Practical Grammar 4
Exercise 4
♣ Add the following test sentences to your grammar and tell the program that they are ungrammatical:
(1) *John [disappeared the hospital].
(2) *Martha [stayed the hospital].
(3) *Fred [resides].
(4) *Joe [saw Fred John].
(5) *John [sent Martha to a check].
(6) *We [gave Fred].
♣ Parse each sentence.
♣ Does the grammar make the right prediction?
♣ If not, formulate in grammatical terms what the problem seems to be.
The PRED feature and valence
Valence is the representation of the knowledge speakers have about what other kinds of constituents a word needs to combine with. You will remember from traditional grammar the distinction between intransitive and transitive verbs. These are just names for those verbs, respectively, which do not need a direct object (i.e. the verbs disappear and break) and those which do (like see and break-Trans).
(1)
John disappeared.
[PRED 'DISAPPEAR<SUBJ>']
(2)
The bottle broke.
[PRED 'BREAK<SUBJ>']
(3)
Joe saw Fred.
[PRED 'SEE<SUBJ,OBJ>']
(4)
Alice broke the bottle.
[PRED 'SEE<SUBJ,OBJ>']
(5)
John sent Martha a check.
[PRED 'SEE<SUBJ,OBJ,OBJ-TH>']
(6)
We gave Fred a wastebasket.
[PRED 'SEE<SUBJ,OBJ,OBJ-TH>']