C-rule

Revision as of 14:34, 23 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")

Strings and lemmas

In the compound-formation process, the UNL^arium 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(A0,[up])VC(A1,"the ghost"); (VH("up the ghost") or VC("up the ghost"))

In complex compounds, order is to be represented by the features ">", ">>", "<" or "<<", 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)

In complex compounds, adjacency is to be represented by the adjacency features (A0, A1, ...), if inflexible

• give up the ghost = VH(A0,[up])VC(A1,"the ghost"); (adjacency must be informed because give the ghost up)
• take something into account = VA("into account")VC(NP); (adjacency must not be informed because both "take sth into account" and "take into account sth" are possible)

Syntax

Compounds may be explicitly expressed by S-rules, a formalism for describing the syntactic structure of phrases.