[matrix] Problem regarding Malayalam implementation

[Emily M. Bender]

Dear Anila,

Do the uninflected nouns only show up in coordination
constructions, or can they show up elsewhere, too?

There should be constraints on the feature INFLECTED
high in the phrase structure rule hierarchy that prevent
uninflected forms from appearing as daughters to
syntax rules, provided the matching/contrasting constraints
are on lexical types and any non-final lexical rules.

The first thing to check would be whether your case
rules are specified to be obligatory.

Emily

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 3:10 AM, A Varghese <vt.anila at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Prof Bender,
>
> My question is: How do I ensure that only fully inflected nouns (and
> not uninflected noun lexemes) get coordinated?
>
> Here's the problem in brief..
>
> The coordination rule allows uninflected noun lexemes to be
> coordinated (in subject/object position), often with multiple parses
> for these ungrammatical constructions. In the lexicon, the noun
> lexemes are specified only for person and gender; case and number are
> specified as noun inflections. (I use a hyphen as the "null affix" for
> singular nominative nouns.)
>
> I modified the coordination rules in malayalam.tdl to ensure that the
> CASE values of the mother node and the daughter are identical (in
> coordinate constructions). This eliminated the problem of multiple
> parses that were showing up earlier even for the grammatical sentences
> involving coordination. (The sentences with coordinated uninflected
> noun lexemes were being parsed even before the rules were changed.)
>
> The changes that were made to the rules won't appear in the choices
> file, so I'm not sending it. I've included some data below (in case
> you'd like to see the patterns that I'm referring to).
>
>
> Thanks once again!
>
> Regards,
>
> Anila
>
>
>
>
> kaLLan (thief): uninflected 3p, masc lexeme
> kaLLan-  : (3p, masc) + sing + nom
> kaLLan-maar: + pl + nom
> kaLLan-e : + sing + acc
> kaLLan-maar-e  : + pl + acc
>
> vaidyan (doctor)
>
> -umm : coordinating conjunction.
>
>
> Hari- kaLLan-e nookk-um  (Hari-nom thief-acc look-fut) is grammatical,
> and receives 1 parse.
>
> *Hari- kaLLan- nookk-um  (Hari-nom thief-nom look-fut) is
> ungrammatical, and is not parsed.
>
> *Hari- kaLLan nookk-um (Hari-nom thief-uninflected look-fut) is
> ungrammatical, and is not parsed.
>
> Hari- kaLLan-e-umm vaidyan-e-umm nookk-um (Hari-nom thief-acc-and
> doctor-acc-and look-fut) is grammatical; 1 parse.
>
> *Hari- kaLLan-umm vaidyan-umm nookk-um (Hari-nom thief-uninflected-and
> doctor-uninflected-and look-fut) is ungrammatical, but receives 1
> parse. (Some such constructions receive multiple parses.)
>
>
>
>
>
> On 9/14/10, Emily M. Bender <ebender at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> Dear Anila,
>>
>> I hope to be able to help you, but don't have time to read long
>> documents.  Please distill your question down to the most pointed
>> query you can create (short and sweet).  Please send the query
>> in the body of the email.  I typically don't have time to look at grammars,
>> so no need to send them.  (If you are working directly with the
>> customization
>> system, it can be useful to have the choices file.)
>>
>> Emily
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 12:36 PM, A Varghese <vt.anila at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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>>>
>>> Dear Prof Bender,
>>>
>>> I've not been able to resolve the problem related to coordination on
>>> my own, and I have to ask you for help.
>>>
>>> The details regarding the problem are in the attached MS Word
>>> document. I'm also sending you the entire Malayalam grammar (the
>>> choices file does not contain the changes I've made to the
>>> Malayalam.tdl file).
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance!
>>>
>>> (I hope I'm not bothering you with something really really trivial
>>> that I should have spotted on my own..)
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Anila
>>>
>>
>