[Lexicog] Slots and slot fillers (nee "Nouns")

[Ron Moe]

Is there any reason why we can't mark the semantic class of lexemes as well
as the morphological or syntactic class? If a parser can look at neighboring
words and note the syntactic class of those words, is there any reason why
it can't note the semantic class as well? We have ways of marking the
semantic class of lexemes. My list of semantic domains is an attempt in that
direction. I see no reason why we can't hope to do what Patrick asks. But
designing parsers is beyond my competency. Does anyone with a knowledge of
parsers have an answer?

Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Patrick Hanks
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 7:25 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Slots and slot fillers (nee "Nouns")



Thanks, Rudy.  Very instructive.

When doing corpus-based analysis of verb meaning and use in English, I'd
love to have a semantically driven parser that could distinguish adverbials
of manner/attitude from instrumental adverbials, regardless of the number of
words involved in each. This is because the type of adverbial can sometimes
affect the meaning of the verb, thus:

treat someone {with respect / respectfully}   = ATTITUDE
treat someone (with chemotherapy/chemotherapeutically) = MEDICAL

-- where the number of words in the adverbial is immaterial and its semantic
value is what matters.  But I suppose that is too much to hope for.

Ah well, back to the grindstone.

Patrick



----- Original Message -----
From: <rtroike at email.arizona.edu>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 10:34 AM
Subject: [Lexicog] Slots and slot fillers (nee "Nouns")


>
> Whether a phonological sequence is a "word" or a "phrase" is sometimes in
> the eye of the beholder, or depends on the structure of the language
involved.
> In English, we write prepositions with a space before and after them, but
in
> Turkish (and most SOV languages), what corresponds semantically (per Ron
Moe)
> is placed at the end of the phonological sequence, and is generally called
> a "case suffix" or sometimes, if written with a space, a "postposition".
In
> English, the GENITIVE marker is written solid with what precedes (more
later),
> albeit with an apostrophe (-'s) [due to the false notion that arose in the
> 17th century that this was a contraction of "his" -- it was not so written
> earlier nor is it in any other Germanic language] when the Genitive
expression
> (single or multiple words) _precedes_ the head Noun, but separately, as
"of",
> when the Genitive expression _follows_ the Noun.
>
> (The "of", being weakly stressed, may encliticize to the Noun, and be
written
> solid with it, as "cup of coffee" becomes "cuppa coffee". -- As a
digression,
> this creates a problem grammatically and lexicographically, as the {GEN}
> morpheme, in its allomorphic form "of", is detached phonologically from
the
> NP it is connected to grammatically; non-native speakers, encountering
> "cuppa" in print, may wonder what it is and look for it in a dictionary
[the
> same problem, from different sources, applies to common orthographic forms
> "hafta", "wanna", "gotta", and "coulda"]).
>
> Charles Fries documented the fact that in Old English, the "Saxon
Genitive"
> was used 95% of the time and the "Romance Genitive" 5% of the time. By the
> 18th century this had reversed to 5% and 95%, respectively. Similarly, the
> suffixed Genitive of Latin was replaced by a preposition "de/di" in the
> modern Romance languages. It is clear, then, both from cross-linguistic
> comparisons as well as from internal histories, that at the level of
semantic
> structure, the suffix and the preposition constitute the same linguistic
> element, with different surface realizations based on positional
differences
> in surface structure.
>
> Structuralists like Bloomfield, Bloch, Fries, Hill, Hockett, Pike, and
Trager
> all recognized the hierarchical difference between the syntactic position
> and its filler(s). A common example of the time was the use of the single
> word "fire" as a complete utterance, which ambiguously could be taken as
> an imperative of a Verb, ordering guns to be shot, or as an elliptical
> existential, alerting hearers to the (possible) presence of a fire. In the
> first instance, "Fire!" was seen as filling the following hiearchical
slots:
>
>        Sentence
>           |
>        Predicate
>           |
>          Verb
>           |
>         Fire
>
> To say that "fire" is merely a word, and nothing more, would be to miss
the
> whole significance of its use, and any valid grammar of English would have
> to account for that. (I am reminded here of the distress expressed by a
> fellow evening-class student in my Beginning Chinese course some years
ago,
> when the instructor mentioned that some word had two possible meanings,
> when she insistently repeated her concern that she would not be able to
> tell which meaning was intended. The wise instructor finally, after a
> number of vain attempts to quiet her concern by illustrating contrasting
> contexts in which the different meanings would be deployed, finally
uttered
> the memorable observation, "Madam, words do not normally occur outside of
> sentences".)
>
> As for the concern about the difference between words and phrases (apart
> from the suffix~postposition/preposition example), the labels NP, VP, DP,
> NumP, TP, etc., although usually verbalized as "noun phrase", etc., do
> not mean "more than one word", but rather are simple formal designations
> of slots within a hierarchical system. (Thanks to X-bar 'theory', the
> exact significance of these labels has changed from the original
> Transformational-Generative grammar, but that is a technical matter.)
>
> No one I know would argue that "at this moment" is not a phrase, and
> "now" is not a word, but in the following sentences, all would agree
> that they are filling the same slot, AdvP-time (or some similar
designation):
>
>          He is leaving at this moment.
>          He is leaving now.
>
> Structural linguists were very much at pains to try to distinguish
> terminologically between word-level category labels and slot-category
labels.
> Thus for them, both of these would be "Adverbials", but only "now" would
be
> an "Adverb". (Since morphological features were used to define
word-classes,
> "pretty" would be an "Adjective", because it could take the suffixes "-er"
> and "-est", but "beautiful" could not be an "Adjective", though it could
be
> classified as an "Adjectival" because it could be compared
periphrastically
> by the use of "more" and "most".) Rigorous methodological purity was a
> touchstone among many, perhaps most, structuralists.
>
>      Rudy Troike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>





Yahoo! Groups Links









------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Get to your groups with one click. Know instantly when new email arrives
http://us.click.yahoo.com/.7bhrC/MGxNAA/yQLSAA/HKE4lB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/