour but I would much prefer
that the behaviour is specifiable cleanly in
the formalism rather than as another parameter
to the generator or whatever.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>I hope Sanghoun has something to add
here!</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Emily</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 5,
2016 at 1:01 PM, Stephan Oepen <span dir="ltr"> <<a href="mailto:oe@ifi.uio.no" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:oe@ifi.uio.no" target="_blank">oe@ifi.uio.no</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> colleagues,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>my ideal would be a set-up where
the provider of generator inputs has
three options: (a) request
topicalization (or similar), (b)
disallow it, or (c) underspecify and
get both variants.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>we used to have that level of
control (and flexibility) in the
LOGON days where there were still
messages: in the message EPs,
there were two optional ‘pseudo’
roles (TPC and PSV) <span></span>to
control topicalization or
passivization of a specific
instance variable. effectively,
when present, these established a
binary relation between the clause
and one of its
nominal constituents. if i recall
correctly, blocking topicalization
was accomplished by putting an
otherwise unbound ‘anti’-variable
into the TPC or PSV roles.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>could one imagine something
similar in the ICONS realm, and if
so, which form would it have to
take?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>best wishes, oe</div>
<div>
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
On Friday, February 5, 2016,
Woodley Packard <<a href="mailto:sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org" target="_blank">sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> I
can confirm that under ACE,
behavior is what you
indicate, i.e. generating
from parsing the topicalized
feline-canine-playtime I get
just the topicalized variant
out, but when generating
from parsing the ordinary
word order I get all 5
variants out.<br>
<br>
I believe this was designed
to imitate the long-standing
condition that the MRS of
generation results must be
subsumed by the input MRS.
The observed behavior seems
to me to be the correct
interpretation of the
subsumption relation with
ICONS involved. Note that
an MRS with an extra
intersective modifier would
also be subsumed, for
example, but such MRS are
never actually generated
since those modifier lexical
entries never make it into
the chart.<br>
<br>
It’s certainly reasonable to
ask whether (this notion of)
subsumption is really the
right test. I’ve met lots
of folks who prefer to turn
that subsumption test off
entirely. I guess it’s also
possible that the
subsumption test is right
for the RELS portion of the
MRS but not for the ICONS,
though that seems a bit odd
to consider. However, given
that we don’t have many
ideas about
truth-conditional
implications of ICONS, maybe
not so odd.<br>
<br>
I don’t really have much to
offer in terms of opinions
about what the right
behavior should be. I
(believe I) just implemented
what others asked for a
couple years ago :-)<br>
<br>
-Woodley<br>
<br>
> On Feb 5, 2016, at 8:03
AM, Ann Copestake <<a></a><a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>>
wrote:<br>
><br>
> I'm part way through
getting ICONS support
working in Lisp, testing on
the version of the ERG
available as trunk. I have a
question about generation.
If I implemented the
behaviour described in <a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs" target="_blank">http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs</a>
there doesn't seem to be a
way of specifying that I
want a `normal' ordering for
English.<br>
><br>
> e.g., if I take the MRS
resulting from<br>
><br>
> that dog, the cat
chased.<br>
><br>
> without ICONS check,
there are 5 realizations,
including the `null ICONS'
case `The cat chased that
dog.' With an exact ICONS
check, I can select
realizations with the same
ICONS (modulo order of ICONS
elements, of course, in the
case where there's more than
one element). But with the
<a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs" target="_blank"> </a><a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs" target="_blank">http://moin.delph-in.net/IconsSpecs</a>
behaviour, there's no way of
specifying I want a `normal'
order - if I don't give an
ICONS, I will always get the
5 realisations. In fact, as
I understand it, I can
always end up with more
icons in the realisation
than in the input, as long
as I can match the ones in
the input.<br>
><br>
> So:<br>
> - is the IConsSpec
behaviour what is desired
for the ERG (e.g., because
one can rely on the
realisation ranking to
prefer the most `normal'
order)?<br>
> - or does the ERG
behave differently from
Emily and Sanghoun's
grammars, such that
different generator
behaviour is desirable? and
if so, could we change
things so we don't need
different behaviours<br>
><br>
> Ann<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Emily M. Bender<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank"> </a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
<div>
<div>=================================</div>
<div>Sanghoun Song</div>
<div>Assistant Professor</div>
<div>Dept. of English Language and Literature</div>
<div>Incheon National University</div>
<div><a href="http://corpus.mireene.com" target="_blank">http://corpus.mireene.com</a></div>
<div>phone: +82-32-835-8129 (office)</div>
<div>=================================</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Emily M. Bender<br>Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br></div></div>
</div>