Adjacency

Revision as of 13:55, 20 September 2010

Adjacency is the distance between two branches in a tree structure. In the UNL^arium framework, adjacency is used to represent the structure of maximal projections and, therefore, to state the distance of constituents in relation to the head.

Values

The number of intermediate projections define the values of the adjacency in the UNL^arium framework, which are the following:

Examples

         XP
        / \
     spec XB4
          / \
        XB3  adjt2
        / \
     XB2 adjt1
     / \
   XB1 comp2
   /  \
  X  comp1

In the structure above:

• comp1 = AJ1 (there is only one projection (XB1) between comp1 and X)
• comp2 = AJ2 (there are two projections (XB1 and XB2) between comp2 and X)
• adjt1 = AJ3 (there are three projections (XB1, XB2 and XB3) between adjt1 and X)
• adjt2 = AJ4 (there are four projections (XB1, XB2, XB3, XB4) between adjt2 and X)

Dictionary

Adjacency is informed in the dictionary only in the following cases:

• Compounds that do not follow the adjacency patterns (such as "bring home the bacon", where the adjunct precedes the complement)
• Compounds that have more than one complement or more than one adjunct whose order is important (such as in "go from strength to strength")

Examples

• bring home the bacon
  • base form = bring
  • compound = +VA([home],AJ1)VC("the bacon",AJ2);
• go from strength to strength
  • base form = go
  • compound = +VA("from strenght",AJ1)VA("to strength",AJ2);

Grammar

In the grammar, adjacency is defined through S-rules in the following format:

<SYNTACTIC ROLE>(+<ADJACENCY>);

Where:

• <SYNTACTIC ROLE> is the syntactic role (VA, VC, VS, VH, etc) of the constituent in relation to the head; and
• <ADJACENCY> is the adjancency (AJ0, AJ1, AJ2, etc) of the constituent in relation to the head.

Examples

• VH(+AJ0); (the head is part of the verb)
• VC(+AJ1); (the object integrates the first projection of the head)

Observations

Complex adjacency

A single adjacency rule may contain several operations:

• VC(+AJ1)VA(+AJ2); (the complement integrates the first projection and the adjunct integrates the second one)

Conditional adjacency

Conditional adjacency may be stated by defining the left side of the s-rule and coindexing it to the right side:

• VC(+AJ1); (unconditional adjacency: the complement will always integrate the first projection);
• VC(PPR):=VC(+AJ1); (conditional adjacency: the complement will integrate the first projection if a personal pronoun;

Use of "+"

As rules are conservative (i.e., features are preserved unless explicitly deleted), the use of "+" is actually optional:

• VC(AJ1); is the same as VC(+AJ1);

Reordering

Reordering can be done in three different ways:

• By L-rules, if the process involves neighbour constituents and affects only the surface structure of the phrase;
• By attribute change (i.e., deleting and adding distribution features), such as in "VC(-AJ1,+AJ2);"
• By movement, in case of more complex inversions and extraction of constituents

The symbol ^ is used for negation and to control infinite recursion

• VC(^AJ1):=VC(AJ1); (assign the feature "AJ1" to the complement of the verb if it does not have it yet)