Practical Grammar 9

When it rains, it pours

Note the following sharp contrasts:

(1) It rained.
(2) *Ingrid rained

(3) There arose a storm
(4) *Ingrid arose a storm

What these examples show is that there are places where only meaningless expressions like it and there can occur in English, but not meaningful expressions like Ingrid or the cat. rain and similar words are called weather verbs and the construction in (3) has the name existential construction. This leads to the it of weather verbs being referred to as weather-it and the there in the existential construction as existential there. It is assumed that both expressions are meaningless and that the only subject th weather verbs permit is weather-it and the only subject that the existential construction tolerates is the existential there.

Note: for both of these meaningsless pronouns, there are pronouns spelled identically that are meaningful and in fact that is no coincidence: the meaningless pronouns developed historically from the meaningful ones in environments where their meaning came to be more and more bleached. As a consequence, we need two different lexical entries with the spelling it and two different ones for there as well.

Altogether, with respect to their subjects, there are three different verb classes in English:

1. 'Normal' verbs: they require a meaningful subject. They make up almost all verbs. Examples: sing, dance, put, tell, insult.
2. wheather-verbs: require wheather-it as their subject. Examples: rain, snowed, thunder.
3. Existential verbs: demand that their subject be the existential there. Examples: arise, be, arrive.

Implementation

It is actually fairly easy to implement these ideas in XLFG. We need the following:

A. A way of marking the distinction between words that do and do not have meaning
B. To make sure that normal verbs only tolerate meaningful subjects.
C. To find a way of making weather-verbs require their subject to be the meaningless weather-it and that the existential verbs require their subject to be the existential-there.

A Meaningful vs. meaningless nouns

We already have a way to distinguish meaningful from meaningless nouns. Recall that we specify the meaning of a noun in its PRED value. To model a meaningless noun simply means to not give it a PRED value.

B Selection for meaningful vs. meaningless nouns

This is also straightforward: meaningful subjects are those which are assigned a semantic role in the verb's PRED value. Meaningless subjects are of course not assigned a semantic role. After all, since meaningless expressions do not refer to anything, there is nothing that could play that role in an event.

C Selection for particular forms as SUBJ

This is a little more involved and requires two theoretical innovations.

1. FORM values for meaningless it and there. The problem is that weather verbs ONLY tolerate the meaningless it as a subject and existential verbs ONLY the meaningless there. But, how can these verbs tell these two meaningless items apart? The answer is that we need to give these two nouns functional information that the verb can selects. This is what the new FORM feature is for. 

Lexical entries:

it is marked [FORM:it] and 
there is marked [FORM:there]. 
Meaningful items are marked [FORM:none].

2. The completeness and coherence conditions assume that all the grammatical functions in a verb's PRED value are assigned a thematic role. For the subjects of weather and existential verbs, however, that is precisely not the case. Therefore, these subjects have to be listed outside the verb's PRED value. The PRED value of rain, for instance, will then be: [PRED:'RAIN'<>SUBJ'] . Since rain has no meaningful dependent, the brackets after its meaning stay empty. The non-semantic subject is then listed after the brackets.

With this, we have all the pieces in place for the next excercise.

Exercise 11

1. Open Grammar Grammar 9
2. For all the words in the sentences below, add lexical entries if that is necessary.
3. Add these sentences as test items with their grammaticality status.
4. Parse.

(5) Ingrid bought olives
(6) *it bought olives
(7) *there bought olives

(8) it rained
(10) *Ingrid rained
(7) *there rained

(11) there arose a storm
(12) *Ingrid arose a storm
(13) *it arose a storm

Note: in there arose a storm, assume there = SUBJ and a storm = OBJ.

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