C-rule

Revision as of 10:30, 26 March 2010

Compounding or composition is the word-formation process of creating compounds by combining or putting together lexemes.

Expressing compounds in the UNL^arium

In the UNL^arium framework, compounds are treated as ordinary simple words except in case of discontinuous multi-word expressions or with infixation (such as "give in" or "take into account"). In these cases, the lemma is different from the base form, and the compound-formation process is expected to be defined through S-rules such as the following:

+<SYNTACTIC ROLE>(<ADDED>);

Where:
<SYNTACTIC ROLE> is the syntactic role (VA, VC, VS, VH, etc) of the term to be added to the base form; and
<ADDED> is the term to be added to the base form to form the compound. It can be a string between "quotes" or a lemma between [brackets].

Examples

Observations

Phrasal verbs

Particles of phrasal verbs must be represented as part of the head, if non separable, or as adjuncts, if separable:

• give in = +VH("in"); ("give in something" but "give something in")
• give back = +VA("back"); ("give back something" or "give something back")

General syntactic roles (NP, PP, XP) must not be defined in composition rules but inside the subcategorization frame

• throw <person> to the lions = +VA("to the lions"); (and not "+VA("to the lions")VC(NP);". The lemma should be associated to the transitive frame instead)

"Quotes" or [brackets]?

In the compound-formation process, the UNLarium distinguishes between strings (to be represented between "") and lemmas (to be represented between [ ]). The difference between strings and lemmas has to do with the dictionary status. Lemmas, but not strings, are expected to be defined as dictionary entries:

• +VA("into account"); (add the string "into account" as a verbal adjunct, take > take into account)
• +VC([love]); (add the lemma "love" as a verbal complement, such as in make > make love)

In the above, it's unlikely to have "into account" as a single entry, whereas "love" is probably already there.

Complex compounds

Compounds must include as many terms as different syntactic roles:

• give up the gost = +VH([up])VC("the ghost"); (+VH("up the ghost") or VC("up the ghost"))

Order is to be represented by the distribution features (">", ">>", "<", "<<", ...), if not default;

• +VC([love]); (order must not be informed, because in English complements come at the right side by default: make > make love)
• +NS([the]); (order must not be informed, because in English specifiers come at the left side, by default: Netherlands > the Netherlands)
• NA(>>,"available"); (order must be informed, because in English nominal adjuncts come at the left side, by default: table > new table)

Adjacency is to be represented by the adjacency features (AJ0,AJ1,AJ2,...), if not default;

• +VC([love]); (adjacency must not be informed, because in English complements come after the head, by default: make > make love)
• +VH([up])VC("the ghost"); (adjacency must not be informed, because in English head particles come before complements, by default: give > give up the ghost)
• +VA([home],AJ1)VC("the bacon",AJ2); (adjacency must be informed because in English the complement is normally generated before the adjunct: bring the bacon home)