[matrix] possessive markers in Bangla language

[Altaf Mahmud]

Hello,

Thank you matrix community for such a scope to provide online suggestions.
As I am working with Bangla language and have an aim to build a HPSG-based
treebank on it, so far I have been able to build a basic foundation, at
which syntactical structures of simple Bangla sentences can be successfully
included using LKB treebanking tool. Thanks especially to Emily Bender,
without her unwavering help and suggestions, it would never be possible for
me to have a good start while don't have any little background on
computational linguistics. Now I am trying for further syntactical and
morphological analysis to extend the range to include maximum number of
acceptable Bangla sentences.

However, in case of possessive marker, non-configurational Bangla language
has different interpretation of a sentence when the word order is changed.
For example: nafider boi

                                              "Nafid's book"

                                              (Nafid's book)


but,

                                                boi nafider

                                                "book Nafid's"

                                                (Book is own by Nafid)

The word 'nafider' can have different syntactical category. First one can be
a determiner, and second one is a possessive proper noun. Since, possessives
are treated as determiner and build Determiner Phrases (DP), do I need to
have two different lexical rules, such as one for determiner and other one
is for possessive noun, while there is a single inflection (nafid+er =
nafider)? And do I have to implement the rules "head-change-only" to make a
noun to be a determiner after been inflected by possessive marker 'er'?
Because 'nafid' is a proper noun and 'nafid+er' will be a determiner and
would be head of this DP.

Bangla also has possessive marker 'er'. It is sometimes used explicitly
without morphologically inflect nominal types but doesn't change the
semantic category  ("nafider boi" and "nafid er boi" have the same semantic
interpretation). Should it be considered as possessive marker  's  in
English and the head of the DP?

Thanks a lot!


-Altaf
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