Ryan Mattson Lab 7 5-22-05 Ling 567 (lab 7 test suite: lab7.items) `Sentential Negation' Sentential negation in Finnish is done with an adverb modifier that shows up right before the verb being negated in its `root' form (not infinitival, but the form that the personal ending would attach to). This is best illustrated with a constrasting positive example: 1) minA syO-n lasia i-nom eat-1p-sg glass-part i eat glass 2) minA en syO lasia i-nom neg-1p-sg eat-neg glass-part i don't eat glass The particular adverb that shows up is dependent on the PNG of the verb. en := scopal-adv-lex & [ STEM < "en" >, SYNSEM [ LKEYS.KEYREL.PRED '_neg_r_rel, LOCAL.CAT.HEAD.MOD < [ LOCAL.CONT.HOOK.INDEX.PNG [ PER first, NUM sg ]]>]]. The adverb looks into its MODs PNG, as illustrated with this lexical entry. There are six adverbs in all which correspond to the six possible PNG values of verbs: en 1pSg et 2pSg ei 3pSg emme 1pPl ette 2pPl eivAt 3pPl I implemented negation as an adverbial modifier, because it seemed to match well the facts of Finnish. I defined an instance of adj-head-scop-phrase, as the adverb occurs before the head verb I then created a subtype of basic-scopal-adv-lex: scopal-adv-lex := basic-scopal-adverb-lex & [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT [ HEAD.MOD < [ LOCAL.CAT.HEAD verb & [ NEG + ]] >, VAL [ SPR < >, SUBJ < >, COMPS < >, SPEC < > ]], ARG-ST < > ]. The adverbs that inherit from this type require the HEAD of their MOD list to be of type verb with a HEAD feature of verb that I added called NEG, which is a boolean value. I created this so that the verbs would be properly inflected for the negative form (interestingly, it's almost an uninflection that is occurring, as opposed to an inflection). What I really needed was some way to use the uninflected verb, but get a PNG value on it. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out a mechanism to do this. I ended up writing a neg_verb-lex-rule: neg_verb-lex-rule := infl-ltol-rule & [ SYNSEM.LOCAL [ CAT.HEAD.NEG + ], C-CONT [ RELS , HCONS ], DTR 1sg_verb-lex-rule & [ SYNSEM.LOCAL [ CAT.HEAD.NEG - ], C-CONT [ RELS , HCONS ]]]. This lexical rule takes a verb that has undergone the 1sg_verb-lex-rule and uninflects the 1pSg ending from the verb (which is typically just `n'). I followed this pattern simply out of convenience for getting the proper form of the verb, though the only support for this process in any literature I have is from a pedagogical grammar book. (From Start to Finnish, Leila White, 2003) One issue with this lexical rule is that the output negative verb always assumes its subject is `minA,' which is incorrect, and this is represented in the Indexed MRS as: ... h10:_hurt_v(e11..., x13:SEMSORT:BOOL:FIRST:SG, x12...), ... That MRS snippet also shows another problem with the negative lexical rule. The correct argument indicies are not being copied up through the rule correctly (x13 and x12 don't exist as indicies anywhere except that relation). The grammar currently generates negative sentences for all verbs that are listed in the lexicon file, based on this simple irule (where !v is any possible vowel of Finnish): neg_verb := %suffix (!vn !v) neg_verb-lex-rule. A good example of the correct syntax, but incorrect semantics is with the sentence 3) minA en syO lasia i-nom neg-adv eat-neg glass-part i don't eat glass The indexed MRS shows that eat does not have the correct argument indicies. (as illustrated above) Update: The problem was fixed with the suggestion of copying up the VAL features, however this broke the overall functionality, because the only subj/neg combo that would work was the 1pSg (minA en) combo. I tried implementing a different version of the irule, however this caused 100% CPU usage to be eaten, and didn't seem to stop parsing at all (I would have to kill the lkb process). That rule looks like: neg_verb := %suffix (!vn !v) (!vt !v) (!vmme !v) (!vtte !v) (!vv!at !v) (sattuu satu) neg_verb-lex-rule. `Can' in Finnish The verb `voida' (`can') in Finnish is an auxiliary verb that can occur in front of any non-auxiliary infinitive. An example is the following sentence: 4) minA voin syOdA lasia i-nom can-1p-sg eat-inf glass-part i can eat glass `voida' is inflected like any other verb for person and number, but the following verb (`syOdA') is in its infinitival form. The infinitival verb still has its appropriate complements in their appropriate forms. I followed the guidelines of using can as an auxiliary verb in order to implement it in Finnish, and they generally worked fine. I created the type subj-raising-verb-lex that inherits from verb-lex and trans-first-arg-raising-lex-item: subj-raising-verb-lex := verb-lex & trans-first-arg-raising-lex-item & [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT.VAL [ SUBJ < #subj & [ LOCAL.CAT.HEAD.CASE nom ] >, COMPS < #comps & [ LOCAL.CAT.HEAD verb & [ FORM inf ]]>], ARG-ST < #subj, #comps > ]. I specified that the element on the comps list of any item that inherits from this type will be constrained to being a verb with a HEAD feature FORM of type inf, which is a new feature I added to verb (along with fin, to contrast). This feature gets set through the following lexical rule: inf_verb-lex-rule := infl-ltow-rule & [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT.HEAD.FORM inf, DTR verb-lex ]. It's very simple, only requiring its daugther to be an uninflected verb which is by default (on verb-lex) left underspecified for FORM. The inflectional rules to create finite verbs set those items to be [FORM fin]. I also had to further constrain verb-lex: verb-lex := basic-verb-lex & [ SYNSEM.LOCAL [ CAT [ HEAD verb & [ QUES -, INV -, NEG -, MOD < > ], VAL [ SPR < >, SUBJ < #subj & [ LOCAL [ CAT [ HEAD noun, VAL.SPR < > ], CONT.HOOK.INDEX #ind ]]>], IMPERATIVE - ], CONT.HOOK.XARG #ind ], ARG-ST < #subj, ... >, INFLECTED - ]. The constraints added during this lab where identifying the INDEX of the item on the verbs SUBJ list to be the XARG of the verb itself. Before this, `voida' was not correctly showing the argument indicies. The infinitive inflectional rule is currently limiting what verbs can be complements to `voida' because I'm hand-specifying each verbs infitival form, but this should be cleared up as soon as I implement an appropriate lexical item in the XFST interface. The only verb that is being inflected for an infinitival form is `syOdA' (to eat).