• No results found

Lexicon Grammar and the Syntactic Analysis of French

N/A
N/A
Protected

Academic year: 2020

Share "Lexicon Grammar and the Syntactic Analysis of French"

Copied!
8
0
0

Loading.... (view fulltext now)

Full text

(1)

LEXICON-GRAMMAR AND THE SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF FRENCH M a u r i c e Gross

L a b o r e t o i r e d ' A u t o m a t i q u e D o c u m e n t s i r e et L i n g u i s t i q u e U n i v e r s i t y of Paris 7

2 place Jussieu 75251 Paris CEDEX 05 France

ABSTRACT

A lexicon-grammar is constituted ot the elementary sentences of a language. Instead of considering words as basic syntactic units to which grammatical information is attached, we use simple sentences (subject-verb-objects) as dictionary entries, Hence, s full dictionary item is a simple sentence with a description of the c o r r e s p o n d i n g d i s t r i b u t i o n a l and t r a n s f o r m a t i o n a l p r o p e r t i e s ,

The systematic study of French has led to an organization of its l e x i c o n - g r a m m a r based on t h r e e main components:

- the lexicon-grammar of free sentences, that is, of sentences whose verb imposes selactionel restrictions on its subject and complements (e.g. to f a l l , to eat, to watch),

- the lexicon-grammar of frozen or idiomatic expressions (e.g. N takes N i n t o a c c o u n t , N f a i a e a a q u e s t i o n ,

- the lexicon-grammar ot support verbs. These verbs do not have the common selactional restrictions, but more complex dependencies b e t w e e n s u b j e c t and c o m p l e m e n t (e.g. to have, to make in N has an i m p a c t on N, N makes a c e r t a i n i m p r e s s i o n on N)

These three components interact in specific ways. We present the structure of the lexicon-grammar built for French and we discuss its a l g o r i t h m i c i m p l i c a t i o n s for parsing.

The construction of a lexicon-grammar of French has led to an accumulation of linguistic information that should significantly bear on the procedures ot automatic analysis of natural languages. We shall present the structure of a lexicon-grammar built for French <2> and will discuss its a l g o r i t h m i c main implications.

1. V E R B S

The syntactic properties of French verbs have been limited in terms of the size of sentences, that is, by restricting the type of complements to object complements. We considered 3 main types of objects: direct, and with prepositions ~ and de. Verbs have been selected from current dictionaries according to the reproducibility of the syntactic judgments carried out on them by a team of linguists. A set of about 10~000 verbs has thus been studied.

The properties systematically studied for each verb are the s t a n d a r d ones:

1 E . R . A . 247 of the C.N.R.S. afiliated to the Universities Paris 7 and Paris Viii.

2 Publication of the lexicon-grammar is under way. The main segments available are: Boons, Guillet, Lecldre 1976a, 1976b and Gross 1975 for French verbs, Giry-Schneider 1978, A. Meunier 1981, de Ndgroni 1978, f o r n o m i n a l i z a t i o n s ,

- distributional properties, such as human or non human nouns, and their pronominal shapes (definite, relative, interrogative pronouns <3>, clitics), possibility of sentential subjects and complements q u e • ( t h a t S), ai 3 ( w h e t h e r S, if S) or reduced i n f i n i t i v e

f o r m s noted V Comp,

transformational properties, such as passive, extraposition, clit i c i z a t i o n , etc,

/~logether, 500 properties have been checked against the 1~000 verbs <4>.

More precisely, each property can be viewed as a sentence form. Consider for e x a m p l e t h e t r a n s i t i v e s t r u c t u r e

(1) N O V N 1

We are using Z.S. Harris' notation for sentence structure: noun phrases are indexed by numerical subscripts, starting with the subject indexed by 0. We can note the property "human subject" in t h e f o l l o w i n g e q u i v a l e n t ways:

(2) Nhum V N 1 or N O (:: Nhum) V N t

w~ere the symbol :: is used to specify a structure . A passive s t r u c t u r e will be noted

(3) N I be V-ed by N O

A t r a n s f o r m a t i o n is a r e l a t i o n between two s t r u c t u r e s noted "=°':

(1) = (3) c o r r e s p o n d s to t h e Passive r u l e

The syntactic information attached to simple sentences can thus be represented in a uniform way by means ot binary matrix (Table 1). Each row ot the matrix corresponds to a verb, each column to a sentence form. When a verb enters into a sentence form, a " + " sign is placed at the intersection of the corresponding row and column, if not s " - " sagn. The description of the French verbs does not have the shape of a 10,000x500 matrix. Because of its redundancy (cf. note 4 1, the matrix has been broken down into about 50 submatrices whose size is 200x40 on the average. It is such a

system of s u b m a t r i c e s t h a t we call a l e x i c o n - g r a m m a r .

J Actually, t h e shape of i n t e r r o g a t i v e pronouns: qu~ (who), que-quoi (what) has been used to define a formal notion of object.

4 Not all properties are relevant to each of the 10~000 verbs.

(2)

i!tt

I

dt~-,

='eml:~l,¢ - - - = ' e m ~ 4- -+ + 4- 4. - ;'e~lmmmr + - 4 . 4 - + b~km - + ÷ - -- :=pkmr + - - - m f ~

+ . . . .

+ - 4 " 4 -

4 - - - -

+ - + -

+ - - -

+ - + - + - + + @ - - - + - - -

N I

: t z i z I =" I z I z I z I =. }; - 4 " - - - - + - - - + - . . . + - - +!

4= + . . . . + - + - - i 4= + + - @ - + - 4 " - - o==u~ + + - + - + +

4 " + - - + - + + - - 4 - -

e = - - + - - - 4 - I

de - - ÷ - 4 - - - i

4= - ÷ - - - + - + - -

. I > I~.

z : l z ~

-ii

+ ÷

÷

+

- - ] r m ~ + + - + - + -

4. . . . . , ~ =

- e a r ~

2 - + ; ; - -

.++'-*-

+

; - 4 . - @ -

-l|uW dkw==¢ + . . . . + +

I n t r a n s i t i v e V e r b s ( F r o m B o o n s . G u i l i p P . S, G u i l l e t , r ~ l "~ 5 e c l ~ r e 1 9 7 6 a )

Table 1

Although the 3 prepositions " z e r o " , a and d e ere felt and described as the basic ones by traditional grammarians, the descriptions have never received any objective bee,s. The lexicon-grammar we have constructed provides s general picture of the shapes of obleCts tn French. The numerical distr,butlon of oblect patterns is given ,n table 2, according to their number in a s e n t e n c e and to t h e i r p r e p o s l h o n a l shape.

N O V

N O V N 1

N o V & N 1

N O V de N I

N O V N 1 N 2

N O V N 1 ~= N 2

N O V N 1 de N 2

N o V & N 1 & N 2

N O V & N 1 de N 2

N O V de N 1 de N 2

! , 8 0 0

3,700

350

500

150 1,600

1,900

3

10

1

DISTRIBUTION OF OBJECTS

Table 2

AS can be seen on table 2, d i r e c t oblects are the most numerous in the JPXlCOn. Also, we have not observed a single example of verbs with 3 0 b l e c t s a c c o r d i n g to our d e f i n i t i o n .

In 2. and 3. we will make more precise the lexicel nature of the Nl's a t t a c h e d to t h e verbs.

The signs in a row of the matrix provides the syntactic paradigm of a verb, that is, the sentence forms into which the verb may enter. The lexicon-grammar is in computer form. Thus, by sorting the rows of signs, one can construct equivalence classes for verbs: Two verbs are in the same class if their two rows of signs are i d e n t i c a l .

We have obtained the following result: for 10,000 verbs there are about 8,000 classes.

On the average, each class contains 1.25 verb. This statistical result can easily be strengthened. When one studies the classes that contain more than one verb, it is always possible to find syntactic properties not yet in the matrix and that will separate the verbs. Hence, it our description were extended, each v e r b w o u l d h a v e • u n i q u e s y n t a c t i c paradigm.

Thus, the correspondence between a verb morpheme end the set of s e n t e n c e f o r m s w h e r e it may o c c u r is o n e - t o - o n e .

A n o t h e r way of stating this result is by saying that structures depend on individual lexical elements, which leads to the following r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of s t r u c t u r e s :

N O e a t N 1

N o o w e N 1 t o N 2

We still use class symbols to describe noun phrases, but specific verbs must appear in each structure. Class symbols of verbs are no longer used, since they cannot determine the syntactic behsviour of i n d i v i d u a l verbs.

The nature of the lexicon-grammar should then become clearer. An entry of the lexicon-grammar of verbs is • simple sentence form with an explicit v e r b appearing in • row. In general, the decleretive sentence is taken as the representative element of the equivalence class o f s t r u c t u r e s c o r r e s p o n d i n g to t h e " + " s i g n s o f a row.

The lexicon-grammar suggests a new component for parsing algorithms. This component is limited to elementary sentences. It i n c l u d e s t h e f o l l o w i n g steps:

- (A) V e r b s a r e m o r p h o l o g i c a l l y r e c o g n i z e d in t h e i n p u t s t r i n g .

- (B) The dictionary is looked up, that is, the space of the

lexicon-grammar that contains the verbs is searched for the input verbs.

- (C) A verb being located in the matrix, its rows of signs provide a set of sentence forms. These dictionary forms are matched with t h e i n p u t s t r i n g .

This a l g o r i t h m is m c o m p l e t e in s e v e r a l r e s p e c t s :

[image:2.612.97.305.45.247.2] [image:2.612.151.267.370.596.2]
(3)

Looking up t h e m a t r i x d i c t i o n a r y may r e s u l t in t h e f i n d i n g of several e n t r i e s with same form (homographs) or of several uses of a g i v e n entry. We will see t h a t t h e s e situations are quite common. in general, m o r e than one p a t t e r n may match the input, mulbple p a t h s o f a n a l y s i s a r e t h u s g e n e r a t e d a n d r e q u i r e b o o k k e e p i n g .

We will come back to these aspects of syntactic computation. We now present two other components of the lexicon-grammar of simple s e n t e n c e s .

2 I D I O M S

The sentences we just described can be called free sentences, for the lexlcal choices Of nouns in each noun phrase N i has certain d e g r e e s of f r e e d o m . We use this d i s t r i b u t i o n a l f e a t u r e to separate f r e e f r o m f r o z e n sentences, t h a t is, f r o m sentences with an i d i o m a t i c p a r t .

The main difference between free end frozen sentences can be s t a t e d in t e r m s o f t h e d i s t r i b u t i o n s o f n o u n s :

- in a f r o z e n nominal posibon, a change of noun e i t h e r changes t h e m e a n i n g o f t h e e x p r e s s i o n t o an u n r e l a t e d e x p r e s s i o n as in

to lay down one's arms v s to lay down o n e ' s f e e t

or else, t h e v a r i a n t noun does not i n t r o d u c e any d i f f e r e n c e in m e a n i n g ( u p t o s t y l i s t i c d i f f e r e n c e s ) , as m

to p u t someone o f f the ( s c e n t . track, t r a i l )

or else. an idiomatic noun appears at t h e same level a s o r d i n a r y nouns of t h e d i s t r i b u t i o n , and t h e g e n e r a l meaning of t h e ( f r e e ) e x p r e s s i o n is p r e s e r v e d , as in

to miss (an o p p o r t u n i t y , the b u s ]

- in a f r e e position, a change of noun introduces a change of meaning that does not affect the general meaning of t h e whole s e n t e n c e . F o r e x a m p l e , t h e t w o s e n t e n c e s

The boy ate the a p p l e

My s i s t e r ate the pie

that d i f f e r by d i s t r i b u t i o n a l changes in s u b j e c t and o b j e c t positions have same general meaning: changes can be considered to be localized to t h e a r g u m e n t s of t h e p r e d i c a t e or function with c o n s t a n t m e a n i n g EAT.

We have systematically described t h e idiomatic sentences of French, making use of the framework developed for the f r e e sentences. S e n t e n t i a l idioms h a v e b e e n classified according to t h e n a t u r e ( f r o z e n or not) of t h e i r a r g u m e n t s ( s u b j e c t and complements). With r e s p e c t t o t h e s t r u c t u r e s of Table 2, a new c l a s s i f i c a t o r y f e a t u r e has b e e n i n t r o d u c e d : t h e poaslbdity for a f r o z e n noun or noun phrase to accept a free noun complement. Thus, for example, we built two classes CP1 and CPN corresponding to t h e two types of c o n s t r u c t i o n s

N O V Prep C 1 : : Jo p l a y s on words

N O V Prep Nhum'a C 1 =: Jo got on Sob's nerves

The s y m b o l C r e f e r s to a f r o z e n n o m i n a l p o s i t i o n and Prep s t a n d s f o r p r e p o s i t i o n .

A l t h o u g h f r o z e n s t r u c t u r e s t e n d to u n d e r g o less t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s than t h e f r e e forms, we found t h a t e v e r y t r a n s f o r m a t i o n t h a t applies to a f r e e s t r u c t u r e also applies to some f r o z e n s t r u c t u r e s . T h e r e is no q u a l i t a t i v e d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n f r e e and f r o z e n s t r u c t u r e s f r o m the syntactic point of view. As a consequence, we can use the same type of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n : a m a t r i x w h e r e each idiomatic combination of words appears in a row and each sentence shape m a column (of. T a b l e s 3 a n d 4 ) ,

I SiJJElS

= m T',' + - + - + - + - + - ÷ - + - + - + + + - + - ¢ - + - + - + - . _ + - ¢ , ÷ - ÷ -

V(RB($ ADVEnES rIG(S

VENIR DAMS

PARTIR 5UR

DEMONTRER N A N PAR

PARTIR DANS

DIRE N A N ~N

TRICHER ARRETER.$-.

VENIR A

ESPERER N DE

ARRANGER N A

OAGNER N A

VENIR CONTRE

PARTIR A

VENIR PAR

PATER N A

CONSULTER N A

CONSULTER N DANS

CHOISIR N A

DISCUTER

BOIRE N AVANT

SPECULER A

PARLER

TRICHZR DE

FONCER A

AGIR A

CUIRE N A

FONCER A

CUIRE N A

ACCEPTER N EN

RIRE DE

LUTTER JUSOU'A

CUIRE N $UR

FONCES A

CUIP~ N A

VENIR PAR

CUIRE N A

CUIRE N A

DORNIR ~N

CUIRE N SOUS

REMBOURSER N A

LA "PERIODE"

CE

L' ABSURDE

L' AFFIRMATIVE

L' AIR

POSS-O AISE

L' ALLER

TOUTS ALLURE

TOUTE POSS-O

L ' AMIABLE

L' ARRACHE

TOUTE ATTENTE

L' AUBE

L' AUTOSUS

L' AVANCE

L' AVENIR

L' AVBNIR

L' AVEUGLETTE

TOUT AZIP~T

LA BAGARP~

LA BAISSE

TOUT RAS

PLUS BELLE

TOUTS BERZINGUE

LE BESOIN

LE BEURRE

TOUTS BITURE

LE B015

TOUTE BONNE FOI

TOUTS POSS-O BOUCHE

LE BOUT

LA BRAISE

TOUTS BRIDE

LA BROCHE

LE BUS

LE BUTAGAZ

LE BUTANE

TOUT CAS

LA CENDNE

LE CENTUPLE

F r o z e n a d v e r b s T a b l e 3

We have systematically classified I15.000 idiomatic sentences, When one c o m p a r e s t h l s f i g u r e with those of table 2', one must conclude that f r o z e n sentences constitute one of the most important c o m p o n e n t s o f t h e l e x i c o n - g r a m m a r .

An i m p o r t a n t lexlcal f e a t u r e of f r o z e n sentences should be s t r e s s e d . T h e r e a r e e x a m p l e s s u c h as

They went a s t r a y

w h e r e words such as astray c a n n o t be found io any o t h e r s y n t a c t i c a l l y u n r e l a t e d s e n t e n c e ; n o t i c e t h a t t h e c a u s a t i v e s e n t e n c e

The# led them a s t r a y

(4)

However, the hteral meanings are almost always mcongruous In the context w h e r e the idlomahc meamng is mtended (unless of course tr:e author of t h e u t t e r a n c e played on words). Thus, when a word c o m b i n a t i o n t h a t c o n s t i t u t e s an idiom is e n c o u n t e r e d m a text, one IS practically e n s u r e d that t h e c o r r e s p o n d i n g meaning is the i d i o m a t i c o n e ,

I

0 ! I

;;I

" I

o H I u N

* • CONNAITRE C O M N A I T R E C O ~ N A Z T R E

N E C O N N A I T R E PAS

: N E C O N N A I T R E OUR

C O N S E R V E R

SE C O N T E K P L E R

C O U P E R D E B L O Q U E R D E T E N I R D I S T I L L E R D O M I N E R

DRESSER Erfl)OSSER ENFONCER

£ T R E . N PAS

E T R E . N P A S

E T R E . N FAS

E T R E . S D I T

F A I R E F A I R E F A I R E F A Z R E

i F A I R E

F A I R E

] F A I R E

j F A I R E

FAIRE

I F A I ~

J F A I R E E N T E N D R E

F A I R E P A S S E R

F A I R E S A U T E R

FERVOR

F L E T R I R F O R C E R

FOR~R

F O R M E R F O R M E R

FORNER FRANCHIR I

! I

I

|

'

]

-~

.E

.'3

.=~

I

- * L£ COUP

- - POSS-¢ i i DOULEUR

- + L£ TRUC

- - POSS-~ BONH£UR

- - - CA

- - POSS-¢ CHgHISE r - - LE NOMBRZL

- . det S I T U A T I O N

+ - LA V E R I T E

LE V E N I N

- + LE LOT

J- , POSS-(P - ÷ BATTERTES

J

- ~ LE H A R N O I S

- ~ LE CLOU

- . UNE L U H I E R E

i:

NORT 'NC"OT

i i !

N

Tout

B R I N D E T O I L E T T E

G R I S E MZN~

H A R A - K I R I

JURISPRUDENCE ; - + UN£ N I N U T E D E S I L E N C E

NO~BRE

:- + D E T O P E R A T I O N P O R T E O U V E R T E

- - D U Q U A R A N T E C I N O F I L L E T T E

T A P I S T I N T I N - - POSS-~ VOIX - - DET ENFANT

- - D E T E N F A N T

- * P O S $ - ~ P O R T E S

- + D E T C R I M E

_ _ L A CHANCE

- + L £ C A R R E

- ~ D E T N U N E R O

- + D E T N U N E R O D E T E L E P H O N E

- . LES PANGS

i

- . D E T CAP

F r o z e n s e n t e n c e s

T a b l e 4

R e t u r m n g to t h e algorithm sketched in 1, we see that we have to m i d d y steps (A) and (B) in o r d e r to r e c o g n i z e f r o z e n e x p r e s s i o n s :

- NOt only verbs, but nouns have to be immediately located in the i n p u t s t r i n g .

- The verbs and the nouns columns of the lexicon-grammar of frozen e x p r e s s i o n s h a v e to be l o o k e d up f o r c o m b i n a t i o n s o f w o r d s .

It Js m t e r e s t m g to n o t e that t h e r e is no g r o u n d f o r stating a p r i o r d y such as look up verbs b e f o r e nouns or the r e v e r s e . Rather, the nature of f r o z e n forms suggests simultaneous searches for the c o m p o s i n g w o r d s .

About the diHerence between free and frozen sentences, we have o b s e r v e d that many f r e e sentences (if not all) have highly restricted nominal posdlons. C o n s i d e r for e x a m p l e t h e e n t r y N O smoke N t =n

Jo smokes the f i n e s t t o b a c c o

In the d i r e c t o b j e c t c o m p l e m e n t , one will find few o t h e r nouns: nouns of o t h e r smoking material, objects made of smoking material s u c h as c i g a r e t t e , c i g a r , p i p e and b r a n d n a m e s f o r t h e s e oblects. This is a c o m m o n situation w i t h technical verbs. Such e x a m p l e s s u g g e s t that, semantically at least, t h e nominal arguments are h a l t e d to one noun, which comes close to having the s t a t u s of f r o z e n e x p r e s s i o n . Thus, to smoke w o u l d h a v e h e r e one c o m p l e m e n t , p e r h a p s tobacco, and all o t h e r nouns o c c u r r i n g m its place would be b r o u g h t in by syntactic operations. We c o n s i d e r t h a t t h i s s i t u a t m n is q u i t e g e n e r a l a l t h o u g h not always transparent. Our analysis of f r e e e l e m e n t a r y sentences has shown t h a t w h e n s u b j e c t s and Oblects allow wide v a r i a t i o n s for t h e i r nouns, t h e n well d e f i n e d syntactic o p e r a t i o n s account for t h e v a r i a t i o n :

- separation of entries: For example, t h e r e is a n o t h e r v e r b N O smoke N t , as m They smoke meat, a n d a t h i r d o n e : N O smoke N 1 out in They smoked the room out; o r c o n s i d e r t h e v e r b to e a t in

Rust ate both r e a r w i n g s o f m y c a r

This v e r b will c o n s t i t u t e an e n t r y d i f f e r e n t o f t h e o n e in to eat lamb;

v a r i o u s z e r o l n g s : The following s e n t e n c e pairs will be r e l a t e d b y d i f f e r e n t d e l e t i o n s :

Bob ale s nrce p r e p a r a t i o n

= Bob ale a nice p r e p a r a t i o n o f lamb

Bob ate a whole b a k e r y

= Bob ate a whole b a k e r y o f a p p l e p i e s

O t h e r o p e r a t i o n s i n t r o d u c e nouns in syntactic positions w h e r e t h e y a r e f o r e i g n t o t h e s e m a n t i c d i s t r i b u t i o n s , a m o n g t h e m a r e

r a l s m g o p e r a t i o n s , which i n d u c e d i s t r i b u t i o n a l d i f f e r e n c e s such as

I i m a g i n e d the s i t u a t i o n

I i m a g i n e d the b r i d g e d e s t r o y e d

s i t u a t i o n is t h e " n a t u r a l " d i r e c t o b l e c t of to imagine, w h i l e b r r d g e ts d e r i v e d ;

- o t h e r r e s t r u c t u r a t i o n o p e r a t i o n s ( G u l l l e t , L e c l ~ r e 1981), as b e t w e e n t h e t w o s e n t e n c e s

This c o n f i r m e d B i b ' s o p i n i o n of Jo

This c o n f i r m e d Bob m his o p i n i o n of Jo

Although the full lexicon of French has not yet been analyzed f r o m this point of view, we can plausibly a s s e r t t h a t a t a r g e class of nommal d i s t r i b u t i o n s could be made semantically r e g u l a r by using Z.S. H a r r i s ' a c c o u n t o f e l e m e n t a r y d i s t r i b u t i o n s , n a m e l y , by

d e t e r m i n i n g a b a s i c f o r m f o r e a c h m e a n i n g , f o r e x a m p l e

A p e r s o n e a t s f o o d

[image:4.612.91.316.119.462.2]
(5)

introducing classificatory sentences that describe universe:

(The boy, My s i s t e r ) ia • p e r s o n , etc.

the semantic

(A pie, This cake) is food, etc.

Classificatory and basic sentences are combined by syntactic o p e r a t i o n s such as

r e l a t l v i z s t i o n :

The person who is the boy eats food which is this pie

WH-ia d e l e t i o n :

The p e r s o n the boy eats f o o d this pie

r e d u n d a n c y removal:

The boy eats this pie

In this way, the semantic variations are explicitly attributed to lexical variations, and not to i n t u i t i v e abstract f e a t u r e s , t h a t is, arbitrary features, or acmes or the like. The requirement of using WORDS in such descriptions is a crucial means for controlling the construction of an empirically adequate linguistic system. In this respect, one is led to categorizing words by evaluating actual classificatory sentences. Hence, all the knowledge linguistically expressible (i.e. in terms of words) is represented by both the basic and the classificatory sentences. A good deal of the inferences that one has to draw in order to understand sentences era contained in the derivations that lead to the seemingly simple s e n t e n c e s .

From a formal point of view, the entries of the lexicon-grammar become much more specifi~ We have eliminated class symbols altogether, replacing them by specific nouns <5>. Entries are then of t h e t y p e

{persen) 0 eat (food) 1

(person) 0 ;We (ObleCt) 1 to (person) 2

(per=ran) 0 k~ck the bucket

An application of this representation of simple sentences is the t r e a t m e n t of c e r t a i n m e t a p h o r s . C o n s i d e r t h e two s e n t e n c e s

(1) Jo f i l l e d the turkey with t r u f f l e s

(2) Jo f i l l e d his r e p o r t with p o o r jokes

(1) is a p r o p e r use of fo fill, w h i l e (2) is • m e t a p h o r i c or figurative meaning. The properties of these sentences vary according to the lexical choices in the complements {Boons 1971). For example, the with-complement that can be occupied by an i n t e r n a l noun in t h e p r o p e r meaning can be o m i t t e d :

Jo t i l l e d the turkey with • c e r t a i n f i l l i n g

= Jo f i l l e d the turkey

5 It is doubtful that actual nouns such as food will be available in the language for each distribution of each entry, but then, expressions such as smoking stuff can be used {in the object of to smoke), again avoiding the use ot abstract f e a t u r e s .

iThis is not t h e case in t h e f i g u r a t i v e meaning:

* J o f i l l e d hie r e p o r t

How to represent (1) and (2) is a problem in terms of number of entries. On the one hand, the two constructions have common syntactic and semantic features, on the other, they ere significantly d i f f e r e n t in form and content. Setting up two entries is • solution, but not a satisfactory one, since both entries are left unrelated. A possible solution in the framework of l e x i c o n - g r a m m a r s is to c o n s i d e r having j u s t one e n t r y :

N O fill N 1 with N 2

and to specify N t lexJcally by means of columns of t h e matrix. For e x a m p l e

N 1 =: f o o d

N t =: text

11~en, the content of N 2 is largely determined end has to be r o u g h l y of t h e t y p e

N 2 =: s t u f f i n g

N 2 =: e u b t e x t

An inclusion relation <6> holds between the two complements. We can w r i t e for t h i s r e l a t i o n

N 2 is in N 1

But now, in our parsing procedure, we have to compensate for the tact that in the lexicon-grammar, the nouns that are represented in the free positions ere not the ones that in general occur in the input sentences. In consequence, occurrences of nouns will have to undergo a complex process of identification that will determine whether they have been introduced by syntactic operations (e.g. restructuration), or by chains of substitutions defined by c l a s s i f i c a t o r y s e n t e n c e s , or by both processes.

3. SUPPORT AND OPERATOR VERB8

We have alluded to the tact that only • certain class of contences could be reduced to entries of the lexicon-gremmr as presented in 1. and 2. We will now give examples of simple sentences that have structures different of the structures of free and f r o z e n s e n t e n c e s , in s e n t e n c e s such as

(1) H e r r e m a r k s m a d e no d i f f e r e n c e

(2) H e r remarks have some (importance for, influence) on Jo

(3) H e r r e m a r k s ere in c o n t r a d i c t i o n with y o u r p l a n

it is d i f f i c u l t to a r g u e t h a t t h e verbs to make, to have and to be in semantically select t h e i r subjects end complement& Rather, these verbs should be considered as auxiliaries. The predicative element is here the nominal form in complement position. This intuition can be given a formal basis. Let us look at nominalizationa as being relations between two simple s e n t e n c e s (Z.S. Harris 1964), as in

(6)

Max walked

: Max look a walk

H e r r e m a r k s are i m p o r t a n t f o r Jo

= Her r e m a r k s are of a c e r t a i n i m p o r t a n c e f o r Jo

= Her r e m a r k s have s c e r t a i n i m p o r t a n c e f o r Jo

Jo r e s e m b l e s Max

: Jo has a c e r t a i n r e s e m b l a n c e with Max

= Jo ( b e a r s . c a r r i e s ) a c e r t a i n r e s e m b l a n c e with Max

-- There is a c e r t a i n r e s e m b l a n c e b e t w e e n Jo and Max

It is t h e n c l e a r that t h e roots walk, i m p o r t a n t and resemble select the other noun phrases. We call support verbs (Vsup) the verbs in such sentences that have no selectional function, Some support verbs are semantically neutral, others i n t r o d u c e modal or a s p e c t u a l meanings, as f o r e x a m p l e in

Bob loves Jo

= Bob Is in love with Jo

= Bob f e l l in love with Jo

= Bob has a d e e p love f o r Jo

to tall, as o t h e r motion verbs do, introduces an inchoative meaning. In this example, the mare semantm relation holds between Bob and love, and t h e s u p p o r t verbs s i m p l y add t h e i r m e a n i n g to t h e relation.

If we use s dependency tree to schematize the relations in simple sentences, we can oppose ordinary verbs with one obleCt and support verbs of superficially identical structures such as in f i g u r e 1:

described

Ma~x love

Bo b ' s ~ ~ Jo

Two problems arise in connection with the distribution of support verbs:

- s noun or a nommalized verb accepts a certain set of support v e r b s and this set v a r i e s w i t h each nominal;

not e v e r y v e r b is a s u p p o r t verb; thus in t h e s e n t e n c e

(4) Max d e s c r i b e d B o b ' a love f o r Jo

to d e s c r i b e is not a Vsup. The q u e s t i o n is t h e n to d e l i m i t the set of Vaups, if such a set can be isolated, or else to p r o v i d e g e n e r a l c o n d i t i o n s u n d e r which s v e r b acts as a Vaup,

One of the structural features that separates support verbs from other verbs is the possibility of clefting noun complements. For example, for Jo is a noun complement of the same type in both s t r u c t u r e s , but we o b s e r v e

* I f is f o r Jo that Max d e s c r i b e d B o b ' a love

It is f o r Jo t h a t Bob has a d e e p love

The main semantic difference between the two constructions lies in the cyclic structure of the graph. This cyclic structure is also f o u n d in m o r e c o m p l e x s e n t e n c e s such as

(5) This note put her remarks in contradiction with your p l a n

(6) Bob gave a c e r t a i n i m p o r t a n c e to h e r r e m a r k s

Both verbs fo p u t and to give have two c o m p l e m e n t s , exactly as in s e n t e n c e s such as

(7) Bob put (the book) 1 (in the drawe~| 2

(8) Bob gave (e book) t (to Jo) 2

Whde in (7) and (8), there is no evidence of any formal relation between both complements, in (5) and (6) we find dependencies a l r e a d y o b s e r v e d on s u p p o r t v e r b s (cf. f i g u r e 2).

gave

B ° ~ m s r k s

has

BJ ove

put

The notre ~ her remarks, in contra~ctmn

\

with your plan

[image:6.612.85.556.450.720.2]
(7)

The verbs to put and to give are s e m a n t i c a l l y minimal, for they only introduce s causative and/or an agentive argument with respect to the sentence with Vsup. We call such verbs operator verbs (Vop). There are other operator verbs that add various m o d a l t t i e s to t h e minimal m e a n i n g s , as in

The note introduced a contradiction between her remarks and your plan

Bob attributed a certain importance to her remarks

Other s y n t a c t i c shapes are lound:

Bob credsted her remarks with a certain importance

Again, the set of nouns (supported by o Vsup) to which the Vops apply vary from verb to verb. As a consequence, we have to r e p r e s e n t t h e d i s t r i b u t i o n s of Vsups and Vops with respect to nominals by means of a m a t r i x such as t h e one in Table 4'.

In each row, we place a noun and each column contains a support verb or an operator verb. A preliminary classification of Ns (and V-ns) has been made in terms of a few elementary support verbs (e.g. to have, to be Prep).

In a sense, this representation is symmetrical with the representation of free sentences. With free sentences, the verb is taken as the central item of the sentence. Varying then the nouns allowed with the verb does not change fundamentally the meaning of the corresponding sentences. With support verbs, the central item is a noun. Varying then the support verbs only introduces a d i s t r i b u t i o n a l - l i k e c h a n g e in meaning.

The recognition procedure has to be modified, in order to account f o r t h i s c o m p o n e n t of t h e language:

- first, the took-up procedure must determine whether s verb is an ordinary verb (i.e. an entry found in a row of the lexicon-grammar) or a Vaup or a Vop, which are to be found in columns;

- simultaneously, nouns have to be looked up in order to cheek t h e i r c o m b i n a t i o n w i t h s u p p o r t verbs.

4. CONCLUSION

We have shown that simple sentence structures were of varied types. At the same time, we have seen that their representation in terms of t h e e n t r i e s of t r a d i t i o n a l " l i n e a r " dictionaries, t h a t is, In terms of words alphabetically or otherwise ordered, is inadequate. An improvement appears to involve the look-up of two-dimensional patterns, for example the matrices we proposed for frozen sentences and their generalization to support verbs and operator verbs. More generally, syntactic structures are determined by combinat|ons of a verb morpheme with one or more noun morpheme(s). Hence, the general way to access the lexicon will have to be t h r o u g h t h e s e l e c t i o n a l m a t r i x of Tables 3 and 4,

In practice, syntactic computations are context-free computations in natural language processing. Context-free algorithms have been studied in many respects by computer scientists, theoreticians and speciahsts ot programming languages. The principles of these algorithms are clearly understood and currently in use, even for natural languages where new problems arise because of the numerous ambiguities and the various t e r m i n o l o g i e s a t t a c h e d to each t h e o r e t i c a l viewpoint.

The tact that context-free recognition is a mastered technique has certainly contributed to the shaping of the grammars used in automatic parsing. The numerous sample grammars presented so far are practically all c o n t e x t - t r e e . There is also a deep linguistic reason for building context-free grammars: natural languages use embedding processes and tend to avoid discontinuous structures.

Much less attention has been peJd to the complex syntactic phenomena occurring Jn simple sentences and to the organization of the lexicon. The tact that we could not separate the syntactic properties of verbs from their lexical features has led us to construct a representation for linguistic phenomena which is more specJhc than the current context-free models. A context-free component will still be useful in the parsing procesS, but it will be relevant only to embedded structures found in complex sentences, with not much i n c i d e n c e on meaning,

To summarize, the syntactic patterns are determined by pairs (verb, noun):

- the frozen sentence N O k~ck the bucket Js t h u s e n t i r e l y s p e c i f i e d , w h i l e t h e pair (take, bull) needs to be disambiguated by the second complement by the horns, requiring thus a m o r e c o m p l e x d e v i c e to be i d e n t i f i e d ;

(take, walk) and (take, food) are support s e n t e n c e s , so are (have, faith) and (have, food);

t h e verbs have, kick and take t o g e t h e r with concrete obiect s e l e c t o r d i n a r y sentence forms.

But the selectional process for structures may not be direct. The words in the previously discussed pairs may not appear in the input text. Words appearing in the input are then related to the words in t h e selectJonal m a t r i x by:

cfassifJcatlonal r e l a t i o n s :

food classifies cake, soup, etc.

concrete obiect classifies ball, chair, etc.

- r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n s u p p o r t s e n t e n c e s , such as

Jo (had, took,threw out) some food

Jo (took, was out for, went out f o r ) a walk

Jo (has, keeps, looses) faith in Bob

relations b e t w e e n support and o p e r a t o r s e n t e n c e s :

Thie gave to Jo faith in Bob

All these relations in fact add a t h i r d d i m e n s i o n to t h e s e l e c t i o n a l matrix.

(8)

REFERENCES

Boons, J.-P, 1971. Metaphore et balsse de la redondance, Langue tran~a/se 11, ParDs: Larousse, pp. 1 5 - t 6 ,

Boons, J., GuHlet, A. and Lecl~re, Ch. 1976a. La structure des phrases slmples en trancals. Constructions intrans/hvea, Droz, Geneva, 377 p.

Boons, J., Gutllet, A. and Lecl~re, Ch. 1976b. La structure des phrases simplea en franFals. Clas~ea de constructions transitives, Rapport de recherches NO 6, Paris: University Paris 7, L.A.D.L., t 4 3 p.

Freckleton, P. 1984. A Systemahc Classlhcation of Frozen Expressions in English° Doctoral Thesis, University of Paris 7, L.A.D.L.

Glry-Schnelder, J. 1978. Lea nommahsations en franFala. L ' o p ~ r a t e u r FAIRE, Geneva: Droz, 414 p.

Gross. M. 1975. M#thodes en ayntaxe, Paris: Hermann, 414 p.

Gross, Maunce 1982. Une classificatmn des phrases tig~es du fran|:a=s, Revue q u d b # c o i s e de h n g u l s t l q u e , Vol. 11, No 2, Montreal : Presses de I'Universitb du Quebec & Montreal,

pp. 151-18,5.

Gulllet, A. and Leclbre. Ch. 1981. Restructuratlon du groupe nom0nal, Langagea, Par=s : Larousse, pp, 99-125.

Harris, Z . S . 1964. The elementary Tranformations, Transformations and Discourse Analysis Papers 54, m Harris, Zeltig 5. 1970, Papers m Structural and Transformational Linguratics, Reldel, D o r d r e c h t . pp. 4 8 2 - 5 3 2 .

Harris, Zeltig 1983. A Grammar of Enghsh on Mathematical P r i n c i p l e s , New York : Wiley Intersc=ence,429 p.

Meumer, A. 1'377. Sur les bases syntaxlques de la morphologle d G r l v a t l o n n e l l e , L i n g v ; s t l c a e I n v e s t l g a t l o n e s 1:2, John B e n l a m m s B.V., A m s t e r d a m , pp. 287-331.

Figure

Table 1 N O eat
Table 4 I imagined the situation I imagined the bridge destroyed
figure 1: gave

References

Related documents

To evaluate whether this axis is involved in HCC cell migra- tion and invasion, and whether the correlation between HIF-1 α and IL-8 expression levels is associated with the NF- κ

to my attention too late may be listed: Oxford, Ashmolean, 1931.480, a small gold king offering nw pots, white crown and beard, from Kawa (Macadam, Kawa II, p. 82); Maystre, Kush

While courts generally have been reluctant to allow compensation for any type of mental suffering,' they have been particularly hesitant to al- low recovery

ing customer data for developing clusters to identify customers using Data

The non-forfeiture value of a life insurance policy is the amount given the holder after the policy has lapsed by non payment of premiums.&#34; These values are

This integrated security system can provide motion in 3 directions for illuminating, tracking and capturing the movements of the human in confined area as well as to

Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness and cost-effec- tiveness of usual physical therapy care in combination with one particular tape technique