Grammar Writing: Week 6

Howework assignment, due Monday November 27th:

The Week 5 grammar worked pretty well, but wrongly allowed intransitive verbs to occur with NPs and transitive verbs without NPs. This problem can be solved by adding a COMPS list to signs which encodes what kinds of other signs (if any) the first one needs to have on its right to be complete. This is the purpose of the Week 6 grammar.

Task 1

In DesktopTrale, develop a grammar consisting of the following components: (see below), i.) a type hierarchy, ii.) lexical entries, iii.) rules.
Save the grammar using this file name: "week6". (The program should produce the "week6.zip" file.)

Task 2

The grammar should be uploaded and tested on 
[1]
(use your assigned port number!)

The Type Hierarchy

1. Import the type hierarchy from Week 5.
2. Add the attribute COMPS with value list to the type syntax.

Lexical entries

From here on, all lexical entries should contain information about the word's COMPS list, i.e. the list with the kinds of signs that the word needs to combine with to its right to form a complete phrase. COMPS lists in English are either empty or contain 1-2 signs, separated by commas. In this exercise, we assume that the complements are words (but keep in mind for later that complements can be arbitrary signs, i.e. words OR phrases).

In order to enter a word into a COMPS list, click in the middle of the list. Usually it is best to put the definition of each complement in parentheses, e.g.

1. <(word, ...)> = a single complement
2. <(word, ...), (word, ...)> = two complements

Phrases

Since the feature COMPS is defined for all signs, like every word, every phrase needs to have a COMPS value.

Verbs

likes
smokes

Nouns

bo
lilly
her
she

Rules

1. The sentence_rule

Mother: a phrase: (a) head value s; (b) empty COMPS.

First daughter: a sign: (a) nominative noun; (b) empty COMPS.

Second daughter: a sign: (a) a finite verb; (b) empty COMPS.

2. The vp_rule

Mother: a phrase: (a) head value finite verb; (b) empty COMPS.

First daughter: a sign: (a) finite verb; (b) the COMPS list which is appropriate for the word

Second daughter: a sign: (a) an accusative noun; (b) empty COMPS.

Test Items

The Week 5 grammar wrongly predicted sentences (20) and (21) to be grammatical. Your Week 6 grammar should now predict that both of these sentences are ungrammatical, whereas (7) and (14) are grammatical.

(1) lilly
(2) bo
(3) she
(4) her

(5) smokes
(6) likes

(7) lilly smokes.
(8) bo smokes.
(9) she smokes.
(10) *her smokes.

(11) likes bo.
(12) likes her.
(13) *likes she.

(14) lilly likes bo.
(15) lilly likes her.
(16) *lilly likes she.

(17) *lilly bo likes.
(18) *likes lilly bo.
(19) *likes she her.

(20) *lilly smokes bo.
(21) *lilly likes.

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