Practical Grammar 7 new

Note: this page has changed! It provides a different treatment of PPs than the textbook!</style>

Prepositional Phrases

The textbook contains a c-structure rule for VP like the following:

1. VP → V          PP
       ↑=↓   (↑ (↓ PCASE)) = ↓

Presently, xlfg cannot handle complex annotations like that of the PP. Therefore, we will simplify the rule as follows:

2. VP → V          PP
       ↑=↓     (↑OBL) = ↓ 

This means that all PPs that combine with verbs bear the grammatical function OBL(IQUE).

(2) translates into xlfg as follows:

3. VP → V PP
2. {
3. ↑=↓1;
4. (↑OBL) = ↓2;
5. }

Add the following rule for PPs:

6.  PP → P DP
7.  {
8.  ↑=↓1;
9.  (↑OBJ) =↓2;
10. }

Exercise 7.1

1. Open your latest grammar.
2. Add the two rules above to your grammar.
3. Also add a correctly annotated rule VP -> V DP PP.
2. Make sure that in all your VP rules that have a PP on the right the annotation on the PP is: (↑OBL) = ↓n.
3. Add the prepositions to on on to your lexicon as follows:

to P
[PRED: 'to<OBJ>',
 PCASE: OBL_REC]

on P
[PRED: 'on<OBJ>',
 PCASE: OBL_LOC]

4. Add the following test items:

a. Oscar donated clothes to charity
b. Robin put food on the table

5. Parse.

Exercise 7.2

1. Add the following test items:

a. *Oscar donated clothes on charity
b. *Robin put food to the table

2. Parse!
3. The grammar does not return the intended result. What is the problem?
4. The problem is easy to fix with the same technique that we used to enforce subject-verb agreement.
5. Do so and parse!

Thematic Roles

So far, we have completely ignored semantics. But xlfg is capable of representing the assignment of thematic roles to the arguments of predicates. The textbook contains a list of thematic roles on page 13. Using these roles, the next exercise asks you to assign an argument structure to each predicate that governs grammatical functions. The notation is extremely simple: just put a period and a role name after each GF name, as follows:

[PRED 'pred<GF.Role>']

Here are some concrete examples:

• [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.AGENT>']
• [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.AGENT, OBJ.PATIENT>']
• [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.AGENT, OBJ.PATIENT, OBL.LOCATION>']
• [PRED 'pred<SUBJ.THEME>']

Exercise 7.3

1. Go to https://xlfg.labri.fr/ and log in.
2. Open your version of Grammar 5.
3. Click on "Output Parameters"
4. Under "Output for Argument-Structure:" select "Draw the Argument-Structure as an acyclic graph"
5. Return to "Input"
6. Assign the thematic role THEME to the SUBJ of the verb disappeared.
7. Parse and look at the output for the sentence John disappeared.
8. Study the relationship between the f-structure and the Argument Structure in the output.
9. Now assign thematic roles to all the other governed grammatical functions in your lexicon and make sure you get the expected Argument Structure output.

Homework

Read section 5.1 of the textbook.

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