[erg] semantics of "so" as in "do so"
Emily M. Bender
ebender at uw.edu
Fri Oct 25 01:31:00 CEST 2013
Dear Paul,
Why doesn't the ARG0 of the do_so relation suffice for the
variable/argument that you are looking for?
Emily
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Paul Haley <paul at haleyai.com> wrote:
> Thanks Dan.
>
> No problem agreeing with the first clause of your second sentence, but I
> don't think the second clause involves coercion as much as proper logical
> semantic structure. I'm not suggesting anything more than a semantic
> argument is missing.
>
> I'm not expecting sentence-oriented processing to do anything at all in
> terms of anaphora resolution. That's how it works now (i.e., without a
> resolution mechanism, which is just fine, imo), but the variable/argument
> seems critical in any case. I don't see how to approach it otherwise.
> Inter- vs. intra-sentential resolution doesn't seem pertinent here.
>
> I didn't know we had ICONSs! Sounds interesting... and potentially
> combinatoric. Should be fun. I'm not sure additional types of constraints
> for verbal anaphora are needed (i.e., we've lived long enough without
> ICONSs) but if there is a linguistic distinction between such reference to
> an instance versus a type of event, that would be appropriate too. Without
> them, the semantics is just more underspecified, which is fine as long as
> it covers the intended meaning. It seems clear that the representation we
> have now does not in the cases at issue here.
>
>
>
>
> On 10/22/2013 1:57 PM, Dan Flickinger wrote:
>
>> Hi Paul -
>>
>> I agree that we don't want to identify the two events as the only
>> possible interpretation. But we have to allow anaphora resolution to
>> perform its magic quite generally, and it is I think misguided to try to
>> coerce the sentence-level semantic composition to do too much. If the text
>> to be parsed were two separate sentences, I hope you would agree that our
>> sentence-oriented processing could not be expected to constrain the elided
>> event via unification:
>> "Kim bought a car. Mary did so, too."
>> So we have to be content in the grammar to set the stage for a currently
>> unimplemented resolution engine separate from the current grammar that will
>> bind these anaphoric elements both sentence-internally and across
>> discourse. This underspecification is very much the same as the approach
>> we take to ordinary pronoun binding, though we do expect to enrich the
>> grammar's MRSs for sentence with pronouns a little more, now that we have a
>> place to assert structurally derived constraints on equality and inequality
>> of individuals, as ICONSs. But I don't know of analogous structural
>> constraints (such as c-command) for verbal anaphora, and in any case these
>> would again be only sentence-internal.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Paul Haley" <paul at haleyai.com>
>> To: "Emily M. Bender" <ebender at uw.edu>, "erg" <erg at delph-in.net>
>> Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 7:39:03 AM
>> Subject: Re: [erg] semantics of "so" as in "do so"
>>
>> What logical semantics is appropriate for "kim left and sandy did so,
>> too"?
>>
>> They may have left together or at different times or independently at
>> the same time.
>>
>> In theory, all of these logical/semantic interpretations should be
>> consistent with the resulting underspecified semantics.
>>
>> The MRS below corresponds, roughly to:
>>
>> exists(e10,e14,x6,x17){leave(**e10,x6),named(x6,Kim),do_so(**
>> e14,x17),named(x17,Sandy)}
>>
>> If e14 co-references e10, this implies there is one leaving event
>> "performed by" both Kim and Sandy, which may or may not be the
>> appropriate logical interpretation.
>>
>> If not, how is e14 to understood as a leaving?
>>
>> One resolution of this would be to have an argument, such as follows:
>>
>> exists(e10,e14,x6,x17){leave(**e10,x6),named(x6,Kim),do(e14,**
>> e10,x17),named(x17,Sandy)}
>>
>> This representation would allow either semantics to result from further
>> (logical) disambiguation.
>>
>> I submit that the MRS resulting now is insufficient to represent the
>> underspecified semantics.
>>
>> Alternatively, I suppose, one could introduce an underspecified form of
>> co-reference in which e14 references e10 other than as logically
>> equivalent, but that raises issues not previously addressed (in any
>> literature that I have seen) with regard to the relationship between
>> underspecified representation and logical axioms.
>>
>>
>> On 10/15/2013 11:29 AM, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>>
>>> [Keeping this on-list]
>>>
>>> Hi Paul,
>>>
>>> The analysis in the ERG is that do+so is a pro-verb, the whole thing
>>> stands in for the event. The point of my examples was that that event
>>> might have any number of participants, and so looking for an ARG2
>>> specifically seems misguided.
>>>
>>> Emily
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 2:56 AM, Paul Haley <paul at haleyai.com
>>> <mailto:paul at haleyai.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> But in the MRS there is nothing that relates the doing to the
>>> leaving or betting!? That's the problem. The semantics is wrong.
>>>
>>> Worse, "it" is frequently interchangeable with "so" in such
>>> constructions, as shown below (as in the case of my first example
>>> further below). The pronoun refers to the event, of course. That
>>> reference is missing in the semantics for "so".
>>>
>>> Seems to me that "so" in this construction is an 'e' pronoun
>>> (where "it" is a 'x' pronoun below, which could also be a bug, imo.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/10/2013 7:28 PM, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>>>
>>>> But "so" in "do so" doesn't actually stand in for the ARG2:
>>>>
>>>> Kim left, and Sandy did so too.
>>>> Kim bet Pat $500 that the Giants would win, and Sandy did so too.
>>>>
>>>> Emily
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 5:42 AM, Paul Haley <paul at haleyai.com
>>>> <mailto:paul at haleyai.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Apologies for a couple of typos below, and one clarification.
>>>>
>>>> It's not really important whether "so" is treated as a
>>>> pronoun or do-so as a proto-verb but by "direct object" I
>>>> meant an ARG2 in the predication for do_v_so corresponding to
>>>> whatever "so" references or introduces or substitutes for.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10/9/2013 8:34 AM, Paul Haley wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Emily!
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, but I'm suggest that "pro-" is "pronomial" not
>>>>> "proto"!-) Generally, don't we want elipsis to be reflected
>>>>> in the semantics? That is, in the "u" and "i" type
>>>>> variables in the MRS (or unresolved pronouns)?
>>>>>
>>>>> Shouldn't the MRS for for that doing have an argument to be
>>>>> resolved against the situational argument for the moving?
>>>>> That argument would be "so" treated as a pronoun, which
>>>>> seems the proper semantics since the "so"
>>>>> actually/semantically references some event/situation, no?
>>>>> That is, if pronomial "so" was the direct object of "do"
>>>>> here, I think all would be well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Paul
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/8/2013 9:14 PM, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hello Paul,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It looks like "do so" is being treated as a "pro-verb", and
>>>>>> that seems appropriate to me. Proverbs (like ellipsis)
>>>>>> take their interpretation from context. So this says
>>>>>> basically that
>>>>>> x6 is doing something, but what that something is needs to
>>>>>> be resolved.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Emily
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Paul Haley
>>>>>> <paul at haleyai.com <mailto:paul at haleyai.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the following, it seems that "so" is more of a
>>>>>> pronoun than a preposition (at least it seems "so" to
>>>>>> me!).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would appreciate your thoughts on getting reasonable
>>>>>> logic from the ERG for this sentence, which is quite
>>>>>> interesting when you also consider quantification...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thank you and best regards,
>>>>>> Paul
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Emily M. Bender
>>>>>> Associate Professor
>>>>>> Department of Linguistics
>>>>>> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Emily M. Bender
>>>> Associate Professor
>>>> Department of Linguistics
>>>> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Emily M. Bender
>>> Associate Professor
>>> Department of Linguistics
>>> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
>>>
>>
>
--
Emily M. Bender
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
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