Distribución del presupuesto UDGVirtual

The neo-Davidsonian analysis of utterances in terms of eventualities divides sentences into fine-grained propositions associated with individual predicates or even predicate arguments. The generalisation of eventuality arguments to other parts of speech leads to undesirable

2.1 Semantic chunking: an intuition 19

proliferation of semantic chunks in sentences, if we insist on strict association between chunks and situations. Below we discuss several scenarios where a more careful consideration is needed.

Let us consider Examples 20 and 21.

(20) The fall of Barad-dur marked the beginning of a new era. (21) When Barad-dur fell, a new era began.

The fall of Barad-durexpresses the same situation as the statement Barad-dur fell, just as the beginning of a new erameans that a new era began. The noun phrases are nominalizations of the respective finite clauses. We have discussed in the preceding section why limiting semantic chunks to finite clauses is too restrictive. Treating every noun phrase as a potential chunk misses the mark in the opposite direction. For example, in English, deverbal nouns formed with suffixes like -ing, -ation, -ment, and -al are ambiguous between readings that can broadly be characterized as eventive and non-eventive (Lieber (2018) for an overview). The dinner in Example 22 refers to the food prepared for eating, while the dinner in Examples 23 is the event of dining as part of a situation involving people meeting up.

(22) The dinner took three hours to prepare.

(23) The dinner lasted three hours and everyone had fun.

Vendler (1967) conceived a linguistic test for distinguishing between different types of nominals. He suggested dividing them into perfect nominals, in which the process of nominalization is complete, and imperfect nominals, where the verb is still ‘alive and kicking’. The distinction was based on what syntactic constructions accept the phrase. The two kinds of nominals also allow different types of modifiers, e.g. adjectives for perfect nominals (24) and adverbs for the imperfect ones (25).

(24) Hermione ruined the potion with the accidental addition of cat hair. (25) Hermione ruined the potion by accidentally adding cat hair.

Chomsky (1970) names three types of nominalization: derived (Example 24), gerun- dive (25) and mixed. The “object” of gerundive nominals is a noun phrase rather than a prepositional phrase and modifiers are adverbial, while mixed nominalization (Example 26) accounts for phrases with the internal syntax of noun phrases rather than sentences, requiring a post-nominal prepositional phrase and adjectival modification:

For the purpose of semantic chunking, derived nominals in English are difficult to reliably distinguish from non-eventive noun phrases. We do not consider them suitable candidates for semantic chunks and focus solely on ing nominals.

Gerundive nominals are indisputably verbal in nature and allow only for the eventive reading, but mixed nominals behave as noun phrases. They occupy argument slots commonly filled by nouns and can appear in coordination with non-eventive noun phrases. Coordination syntactically connects two constituents of the same kind. Consider Example 27:

(27) Sam’s singing and a bonfire made Frodo’s day better.

If we allow semantic chunks based on mixed nominals, Sam’s singing, identified as a self-contained semantic constituent corresponding to a situation, has the same status as a simple object (a bonfire).

If we disqualify all noun-like constructions, we end up with the interpretation of semantic chunks as related to syntactic clauses. They are typically centred around a main verb, but, importantly, the verb does not have to be the main predicate of the situation. Copular verbs, such as was in Example 28, do not clearly contribute meaning to the sentence. They appear in utterances of the form A is B, where B is often a predicate of A, attributing a property. The adjective angry in Example 28 is predicative and the copula only provides support for the tense of the clause.

Our analysis assigns two semantic chunks (bracketed) both Examples 28 and 29: (28) [Gollum was angry]1because [Sam cooked the fish]2.

(29) [Gollum threw a tantrum]1because [Sam cooked the fish]2.

Although the main carrier of meaning in the main clause of the first sentence is an adjective (angry), the main clauses of both sentences describe parallel situations, resulting from Sam’s actions but distinct from the situation in which Sam cooked the fish.

For comparison, the adjective angry in Example 30 appears in an attributive role. (30) Angry Gollum threw a tantrum.

Predicates used in attributive context are not valid bases for distinct semantic chunks, even if the same predicates qualify when used as primary predicates in the clause. Although they can be interpreted as eventualities in the neo-Davidsonian sense, attributive adjectives do not support complex modification (Examples 31 and 32) and are associated with short phrases, often corresponding to single tokens in the string representation.

(31) The hobbit was stupid enough to ruin the meal and he cooked the fish. (32) *The stupid enough to ruin the meal hobbit cooked the fish.

2.1 Semantic chunking: an intuition 21

The example of copular verbs illustrates the recurring issue of granularity and the search for the ‘Goldilocks zone’5of chunking (§2.1.1). A semantic chunk corresponding to a single surface token or a single unit in any type of representation does not serve well the goal of reducing the complexity of a sentence.

The issue is further exacerbated by the existence of verbless clauses (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002, Chapter 14):

(33) Her face pale with anger, she left the tent. (34) Her face reddening with anger, she left the tent.

Even though only the second sentence contains two verbs (left and reddening), the first one can be interpreted as equivalent to:

(35) Her face was pale with anger as she left the tent.

The new sentence (Example 35) supports two situations, which suggests that the same is true of the original utterance (Example 33). As a consequence, her face pale with anger can be construed as a valid semantic chunk. A qualification is, however, necessary: a valid chunk under the right circumstances. Whether a fragment, such as a verbless clause, can be treated as a semantic chunk depends not on whether we, humans, can identify it as referring to a specific, separate situation, but whether the chunking algorithm can recognise it reliably as such in the input representation and whether the target task can process it correctly without full access to the remainder of the sentence. We discuss these questions for the particular case of DMRS representation throughout the thesis.