Leonid Iomdin Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences

Program Overview: p Basic Principles of The Meaning-Text theory by Igor Mel’čuk. Language as a Universal Translator of Senses to Texts and Texts to Senses. Text analysis and text generation. The theory of integral linguistic description by Juri Apresjan. The grammar and the dictionary of language. 2. Two syntactic levels of sentence representation: surface syntax and deep syntax. November 30, Lecture 4

Program Overview: p The dependency tree structure as a syntactic representation of the sentence. Dependency tree vs. Constituent tree: advantages and drawbacks of both types of representation. Limits of the dependency tree. The hypothesis of two syntactic starts. 4. The notions of syntactic relation. Major classes of syntactic relations: actant, attributive, coordinative and auxiliary relation classes. 5. The notion of syntactic feature. Syntactic features vs. Semantic features. November 30, Lecture 4

Program Overview: p Actants and valencies. Active, passive and distant valencies. The government pattern of a dictionary entry. An overview of actant syntactic relations. The predicative relation. The agentive relation. Completive relations. 7. An overview of attributive syntactic relations. Grammatical Agreement. Numerals and Quantitative Constructions. The system of Quantification Syntax of Russian. 8. Grammatical coordination as a type of grammatical subordination. An overview of coordinative syntactic relations. November 30, Lecture 4

Program Overview: p Auxiliary syntactic relations. Analytical grammatical forms as an object of syntax. 10 Microsyntax of Language. Minor Type Sentences. Syntactic Idioms. 11. Lexical Functions in the Dictionary and the Grammar. 12. Syntactic description and syntactic rules. Dependency Syntax in NLP. Dependency Syntax in Machine Translation. Syntactically Tagged Corpus of Texts. November 30, Lecture 4

Surface Syntax is the main linguistic discipline to which this course is devoted: conversion between deep morphological representation and surface syntactic representation November 30, Lecture 4

Classes of Syntactic Relations 1) actant relations; 2) attributive relations; 3) coordinative relations; 4) auxiliary relations November 30, Lecture 4

Actant Relations 1) predicative relation; 2) agentive relation; 3) completive relations (1 st completive to 5 th completive); 4) copulative relation; 5) prepositional relation etc. November 30, Lecture 4

Actants and Valencies Several notions are needed: Predicate Situation Situation Participant, or Actant Valency (=valence) Frame representation Government Pattern November 30, Lecture 4

Predicative Relation The government member of the predicative SSyntRel being invariably a finite verb, its dependent member can be one of the four items: November 30, Lecture 4

Predicative Relation 1 A noun or its equivalent: John [Y] kissed [X] Mary It [Y] seems [X] easier It [Y] seems [X] easier to agree than to oppose The easiest [Y] of all solutions would [X] be to agree Enough [Y] has [X] been said Between [Y] ten and fifteen students attended [X] the lecture Whoever [Y1] is [X1,Y2] undertaking the job has [X2] to understand what [Y3] lies [X3] ahead November 27, Lecture 311

A Noun or its Equivalent: an Excursus 1) Normal Nouns, including pronouns John [Y] kissed [X] Mary; I [Y] left [X]; Who [Y] came [X]?, What [Y] happened [X]? It [Y] seems [X] easier It [Y] seems [X] easier to agree than to oppose November 30, Lecture 4

A Noun or its Equivalent: an Excursus 2) Elective Groups The easiest A,sup [Y] of all solutions would [X] be to agree The stronger A,comp [Y] of the (two) men must [X] do the job Ten Num [Y] of them were [X] chosen to appear in the final. Santorini is [X] the most beautiful A [Y] among these islands November 30, Lecture 4

A Noun or its Equivalent: an Excursus Elective Groups NB: The easiest solution of all solutions is NOT an elective group! Compare The easiest solution in all those listed was solution 1 *The easiest in all solutions was solution 1 November 30, Lecture 4

A Noun or its Equivalent: an Excursus 3) Quantitative Adverbs Enough, much, little [Y] has [X] been said NB: we have to distinguish between Enough of this, much of the money, few of them (adverb is the head) and Enough milk, much money, few people (noun is the head) November 30, Lecture 4

A Noun or its Equivalent: an Excursus 4) Approximative Groups, introduced by prepositions Between [Y] ten and fifteen students attended [X] the lecture From [Y] ten to fifteen students attended [X] the lecture Up to [Y] fifteen students attended [X] the lecture About [Y] fifteen students attended [X] the lecture About and around are prepositions rather than adverbs! November 30, Lecture 4

A Noun or its Equivalent: an Excursus 5) Whoever/Whatever Clauses Whoever [Y1] is [X1,Y2] undertaking the job has [X2] to understand this Whatever [Y1] I saw [X1,Y2] cost [X2] a fortune NB: We need to distinguish between these clauses and clauses formed with interrogative pronouns: *Who is undertaking the job has to understand this Who is undertaking the job is secret *What I saw cost a fortune What I saw was unclear November 30, Lecture 4

(Back to) Predicative Relation 2 A verb in the form of an infinitive or a gerund : To [Y] ask John to do it would [X] be silly Which way to [Y] choose is [X] a matter of personal and individual preferences Maintaining [Y] this website will [X] be greatly appreciated November 30, Lecture 4

Predicative Relation 3 A subordinate clause: That this interest continues to increase is attested by the growing number of papers Who comes depends on what has been written in the letter If John comes or not is unclear Whether John comes is unclear November 30, Lecture 4

Predicative Relation 4 Anticipatory THERE: There are some issues to discuss. There happened to be a marker on the map. November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features: An Excursus simple features: COUNT stone = COUNT sandstone ≠ COUNT (in attribute-value pairs notation: stone COUNT=YES sandstone COUNT=NO ) man = ? mankind =? assistance = ? November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features dollar = ? money =? news = ? advice = ? November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features MESUR ampere, angstrom, atmosphere, barrel, bushel, centimetre, … Two inches wide Two inches wider An inch wide An inch wider *A table wide *A table wider November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features PREDTO abnormal, absurd, acceptable, aimless, altruistic, difficult, easy, hard…. (700 adjectives) To stay one more day was absurd It was absurd to stay one more day absolute, relative ≠ PREDTO November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features PREDTHAT abnormal, absurd, nice, fine,… (400 adjectives) That he stayed one more day was absurd It was absurd that he stayed one more day difficult, easy ≠ PREDTHAT November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features PREDIF absurd, natural, contranatural, accidental, amiable, smart, spiteful, splendid, …(50 adjectives) It would be absurd if he stayed one more day difficult, easy ≠ PREDIF new = ? old =? November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features PREDTHAT, *PREDTO (200 adjectives) wrong, right = PREDTHAT and PREDTO It was wrong that he stayed one more day It was wrong to stay one more day false, true = PREDTHAT, not PREDTO It was false that he stayed one more day *It was false to stay one more day November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features: some training green nice American mathematical comprehensive curious criminal November 30, Lecture 4

Syntactic Features: some training negative prolific acceptable heavy high old similar November 30, Lecture 4

Next lecture Actantial Syntactic Relations (continuation). Attributive Relations November 30, Lecture 4