---------------------------------------------------------------------------
MELANIE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have done most of the merging of the grammar versions and could
tomorrow give you a tar file on that.
Some problems are not yet solved:
- I have to re-check that in the merging process I did not lose any
lexical information.
- I have to make changes due to Matrix 0.6
- I am not really convinced by your (NTT) contribution to relative
sentences and would like to discuss that. You introduced three more
relative clause rules that link the head noun to arguments on the verbs
subcat. Our approach to relative clauses was very similar to topic: We
thought that one cannot decide without additional semantic and world
knowledge, which argument can be linked. Therefore we decided to leave
this relation unspecified. The solution you found seems to insert lots
of spurious ambiguity without really helping, i.e. we have three
readings instead of one; and still don't know where to link the argument.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes -- that is my recollection of our analysis of relative
clauses as well. Tim Baldwin eventually convinced me that
there were a few cases in which you actually need a syntactic
long distance dependencies (something to do with constraints ga-no
conversion, I think, and maybe some other cases) but it seemed
to me that overgenerating a bit in those cases was better than
the extensive ambiguity introduced by allowing the long-distance
dependencies to any missing (i.e., pro-dropped) argument in
the relative clause. Furthermore, you need something like
the topic relation in the case of RCs like (i), which would
add an extra reading everywhere, too.
(i) atama ga yoku naru hon
(Did we write about this in the Coling paper? I can't remember.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are not happy with the implementation - we would like to have one
rule that can takes anything left from the subcat list rather than two
rules. But that is a separate issue.
We discussed this a fair bit before we did this. The unavoidable
ambiguity is nasty, and we definitely felt it treebanking. However,
the consenus was that in a construction like "akai hon", there is
really no ambiguity or vagueness - the ONLY interpretation we wanted
was the gapped one. What we want to do is find something that will
restrict the application of the vague rule to the cases where it is
needed "atama-ga yoku naru hon", "sakana-wo yaku nioi" . We haven't
done that yet (^_^). We are also interested in how often we can get
the correct selection using the stochastic model and treebank - just
because we get the same ambiguity everytime doesn't mean it has to be
ranked the same. In fact, I would like to try the same with topic at
some stage...
However, I realise that we may not reach consensus here, and suggest
that we might consider a tiny fork - have an experimental hen.tdl and
two scripts, one which doesn't load that one (ascript) and one that
does (nscript) so we can keep the wierd stuff separate.
Can I widen this discussion to include my group here + tim and a
couple of others?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Tim: We're inviting you to join in a discussion of the treatment of
relative clauses]
[Francis: Please also forward to your colleagues there.]
I'm (still?) skeptical about the claim that "akai hon" is completely
unambiguous. I'd be happy to believe that there is one strongly preferred
reading, but can it really never have the other(s)? What about a
context in which the interlocutors are trying to choose between some
childrens books, with the text written in different colors... they've
been discussing them for a while, and finally say "akai hon ga
yominikui" meaning "moji ga akai hon ga yominikui". Or some such.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
That is a different ambiguity/vagueness. It exists for English as well,
and as far as I know for any language in which you ascribe properties
(i.e. all of them). Even in the most salient interpretation it isn't
normally the whole book that is red, but only the cover. I would be
happy (although not ecstatic) to give the same parse to a book with a
red cover, a book with red type and a book about communists...
However, in the atama-ga yoku naru hon/sakana-wo yaku nioi examples (and
more troublingly to me the kinou katta hon) the modified noun is NOT an
argument of the verb (actually, at least in the last case, I would like
it to be, with a sort of adjuncts are arguments analysis (but I
digress)).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps it's worth digging around in a corpus for better counterexamples...
Anyway, it seems to me that Melanie & I are objecting to (what we see
as) extraneous ambiguity in parsing, whereas Bondo-san-tachi are
objecting to (what they see as) extraneous ambiguity in
interpretation. As a grammar engineering, I know where I stand on the
issue.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would prefer to see it as us taking the mono-stratal claim that HPSG
makes more seriously. It seems to me that whether a constituent is an
argument or not is something that a grammar should distinguish. As a
grammar engineer, I can see why you don't want to make a distinction
that the grammar will never decide, and am in full sympathy. In the
medium term (as soon as one of has the insight), our goal was to find a
way to restrict the vague rule from even applying to "akai hon". Then
it would not be a spurious ambiguity, and this discussion becomes
unnecessary. If I recall correctly the topic-like (head-restrictive)
analyses are actually the least common, and normally have a fairly
restrictive interpretation (resultative). A quick look at Tim's MA
shows 84% gapped (includes non-SBJ/OBJ) vs 14% head-restrictive
(includes examples where I think the noun can subcategorize for a
clause). So I would rather get gapping constructions right than
head-restrictive ones. As a non-grammar engineer, I calculate that
allowing for some non-sbj/obj arguments and locative/temporal, I would
expect a grammar that returns analyses with the gapped analysis is going
to give the correct analysis more often than one that claims all
relative clauses are head-restrictive. Perhaps the real problem is
that, although we understand that the topic-analysis is meant to be a
superset of the gapped and head-restrictive analyses, it just seems too
vague for a precise grammar.
In a different line of argument (orthogonal to the first), I argue that
if you think of the symbolic grammar AND the stochastic model together
as making up the grammar that we are engineering then we can tolerate
kinds of ambiguity that we wouldn't otherwise. In this case - the
symbolic grammar and language model will learn to disprefer the vague
rule, prefer the subject for intransitive and object for transitive,
maybe modulo some specific variations based on certain verb/argument
correlations. This could, of course, be done as part of a separate
interpretation module. However, is seems to be something on the level I
want in my treebank.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> However, I realise that we may not reach consensus here, and suggest
>> that we might consider a tiny fork - have an experimental hen.tdl and
>> two scripts, one which doesn't load that one (ascript) and one that
>> does (nscript) so we can keep the wierd stuff separate.
That would be fine, but I'd rather convince you
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
And vice versa. Unfortunately, from a practical point of view, we will
probably have to have two scripts anyway as our default is not to call
chasen (we don't want the analyses to potentially change if the chasen
dictionary/model changes).
I think that is as convincing as I can be without going back and
re-reading about relative clauses, and all my notes/books on them are at
work so I will stop here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHASHI
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If all relative clauses are parsed as non-gapped, (1a) is necessarily
parsed with the relative clause's subject being (phonetically null)
pronoun, pro, as in (1b), even if (1a) is intended to mean something
like (1c).
(1) a. hon wo katta hito
b. [pro hon wo katta] hito
c. a man who bought a book
However, if (1a)'s interpretation is (1c), that is, its relative
clause's subject and the relative head are co-referencial (as
indicated with ``_i" in (2)), the subject is never a pronoun.
(2) * [kare_i ga hon wo katta] hito_i
I would say that the analysis that all relative clauses are non-gapped
ones would predict something like (2).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an interesting point. I think there may be a way out
of it though. We are constraining the head noun to be related
to the rest of the clause by a topic relation. So, if (3) is
also ungrammatical, I'd say (2) is out for the same reasons (on
our analysis):
(3) hito_i-ha kare_i-ga hon wo katta
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Francis:
>> That is a different ambiguity/vagueness. It exists for English as well,
>> and as far as I know for any language in which you ascribe properties
>> (i.e. all of them). Even in the most salient interpretation it isn't
>> normally the whole book that is red, but only the cover. I would be
>> happy (although not ecstatic) to give the same parse to a book with a
>> red cover, a book with red type and a book about communists...
Okay - point taken. But I think we could come up with better
examples. The empirical question is, are there really RelCl+N strings
that can't be given the head-restrictive (topic-like) interpretation
in any context? And if the answer is yes, what properties do they
have in common that we can leverage in the analysis?
>> Francis:
>> However, in the atama-ga yoku naru hon/sakana-wo yaku nioi examples (and
>> more troublingly to me the kinou katta hon) the modified noun is NOT an
>> argument of the verb (actually, at least in the last case, I would like
>> it to be, with a sort of adjuncts are arguments analysis (but I
>> digress)).
It seems to me that sakana-wo yaku nioi might conceivably be a case of
the noun selecting the relative clause. I seem to remember reading
somewhere (or maybe just imagining once before) that nioi, oto, etc
land in the same class as fact, idea, etc in Japanese. As for kinou
katta hon, do you mean hon wo katta hi? We'll need an
adjunct-extraction analysis for the English equivalents (the day I
bought the book), and presumably could use something similar for
Japanese, if we're going down that path.
>> Francis:
>> Tim or Chashi may have them at their fingertips.
I'd love to see some, if it's not too much trouble. Perhaps hard
to search for in a corpus, though.
>>> Francis:
> I would prefer to see it as us taking the mono-stratal claim that HPSG
>> makes more seriously. It seems to me that whether a constituent is an
>> argument or not is something that a grammar should distinguish. As a
I don't think that my position runs counter to the mono-stratal claim.
It's true that HPSG builds a single representation for a surface string,
including syntactic, semantic (and ideally pragmatic) information. But
the semantic representations always require further interpretation
(that's just how language works), and furthermore there is plenty of
work in HPSG that relies on underspecified semantic representations
to represent certain ambiguities rather than building separate structures
for each one (cf. the MRS treatment of scope ambiguities). (Likewise,
I wouldn't expect anyone to handle pronoun resolution in the grammar,
with the possible exception of reflexives.)
Now, if the grammar of Japanese does in fact distinguish whether
something is an argument or not, than our implemented grammars should
do so, too. If there is no syntactic reflex of the difference, I'd
rather leave it up to interpretation, on the model of pronoun resolution.
The other reason I prefer the topic-analysis is that it gives only one
parse for each relative clause. If you're going to allow for all
different kinds of gapped arguments, as well as locative/temporal
adverbs, given the prevalence of pro-drop, you're going to get lots of
analyses for each one, and we're not going to be able to distinguish
them syntactically. (Although maybe sortal constraints would give us
some headway?)
>> Francis:
>> In a different line of argument (orthogonal to the first), I argue that
>> if you think of the symbolic grammar AND the stochastic model together
>> as making up the grammar that we are engineering then we can tolerate
>> kinds of ambiguity that we wouldn't otherwise. In this case - the
>> symbolic grammar and language model will learn to disprefer the vague
>> rule, prefer the subject for intransitive and object for transitive,
>> maybe modulo some specific variations based on certain verb/argument
>> correlations. This could, of course, be done as part of a separate
>> interpretation module. However, is seems to be something on the level I
>> want in my treebank.
Speaking from a purely practical level once again, while this sounds good
for ambiguity resolution in practical applications, it doesn't solve
the problem of dealing with all that ambiguity while in the process
of grammar engineering. There's enough ambiguity around as it is --
and the treebank-based parse selection techniques are wonderful -- but
that doesn't mean I want to throw in any more if I can help it.
Alright, to sum up and try to sound like a bit less of a curmudgeon
this morning: Until someone comes up with a characterization of a
class of relative clauses that strictly disallow the head-restrictive
interpretation, I'll continue to believe that the actual state of
affairs is that both analyses (gapped and head-restrictive) actually
apply in all cases. Furthermore, since there are usually multiple
possibilities for the gapped kind in any given case, leading to an
interpretation problem anyway, I prefer to only implement the
head-restrictive kind. (However, if stochastic parse selection can
get us to the right interpretation most of the time--and do so better
or more easily than whatever the relevant algorithm is in some
back-end trying to interpret our representations--I might be talked
out of this position.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> It seems to me that sakana-wo yaku nioi might conceivably be a case of
>> the noun selecting the relative clause. I seem to remember reading
>> somewhere (or maybe just imagining once before) that nioi, oto, etc
>> land in the same class as fact, idea, etc in Japanese.
The Matsumoto claim is that jijitsu, riyuu, mokuteki and whatnot select for
the relative clause, whereas with nioi, oto, etc, the noun and clause mutually
select for each other. I'm not sure that I agree with this analysis, but do
think that there is something to be said for the mutual selection argument for
RCCs like:
Kennedy-ga ansatsu-sareta yokutoshi
>> Emily:
>> I'd love to see some, if it's not too much trouble. Perhaps hard
>> to search for in a corpus, though.
One example which, I believe, is unambiguously gapping is:
Kim-ga nobeta riyuu
noberu is funny in that it requires an overt direct object (somewhat like the
"put" requiring an overt locative), such that the non-gapping interpretation
becomes ungrammatical. Most locatives and temporals resist the topic analysis
(as in they cannot be true topics), but it seems that you are on the trail of
these. You also get very weird pragmatic effects in trying to interpret RCCs
such as:
hoN-o watashita aite
as anything other than gapping. The ga/no examples were things like:
Kim-ga watashita hito
Kim-no watashita hito
In the first case, you get two interpretations: the person Kim handed (X) to,
and the person Kim handed (over/to X), whereas in the second case, you only get
the object-gapping interpretation (the person Kim handed (over/to X). Note that
this is a defeasible constraint:
Kim-no kagi-o watashita hito
means the person Kim handed the keys to.
>> Emily:
>> I don't think that my position runs counter to the mono-stratal claim.
>> It's true that HPSG builds a single representation for a surface string,
>> including syntactic, semantic (and ideally pragmatic) information. But
>> the semantic representations always require further interpretation
>> (that's just how language works), and furthermore there is plenty of
>> work in HPSG that relies on underspecified semantic representations
>> to represent certain ambiguities rather than building separate structures
>> for each one (cf. the MRS treatment of scope ambiguities). (Likewise,
>> I wouldn't expect anyone to handle pronoun resolution in the grammar,
>> with the possible exception of reflexives.)
>>
>> Now, if the grammar of Japanese does in fact distinguish whether
>> something is an argument or not, than our implemented grammars should
>> do so, too. If there is no syntactic reflex of the difference, I'd
>> rather leave it up to interpretation, on the model of pronoun resolution.
Based on my earlier work on relative clauses, what I'd be interested in is the
ability to read the valence saturation properties directly off the MRS, and I
guess you get this directly from the ARGS list. This would then give you the
range of unfilled argument positions to test for possible gapping.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>> Okay - point taken. But I think we could come up with better
>> examples. The empirical question is, are there really RelCl+N strings
>> that can't be given the head-restrictive (topic-like) interpretation
>> in any context? And if the answer is yes, what properties do they
>> have in common that we can leverage in the analysis?
Just to confirm, the topic-like interpretation (as given by the
original JACY) is meant to be a semantic superset of the
gapped-analysis and the head-restrictive analysis isn't it? Which
interpretation is correct is left to the interpretation module.
If we split RelCl+N into two classes
- gapping - (with various possible arguments)
- head-restrictive or attributive (Tim identifies 7 semantic types)
I still can't think of a head-restrictive interpretation of "akai hon"
that makes sense. Maybe a real linguist could?
>> Francis:
>>> > However, in the atama-ga yoku naru hon/sakana-wo yaku nioi examples (and
>>> > more troublingly to me the kinou katta hon) the modified noun is NOT an
>>> > argument of the verb (actually, at least in the last case, I would like
>>> > it to be, with a sort of adjuncts are arguments analysis (but I
>>> > digress)).
>
>> Emily:
>> It seems to me that sakana-wo yaku nioi might conceivably be a case of
>> the noun selecting the relative clause. I seem to remember reading
>> somewhere (or maybe just imagining once before) that nioi, oto, etc
>> land in the same class as fact, idea, etc in Japanese. As for kinou
>> katta hon, do you mean hon wo katta hi? We'll need an
Yes. Sorry.
>> Emily:
>> adjunct-extraction analysis for the English equivalents (the day I
>> bought the book), and presumably could use something similar for
>> Japanese, if we're going down that path.
Matsumoto also argues for an adjunct-extraction analysis for "atama-ga
yoku naru hon" <=> "hon-ni-yotte atama-ga yoku naru" to lead us even
further down a very slippery slope.
>> Emily:
>> I'd love to see some, if it's not too much trouble. Perhaps hard
>> to search for in a corpus, though.
I will be extra attuned to them as I go through our treebank. We
should be able to pull out all examples of each type easily, although
I am not 100% confident that my judgments were always consistent.
>> Emily:
>>>> > > Anyway, it seems to me that Melanie & I are objecting to (what we see
>>>> > > as) extraneous ambiguity in parsing, whereas Bondo-san-tachi are
>>>> > > objecting to (what they see as) extraneous ambiguity in
>>>> > > interpretation. As a grammar engineer, I know where I stand on the
>>>> > > issue.
>>
>> Francis:
>>> >
>>> > I would prefer to see it as us taking the mono-stratal claim that HPSG
>>> > makes more seriously. It seems to me that whether a constituent is an
>>> > argument or not is something that a grammar should distinguish. As a
>
>> Emily:
>> I don't think that my position runs counter to the mono-stratal claim.
>> It's true that HPSG builds a single representation for a surface string,
>> including syntactic, semantic (and ideally pragmatic) information. But
>> the semantic representations always require further interpretation
>> (that's just how language works), and furthermore there is plenty of
>> work in HPSG that relies on underspecified semantic representations
>> to represent certain ambiguities rather than building separate structures
>> for each one (cf. the MRS treatment of scope ambiguities). (Likewise,
>> I wouldn't expect anyone to handle pronoun resolution in the grammar,
>> with the possible exception of reflexives.)
>>
True.
>> Emily:
>> Now, if the grammar of Japanese does in fact distinguish whether
>> something is an argument or not, than our implemented grammars should
>> do so, too. If there is no syntactic reflex of the difference, I'd
>> rather leave it up to interpretation, on the model of pronoun resolution.
I will keep trying to come up with a syntactic difference then.
>> Francis:
>>> > grammar engineer, I can see why you don't want to make a distinction
>>> > that the grammar will never decide, and am in full sympathy. In the
>>> > medium term (as soon as one of has the insight), our goal was to find a
>>> > way to restrict the vague rule from even applying to "akai hon". Then
>>> > it would not be a spurious ambiguity, and this discussion becomes
>>> > unnecessary. If I recall correctly the topic-like (head-restrictive)
>>> > analyses are actually the least common, and normally have a fairly
>>> > restrictive interpretation (resultative). A quick look at Tim's MA
>>> > shows 84% gapped (includes non-SBJ/OBJ) vs 14% head-restrictive
>>> > (includes examples where I think the noun can subcategorize for a
>>> > clause). So I would rather get gapping constructions right than
>>> > head-restrictive ones. As a non-grammar engineer, I calculate that
>>> > allowing for some non-sbj/obj arguments and locative/temporal, I would
>>> > expect a grammar that returns analyses with the gapped analysis is going
>>> > to give the correct analysis more often than one that claims all
>>> > relative clauses are head-restrictive. Perhaps the real problem is
>>> > that, although we understand that the topic-analysis is meant to be a
>>> > superset of the gapped and head-restrictive analyses, it just seems too
>>> > vague for a precise grammar.
>
>>
>> Emily:
>> The other reason I prefer the topic-analysis is that it gives only one
>> parse for each relative clause. If you're going to allow for all
>> different kinds of gapped arguments, as well as locative/temporal
>> adverbs, given the prevalence of pro-drop, you're going to get lots of
>> analyses for each one, and we're not going to be able to distinguish
>> them syntactically. (Although maybe sortal constraints would give us
>> some headway?)
And this makes a big difference tree banking. Especially with the
possible adjunct-extraction it gets very hairy quickly. We tried to
solve this with sortal constraints in ALT and found them to be
effective, but hard to do right. To capture the full range of use we
really needed preferences rather than constraints. Which I suppose
pushes us toward interpretation...
>> Francis:
>>> > In a different line of argument (orthogonal to the first), I argue that
>>> > if you think of the symbolic grammar AND the stochastic model together
>>> > as making up the grammar that we are engineering then we can tolerate
>>> > kinds of ambiguity that we wouldn't otherwise. In this case - the
>>> > symbolic grammar and language model will learn to disprefer the vague
>>> > rule, prefer the subject for intransitive and object for transitive,
>>> > maybe modulo some specific variations based on certain verb/argument
>>> > correlations. This could, of course, be done as part of a separate
>>> > interpretation module. However, is seems to be something on the level I
>>> > want in my treebank.
>
>>
>> Emily:
>> Speaking from a purely practical level once again, while this sounds good
>> for ambiguity resolution in practical applications, it doesn't solve
>> the problem of dealing with all that ambiguity while in the process
>> of grammar engineering. There's enough ambiguity around as it is --
>> and the treebank-based parse selection techniques are wonderful -- but
>> that doesn't mean I want to throw in any more if I can help it.
Agreed.
>> Emily:
>> this morning: Until someone comes up with a characterization of a
>> class of relative clauses that strictly disallow the head-restrictive
>> interpretation, I'll continue to believe that the actual state of
>> affairs is that both analyses (gapped and head-restrictive) actually
>> apply in all cases.
Can you show me what a head-restrictive analysis of "akai hon" looks
like?
>> Emily:
>> Furthermore, since there are usually multiple possibilities for the
>> gapped kind in any given case, leading to an interpretation problem
>> anyway, I prefer to only implement the head-restrictive kind.
A reasonable choice.
>> Emily:
>> (However, if stochastic parse selection can get us to the right
>> interpretation most of the time--and do so better or more easily
>> than whatever the relevant algorithm is in some back-end trying to
>> interpret our representations--I might be talked out of this
>> position.)
However, in order to test this we need to (1) build a tree bank with
the gapped relative clause rule - which we are doing and (2) implement
a back end to interpret (at least) relative clauses - which we are not
at present ...
A few numbers (from Baldwin 2001) data from the EDR corpus:
subject gap: 64%
object gap: 7%
Locative/temporal gap: 4%
Co-actor gap: 1%
Content attributive: 14% (i.e. nouns that take arguments)
Idiom/exclusive RCC: 5% (lexically governed)
All others < 1% each
resultative gap (the classic "sakana-wo yaku nioi") 0.1%
Assuming Tim as the interpretor to beat: just under 90%.
I would like to look at our corpus (which admittedly has a very skewed
collection of relative clauses) and preferably one or more others and
see what proportion are tagged as gapped/non-gapped using the current
grammar (or a slightly better one that also has gapped
temporal/locative and some more clause taking nouns). Then see how
well we do with stochastic parse selection. To do this of course I
will need to use the gapped rule...
For the time being, Melanie has put the rules in a separate file.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> One example which, I believe, is unambiguously gapping is:
>>
>> Kim-ga nobeta riyuu
>>
>> noberu is funny in that it requires an overt direct object (somewhat like the
>> "put" requiring an overt locative), such that the non-gapping interpretation
>> becomes ungrammatical. Most locatives and temporals resist the topic analysis
>> (as in they cannot be true topics), but it seems that you are on the trail of
>> these.
Both Tanaka and Amano found "Kim-ga nobeta riyuu" to be clearly
ambiguous, with the object gap and content-clause readings.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philistines! I find this somewhat surprising, and had managed to convince
Uchiyama-san yesterday that only the object gap reading was possible. I'd be
intrigued to have a sentential context in which they think that the
content-clause reading comes out. Sorry, I realise that this is heading off in
a tangent from the main point of the discussion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> You also get very weird pragmatic effects in trying to interpret
>> RCCs such as:
>>
>> hoN-o watashita aite
>>
>> as anything other than gapping. The ga/no examples were things like:
>>
>> Kim-ga watashita hito
>> Kim-no watashita hito
>>
>> In the first case, you get two interpretations: the person Kim handed (X) to,
>> and the person Kim handed (over/to X), whereas in the second case, you only get
>> the object-gapping interpretation (the person Kim handed (over/to X). Note that
>> this is a defeasible constraint:
>>
>> Kim-no kagi-o watashita hito
>>
>> means the person Kim handed the keys to.
Hmmm, interesting, although I don't immediately see a way to capture
that difference.
>>> > I don't think that my position runs counter to the mono-stratal claim.
>>> > It's true that HPSG builds a single representation for a surface string,
>>> > including syntactic, semantic (and ideally pragmatic) information. But
>>> > the semantic representations always require further interpretation
>>> > (that's just how language works), and furthermore there is plenty of
>>> > work in HPSG that relies on underspecified semantic representations
>>> > to represent certain ambiguities rather than building separate structures
>>> > for each one (cf. the MRS treatment of scope ambiguities). (Likewise,
>>> > I wouldn't expect anyone to handle pronoun resolution in the grammar,
>>> > with the possible exception of reflexives.)
>>> >
>>> > Now, if the grammar of Japanese does in fact distinguish whether
>>> > something is an argument or not, than our implemented grammars should
>>> > do so, too. If there is no syntactic reflex of the difference, I'd
>>> > rather leave it up to interpretation, on the model of pronoun resolution.
>
>>
>> Based on my earlier work on relative clauses, what I'd be interested in is the
>> ability to read the valence saturation properties directly off the MRS, and I
>> guess you get this directly from the ARGS list. This would then give you the
>> range of unfilled argument positions to test for possible gapping.
I am still very bad at reading MRSs but I believe that currently JACY
gives the same analysis for -ha marked topics and embedded clauses
(the noun is linked to the verb with a "wa" relation) although the
top is different. I would have thought it may be useful to
distinguish these from the point of view of an interpreter.
Actually, looking closely, for topic "wa" (ha-kaku) the ARG1 is the
noun, and the ARG2 the event. For the relative clause "wa", the ARG1
is the event, and the ARG2 the noun.
Melanie, Emily:
Is this deliberate?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003-12-04
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Emily wrote:
>
>>> > I'd love to see some, if it's not too much trouble. Perhaps hard
>>> > to search for in a corpus, though.
>
>>
>> One example which, I believe, is unambiguously gapping is:
>>
>> Kim-ga nobeta riyuu
>>
>> noberu is funny in that it requires an overt direct object (somewhat like the
>> "put" requiring an overt locative), such that the non-gapping interpretation
>> becomes ungrammatical. Most locatives and temporals resist the topic analysis
>> (as in they cannot be true topics), but it seems that you are on the trail of
>> these.
But, if this is indeed unambiguously gapping (see Francis's message),
it doesn't argue for constraining the topic-like relative clause rule,
since that reading would be ruled out by the fact that nobeta can't
appear without something explicit happening to its object. On the other
hand, it does argue for also including a gap-based relative clause rule.
I've always (well, since talking this over with you in 2001 or so at
least) believed that the linguistically correct thing is to include
both. Practically, I'm still resisting
>> You also get very weird pragmatic effects in trying to interpret RCCs
>> such as:
>>
>> hoN-o watashita aite
>>
>> as anything other than gapping. The ga/no examples were things like:
>>
>> Kim-ga watashita hito
>> Kim-no watashita hito
>>
>> In the first case, you get two interpretations: the person Kim handed (X) to,
>> and the person Kim handed (over/to X), whereas in the second case, you only get
>> the object-gapping interpretation (the person Kim handed (over/to X). Note that
>> this is a defeasible constraint:
>>
>> Kim-no kagi-o watashita hito
>>
>> means the person Kim handed the keys to.
The defeasibility here makes this look very much like a pragmatic
effect, as you say, and therefore probably not one we want to model
in the grammar. (Rather, it should be handled in some "interpretation"
component.)
>> Emily wrote:
>
>>> > I don't think that my position runs counter to the mono-stratal claim.
>>> > It's true that HPSG builds a single representation for a surface string,
>>> > including syntactic, semantic (and ideally pragmatic) information. But
>>> > the semantic representations always require further interpretation
>>> > (that's just how language works), and furthermore there is plenty of
>>> > work in HPSG that relies on underspecified semantic representations
>>> > to represent certain ambiguities rather than building separate structures
>>> > for each one (cf. the MRS treatment of scope ambiguities). (Likewise,
>>> > I wouldn't expect anyone to handle pronoun resolution in the grammar,
>>> > with the possible exception of reflexives.)
>>> >
>>> > Now, if the grammar of Japanese does in fact distinguish whether
>>> > something is an argument or not, than our implemented grammars should
>>> > do so, too. If there is no syntactic reflex of the difference, I'd
>>> > rather leave it up to interpretation, on the model of pronoun resolution.
>
>>
>> Based on my earlier work on relative clauses, what I'd be interested
>> in is the ability to read the valence saturation properties directly
>> off the MRS, and I guess you get this directly from the ARGS
>> list. This would then give you the range of unfilled argument
>> positions to test for possible gapping.
This sounds (to me) more compatible with the topic-only version of
the grammar than it is with one that implements the different gapping
possibilities. Is that what you mean? On the other hand, it also
assumes that we're basically not looking at any long-distance dependencies.
If the argument is a gapped one (rather than just topic-linked), it
belongs with the highest verb. Is that defensible (even statistically)?
Or am I missing something?
To put it differently, what about examples like this one:
(1) kinou akai to omotta hon
(Actually, I'm not sure if that should be akai to akakatta, please
correct me someone...) Is that parallel to "akai hon" in its
range of interpretations, i.e., would Bondo-san-tachi feel that
the topic-like analysis is similarly lacking in precision?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>> To put it differently, what about examples like this one:
>>
>> (1) kinou akai to omotta hon
>>
>> (Actually, I'm not sure if that should be akai to akakatta, please
>> correct me someone...) Is that parallel to "akai hon" in its
>> range of interpretations, i.e., would Bondo-san-tachi feel that
>> the topic-like analysis is similarly lacking in precision?
Yes. My colleagues, and for what it's worth me, find only one
possible interpretation - hon is the ARG1 of akai.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cHIKARA HASHIMOTO
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's difficult for me to come up with situations where "akai hon" has
interpretation where the one which is red is not "hon". Likewise, in
(1) the one which is red is always "hon", I guess.
If we describe the situation where the one which is red is something
other than "hon", for instance, the building in which the publisher is
located, then we say something like below.
(a) sono syuppansya no biru ga akai hon
publisher
(b) kinou sono syuppansya no biru ga akai to omotta hon
However, "akai hon" and "kinou akai to omotta hon" have no such
interpretations.
But It's possible it's just pragmatic and other Japanese might judge
differently.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interesting. What do you think of (c)?
(c) Kono hon ha syuppansya no biru ga akai (to omotta).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cHIKARA HASHIMOTO
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think (c) is completely acceptable.
But "Kono hon ha akai (to omotta)" is difficult to construe
in the same way as (c).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AKIRA OHTANI
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Question.
At Mon, 01 Dec 2003 16:13:46 +0900,
HASHIMOTO Chikara wrote:
>> clause's subject and the relative head are co-referencial (as
>> indicated with ``_i" in (2)), the subject is never a pronoun.
>>
>> (2) * [kare_i ga hon wo katta] hito_i
>>
>> I would say that the analysis that all relative clauses are non-gapped
>> ones would predict something like (2).
(I) *Ken-ga [keeki-ga teeburu-no ue-ni aru mono]-o tot-te tabe-ta.
-nom cake-nom table-gen on be NO -acc pick up ate
Sentence (I) should be ungrammatical in the same way from
sentence/phrase that hashimoto pointed out.
Compare (I) and (II):
(II) Ken-ga [keeki-ga teeburu-no ue-ni aru no]-o tot-te tabe-ta.
-nom cake-nom table-gen on be NO -acc pick up ate
`There was a cake on the table and Ken picked it up and ate it.'
There are head-internal relative clauses in Japanese, exemplified by
examples like (II). I don't know the literature that this construction
is subject to a number of constraints relating to syntax and semantics.
Is NO a kind of dimmy noun?
Are there any semantic relation between keeki and NO, aren't they?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd be inclined to treat the internally headed relative clauses
as a separate construction all together, rather than try to handle
them with the same machinery as externally headed relative clauses.
That said, we'll still need an explanation for the ungrammaticality
of (I), given the existence of the topic-like (head-restrictive)
relative clause constructions. I think it's basically semantic:
that is, once again, I'll bet the following is ungrammatical:
(III) mono-ha keeki-ga teeburu-no ue-ni aru.
Emily
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>> I'd be inclined to treat the internally headed relative clauses
>> as a separate construction all together, rather than try to handle
>> them with the same machinery as externally headed relative clauses.
I agree we should treat internally headed ones separately.
>>
>> That said, we'll still need an explanation for the ungrammaticality
>> of (I), given the existence of the topic-like (head-restrictive)
>> relative clause constructions. I think it's basically semantic:
>> that is, once again, I'll bet the following is ungrammatical:
>>
>> (III) mono-ha keeki-ga teeburu-no ue-ni aru.
It's pretty bad for me.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
MELANIE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
first let me try to start to set up restrictions for an example like "akai hon":
- the verb is intransitive (i.e., "taberu mizumi" would be ambiguous)
- there is no other subject (i.e., "me ga akai hito" would have to have the
topic interpretation. )
Is that correct? Are there more restrictions?
Another thought (that's where Ann comes in):
If we have cases here, where we cannot decide on the syntactic level, if
something is an adjunct or an argument; and if it's an argument, if it's an arg1
or arg2, shouldn't that fit well with the RMRS idea of underspecifying argument
positions?
For "tabeta mizumi"
Something like
ARGn mizumi
in the relation of the verb "tabeta"? What would be missing here, is an MRS that
allows to state this uncertainty. Ann, we have talked about examples of topics
in Japanese, where as well one cannot decide the argument position of an entity.
How would one encode that in the grammar in order to get the ARGn
interpretation in the RMRS right?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
n Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 04:08:12PM +0100, Melanie Siegel wrote:
>> Melanie:
>> first let me try to start to set up restrictions for an example like "akai hon":
>>
>> - the verb is intransitive (i.e., "taberu mizumi" would be ambiguous)
>> - there is no other subject (i.e., "me ga akai hito" would have to have the
>> topic interpretation. )
>>
>> Is that correct? Are there more restrictions?
I think it might be a little different. Presumably, if there are
intransitive verbs functioning as relative clauses that actually
resist the topic-like relative clause construction, then there are
also transitive verbs that do so. Whether or not they end up leading
to ambiguous relative clauses wouldn't depend on whether there is
also pro-drop of some argument in addition to the gapped argument.
>> Another thought (that's where Ann comes in): If we have cases here,
>> where we cannot decide on the syntactic level, if something is an
>> adjunct or an argument; and if it's an argument, if it's an arg1 or
>> arg2, shouldn't that fit well with the RMRS idea of underspecifying
>> argument positions?
>> For "tabeta mizumi"
>> Something like
>>
>> ARGn mizumi
>>
>> in the relation of the verb "tabeta"? What would be missing here, is
>> an MRS that allows to state this uncertainty. Ann, we have talked
>> about examples of topics in Japanese, where as well one cannot
>> decide the argument position of an entity. How would one encode
>> that in the grammar in order to get the ARGn interpretation in the
>> RMRS right?
This would be a nice way of dealing with the ambiguity caused
by pro-drop, but if we go this way, I think we'd have to also find
a way to include adjuncts as well as arguments...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Melanie:
>
>>> > Hi,
>>> > first let me try to start to set up restrictions for an example like "akai hon":
>>> >
>>> > - the verb is intransitive (i.e., "taberu mizumi" would be ambiguous)
>>> > - there is no other subject (i.e., "me ga akai hito" would have to have the
>>> > topic interpretation. )
>>> >
>>> > Is that correct? Are there more restrictions?
>
>>
>> I think it might be a little different. Presumably, if there are
>> intransitive verbs functioning as relative clauses that actually
>> resist the topic-like relative clause construction, then there are
>> also transitive verbs that do so. Whether or not they end up leading
>> to ambiguous relative clauses wouldn't depend on whether there is
>> also pro-drop of some argument in addition to the gapped argument.
As far as resultative-style head-restrictive clauses go (the sakana-ga
yakeru-nioi case, which seems to me to be the really problematic one),
it seems to me to be restricted to non-stative predicates -
processes, accomplishments etc. But my intuitions are not so clear, I
need to look at more data.
>>> > Another thought (that's where Ann comes in): If we have cases here,
>>> > where we cannot decide on the syntactic level, if something is an
>>> > adjunct or an argument; and if it's an argument, if it's an arg1 or
>>> > arg2, shouldn't that fit well with the RMRS idea of underspecifying
>>> > argument positions?
>>> > For "tabeta mizumi"
>>> > Something like
>>> >
>>> > ARGn mizumi
That would be nice.
>>> > in the relation of the verb "tabeta"? What would be missing here, is
>>> > an MRS that allows to state this uncertainty. Ann, we have talked
>>> > about examples of topics in Japanese, where as well one cannot
>>> > decide the argument position of an entity. How would one encode
>>> > that in the grammar in order to get the ARGn interpretation in the
>>> > RMRS right?
>
>>
>> This would be a nice way of dealing with the ambiguity caused
>> by pro-drop, but if we go this way, I think we'd have to also find
>> a way to include adjuncts as well as arguments...
Another strength of RMRS I believe.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Just to confirm, the topic-like interpretation (as given by the
>> original JACY) is meant to be a semantic superset of the
>> gapped-analysis and the head-restrictive analysis isn't it? Which
>> interpretation is correct is left to the interpretation module.
Yes -- although I'm afraid I've been using the term somewhat ambiguously
in this discussion. On the one hand, I've used it to refer to the
non-gapped (i.e., head-restrictive) analysis, and on the other to
the semantic superset idea. Sorry about that.
>> Francis:
>> If we split RelCl+N into two classes
>> - gapping - (with various possible arguments)
>> - head-restrictive or attributive (Tim identifies 7 semantic types)
>>
>> I still can't think of a head-restrictive interpretation of "akai hon"
>> that makes sense. Maybe a real linguist could?
Well, as you pointed out in an earlier message, the metonymy problem
makes it hard to think of examples. Basically, we'd need to look at
instances of "kono hon-ha akai desu" and find ones that aren't
basically "kono hon-ga akai desu" and then make corresponding relative
clauses. There's a separate issue which we haven't brought up
so far, which is the validity of treating adjectives as relatives at
all (we don't for English). Perhaps that explains why "akai hon"
and "red book" seem to have the same set of possible interpretations?
(In the JaCY grammar, we had last I checked a very small number of
pre-nominal modifiers that behaved like adjectives and not like
relative clauses. One was tan naru, since it can't be predicative.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think that "nurete-iru hon" (wet book) is as unambiguous for me - it
isn't so much the fact that the part-of-speech is an adjective as it
is that the predicate is stative.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an interesting development, and should be confirmed ^_^;
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't think of any instances of "kono hon-ha akai desu" that aren't
basically "kono hon-ga akai desu". But I'll keep trying.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>>> > adjunct-extraction analysis for the English equivalents (the day I
>>> > bought the book), and presumably could use something similar for
>>> > Japanese, if we're going down that path.
>
>> Francis:
>> Matsumoto also argues for an adjunct-extraction analysis for "atama-ga
>> yoku naru hon" <=> "hon-ni-yotte atama-ga yoku naru" to lead us even
>> further down a very slippery slope.
Which Matsumoto are we talking about?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yoshiko. In "noun-modifying constructions"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Francis:
>> I will be extra attuned to them as I go through our treebank. We
>> should be able to pull out all examples of each type easily, although
>> I am not 100% confident that my judgments were always consistent.
Great!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what I should really do is get back to debugging infl.tdl so I can
redo our treebank and then get the data ... I suspect I won't be able
to extract it this week, and then I am taking Dec 9-25th off (and
27th-31st is a holiday) so I am afraid it looks like January.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sounds like a good project for the new year. I'm impressed that you've
had the time to keep up with this conversation so far! (I'm barely
hanging on...)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>>> > The other reason I prefer the topic-analysis is that it gives only one
>>> > parse for each relative clause. If you're going to allow for all
>>> > different kinds of gapped arguments, as well as locative/temporal
>>> > adverbs, given the prevalence of pro-drop, you're going to get lots of
>>> > analyses for each one, and we're not going to be able to distinguish
>>> > them syntactically. (Although maybe sortal constraints would give us
>>> > some headway?)
>
>> Francis:
>> And this makes a big difference tree banking. Especially with the
>> possible adjunct-extraction it gets very hairy quickly. We tried to
>> solve this with sortal constraints in ALT and found them to be
>> effective, but hard to do right. To capture the full range of use we
>> really needed preferences rather than constraints. Which I suppose
>> pushes us toward interpretation...
Indeedy
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although of course we would still need interpretation after the
grammar gives us a choice between gapping and attributive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Right - so why not push it all off into interpretation?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>>> > Alright, to sum up and try to sound like a bit less of a curmudgeon
>>> > this morning: Until someone comes up with a characterization of a
>>> > class of relative clauses that strictly disallow the head-restrictive
>>> > interpretation, I'll continue to believe that the actual state of
>>> > affairs is that both analyses (gapped and head-restrictive) actually
>>> > apply in all cases.
>
>> Francis:
>> Can you show me what a head-restrictive analysis of "akai hon" looks
>> like?
Syntactically, or in MRS? Like what the Japanese grammar gives.
What kind of context it makes sense in? We're still working on
that one, right?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I meant what kind of context it makes sense in. And we are still
working on that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Emily:
>>> > (However, if stochastic parse selection can get us to the right
>>> > interpretation most of the time--and do so better or more easily
>>> > than whatever the relevant algorithm is in some back-end trying to
>>> > interpret our representations--I might be talked out of this
>>> > position.)
>
>> Francis:
>> However, in order to test this we need to (1) build a tree bank with
>> the gapped relative clause rule - which we are doing and (2) implement
>> a back end to interpret (at least) relative clauses - which we are not
>> at present ...
>>
>> A few numbers (from Baldwin 2001) data from the EDR corpus:
>> subject gap: 64%
>> object gap: 7%
>> Locative/temporal gap: 4%
>> Co-actor gap: 1%
>>
>> Content attributive: 14% (i.e. nouns that take arguments)
>> Idiom/exclusive RCC: 5% (lexically governed)
>>
>> All others < 1% each
>>
>> resultative gap (the classic "sakana-wo yaku nioi") 0.1%
>>
>> Assuming Tim as the interpretor to beat: just under 90%.
>>
>> I would like to look at our corpus (which admittedly has a very skewed
>> collection of relative clauses) and preferably one or more others and
>> see what proportion are tagged as gapped/non-gapped using the current
>> grammar (or a slightly better one that also has gapped
>> temporal/locative and some more clause taking nouns). Then see how
>> well we do with stochastic parse selection. To do this of course I
>> will need to use the gapped rule...
That all sounds good.
>> For the time being, Melanie has put the rules in a separate file.
And it seems like we're maybe even converging a bit in our
views, too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think so, although we are still not in perfect harmony.
I would say we all agree on the following:
(A) Japanese relative clauses have at least two interpretations
- attributive
- gapping
(B) These can be represented by a single superset
- topic relation
[I am not sure if it gets the long distance things right]
(C) Many interpretations can not be distinguished solely with the
level of semantics that should be in a grammar
(D) We need some kind of adjunct extraction machinery
(E) We need some more clause taking nouns (jijitsu, riyuu, ...)
(F) It would be nice if we could get an underspecified ARGn
analysis
I think we disagree on the following:
(i) Some interpretations can be distinguished solely with the level of
semantics that should be in a grammar
- Francis believes this, but have not demonstrated it to my satisfaction,
let alone Emily's - I think Chikara also believes this
(ro) Even if (D) is true it is still better to have a single superset
analysis and leave interpretation to some back-end interpreter
and avoid the explosion of spurious ambiguity
- Emily's position
(ha) Even if (D) is false, we should try and return the several
analyses and annotate the preferred one in our treebank and
try to disambiguate using the stochastic model.
- Francis's position
(ni) In any case relative-clause topic and topic topic are different
enough to be labeled differently.
Francis's position
(ho) To be consistent Francis should also want to annotate the
preferred analysis of -ha marked topics in the treebank and
disambiguate using the stochastic model.
Hmm. I must admit I would like to try this...
Discussing things with Akira, Taka and Sanae yesterday came to an
ambiguous conclusion - there was a strong aesthetic feeling that the
grammar should say whether the relative clause was gapped or not.
There was also a strong feeling that akai-hon was unambiguous.
However, no-one was able to think of a way of constraining any of the
ambiguity syntactically and we all acknowledged the rational behind
the superset analysis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMILY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>(A) Japanese relative clauses have at least two interpretations
>> - attributive
>> - gapping
I guess this should be modified to "Most Japanese relative
clauses" or "In general, Japanese relative clauses..."
>(B) These can be represented by a single superset
>> - topic relation
>> [I am not sure if it gets the long distance things right]
Why not? Ha-topics can be related long-distance to embedded
verbs, right?
-- Kono hon ha akai to omotta.
>> (C) Many interpretations can not be distinguished solely with the
>> level of semantics that should be in a grammar
>>
>> (D) We need some kind of adjunct extraction machinery
>>
>> (E) We need some more clause taking nouns (jijitsu, riyuu, ...)
>>
>> (F) It would be nice if we could get an underspecified ARGn
>> analysis
>>
>> I think we disagree on the following:
>>
>> (i) Some interpretations can be distinguished solely with the level of
>> semantics that should be in a grammar
>>
>> - Francis believes this, but have not demonstrated it to my satisfaction,
>> let alone Emily's - I think Chikara also believes this
>>
>> (ro) Even if (D) is true it is still better to have a single superset
>> analysis and leave interpretation to some back-end interpreter
>> and avoid the explosion of spurious ambiguity
>> - Emily's position
>>
>> (ha) Even if (D) is false, we should try and return the several
>> analyses and annotate the preferred one in our treebank and
>> try to disambiguate using the stochastic model.
>> - Francis's position
I'm not sure I see the connection to (D) for either (ro) or
(ha), but other than that they make sense to me (as summaries).
>> (ni) In any case relative-clause topic and topic topic are different
>> enough to be labeled differently.
>> Francis's position
>>
>> (ho) To be consistent Francis should also want to annotate the
>> preferred analysis of -ha marked topics in the treebank and
>> disambiguate using the stochastic model.
>> Hmm. I must admit I would like to try this...
That would be interesting ... but talk about your extra ambiguity!!
Are you proposing a gap-based analysis of (gap-related) topics, or
some other syntactic mechanisms for producing the multiple reasons
to choose between?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Francis:
>>> > Both Tanaka and Amano found "Kim-ga nobeta riyuu" to be clearly
>>> > ambiguous, with the object gap and content-clause readings.
>
>> Tim:
>> Philistines! I find this somewhat surprising, and had managed to convince
>> Uchiyama-san yesterday that only the object gap reading was possible. I'd be
If you have to convince your informant, then your judgment is
suspect. I believe a certain Bender is vary scathing of minimalist
researchers doing this in her review in Journal of Linguistics.
>> Tim:
>> intrigued to have a sentential context in which they think that the
>> content-clause reading comes out. Sorry, I realise that this is heading off in
>> a tangent from the main point of the discussion.
Context paraphrase in English:
The reason I spoke out (nobeta) was that I was annoyed by his
attitude.
The reason that Kim (nobeta) was that she wanted to help him.
"Kim-ga nobeta riyuu-ha kare-wo tasuketakatta kara da."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCIS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My untested assumption is that the distribution of topics and the
distribution of relative clauses is different enough that an
interpreter (back-end system) will want different parameters in
resolving them. For example I am pretty sure that o-kaku is quite
rare as a topic (much less than 7%), although I can't find any data at
hand.
--