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. 2November 27, Lecture 3

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. 3November 27, Lecture 3

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. 4November 27, Lecture 3

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. 5November 27, Lecture 3

6 Syntax is the conversion of the morphological representation into a syntactic representation and vice versa Linguistic Disciplines

Surface Syntactic Representation (SSyntR) of a Sentence in ETAP-3 7November 27, Lecture 3 Mel'čuk, I. A, & Pertsov, N. V. (1987).

Surface Syntax is the main linguistic discipline to which this course is devoted: conversion between deep morphological representation and surface syntactic representation 8November 27, Lecture 3

9 Two types of Syntactic Representations Constituent Tree Phrase Structure NP ANVN VP S Small children like ice-cream

November 27, Lecture 310 Two types of Syntactic Representations LIKE ICE-CREAMCHILDREN SMALL Dependency Tree Structure predicative 1st completive modificative

Surface-Syntactic Relation (SSRel) An SSRel is a binary relation connecting two lexical nodes of a sentence. It is antireflexive: *X X; antisymmetric: if X Y, then *Y X; antitransitive: if X Y and Y Z then *X Z November 27, Lecture 311 r r r rr r

Linguistically. SSRel represents a syntactic role, or function: ‘be the grammatical subject of’ ‘be a modifier of’ ‘be a circumstantial modifier of’. So the notion of an SSRel is related to ‘element of the sentence’ – the keystone of traditional syntax. November 27, Lecture 312 Surface-Syntactic Relation (SSRel)

The traditional notion focuses on the dependent term of a syntactic relation while we focus on the relation itself. SSRel must be distinguished from semantic and morphological relations. November 27, Lecture 313 Surface-Syntactic Relation (SSRel)

One SSRel may correspond to several semantic relations. Predicative SSRel: ‘agent – action’ John [Y] wrote [X] a letter ‘patient – action’ John [Y] underwent [X] an operation ‘subject – state’ John [Y] enjoyed [X] the film ‘time – event’ Last year [Y] saw [X] a slowdown in credit card use; the last day [Y] saw [X] a change in the weather November 27, Lecture 314 Surface-Syntactic Relation (SSRel)

One SSRel may correspond to several morphological relations. Predicative SSRel (in Russian): the noun phrase in the nominative; the verb agrees with it in person and number (present tense) Rabota sg nachinaetsja 3-p,sg ‘the work begins’ the noun phrase in the nominative; the verb agrees with it in gender and number (past tense) Rabota fem,sg nachalas’ fem,sg ‘the work began’ November 27, Lecture 315 Surface-Syntactic Relation (SSRel)

the noun phrase in the genitive, the verb is in the third person singular (present tense) Raboty gen xvataet 3-p,sg ‘there is enough work’ the noun phrase in the genitive, the verb is in the neutral gender singular (past tense) Raboty gen xvatalo neut,sg ‘there was enough work’ November 27, Lecture 316 Surface-Syntactic Relation (SSRel)

Classes of Syntactic Relations 1) actant relations; 2) attributive relations; 3) coordinative relations; 4) auxiliary relations November 27, Lecture 317

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 27, Lecture 318

Actants and Valencies Several notions are needed: Predicate Situation Situation Participant, or Actant Valency (=valence) Frame representation Government Pattern November 27, Lecture 319

Actants and Valencies Two different sources of this approach: Linguistics (Lucien Tesnière, Charles Fillmore, Jury Apresjan) Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (Marvin Minsky, Terry Winograd) November 27, Lecture 320

Actants and Valencies L. Tesnière. Éléments de syntaxe structurale, Klincksieck, Paris 1959 Ch. Fillmore. Frame semantics and the nature of language, 1976 Ju.Apresjan. Lexical Semantics. Moscow 1974 M.Minsky. A Framework for Representing Knowledge, 1975 T. Winograd. Understanding Natural Language, 1972 November 27, Lecture 321

Actants and Valencies SLEEP SEE GIVE SELL LEASE CURE rus. KOMANDIROVAT’ ‘send on an official trip’ November 27, Lecture 322

Actants and Valencies There are three types of valencies: active passive distant November 27, Lecture 323

Actants and Valencies Active valencies transmission of [D2] personal data by [D1] Europol to [D3] third States transmission by [D1] insects of [D2] spores from [D3] diseased trees to [D4] wounds on healthy trees November 27, Lecture 324

Actants and Valencies Passive valencies red ball November 27, Lecture 325

Actants and Valencies Distant valencies the ball is red I wanted John to do the job Nastassja Kinski was the favorite actress of my sister. Nastassja Kinski was her favorite actress. November 27, Lecture 326

Actants’ Interplay REASON (noun): 2 valencies: cause [1] and consequence [2] Population growth is the reason of climate change We cannot refund tickets for the reason of adverse weather conditions November 27, Lecture 327 [1][2] [1]

Actants’ Interplay REASON (noun): 2 valencies: cause [1] and consequence [2] Staff arriving late because of inclement weather will, if the reason of bad weather is accepted, be paid at the rate they would have received for that day if normal conditions prevailed. November 27, Lecture 328 [1]

Government Pattern: ETAP-3 November 27, Lecture 329

Government Pattern: ETAP-3 November 27, Lecture 330

Government Pattern: FrameNet November 27, Lecture 331

Government Pattern: FrameNet November 27, Lecture 332

Government Pattern: Problems 1) Not all valencies are covered. Reason – only the consequence and not the cause. Ask – subject valency is not covered. November 27, Lecture 333

Government Pattern: Problems 2) Certain word properties are not explicitly stated I asked John to write a report: Object Infinitive I asked to write a report: ? I was asked to write a report: ? I asked to be transferred to the new building ? I asked to stay longer I asked to continue to work in the old building November 27, Lecture 334

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 27, Lecture 335

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 336

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 27, Lecture 337

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 November 27, Lecture 338

Predicative Relation 4 Anticipatory THERE: There are some issues to discuss. There happened to be a marker on the map. November 27, Lecture 339

Next lecture Actantial Syntactic Relations (continuation). Syntactic Features. Attributive Relations 40November 27, Lecture 3