PRED-features

[Alex Alsina]

Ah, now I see the problems that Avery Andrews is having with the PRED 
feature.  Once you have introduced the features REL and ARGS into the 
picture, it makes no sense to still have a PRED sitting around waiting 
for some function to fall on it.  In a sense you have renamed PRED as REL 
and ARGS.  Therefore, the role of PRED is taken up by REL and ARGS and 
there is no reason to keep PRED around.  (See relevant citation below 
from Avery Andrews' latest msge.)

> One specific idea would to to see PRED as an abbreviation
> for an LCS attribute (corresponding pretty closely to the REL of
> Andrews and Manning 1993) whose value is the lcs for a lexical item,
> and an ARGS attribute whose value is its argument-structure. 

It seems to me that an obvious function of the PRED feature, and possibly 
the only one, would be to represent the argument structure, as some 
people currently assume.  But if you choose to represent the argument 
structure as the attribute of the feature ARGS, then you should seriously 
consider waving PRED a last goodbye.  I don't think this is a major 
problem, just a terminological one.  It's worthwhile making our 
terminological choices clear, so as to avoid misunderstanding each other 
and treating terminological differences as differences in content.

Alex Alsina