Syntax and Semantics
References:
1. Bender: Linguistic Fundamentals for NLP I
2. Bender and Lascarides: Linguistic Fundamentals for NLP II
3. Asher, Kumari: Malayalam
4. Wikipedia
5. Nan Decker. 1985. The use of syntactic clues in discourse processing.
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Introduction
• I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
Lemmas Parts-of-speech
Dependency parse
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https://corenlp.run/
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https://corenlp.run/
Parts-of-speech
• ADJ: adjective (big, third, incomprehensible) • NUM: numeral (27, nine, hundred)
• ADP: adposition (in, to, during) • PART: particle (‘s, ‘nt)
• ADV: adverb (very, tomorrow, when, there, nowhere) • PRON: pronoun (he, she, your, who, somebody)
• AUX: auxiliary (has, was, should, is) • PROPN: proper noun (Mary, Mumbai, Matrubhumi)
• CCONJ: coordinating conjunction (and, or, but) • PUNCT: punctuation
• DET: determiner (a, an, the, this, which, no) • SCONJ: subordinating conjunction (that, if, while)
• INTJ: interjection (yep, ohh) • SYM: symbol
• NOUN: noun (girl, tree, decision) • VERB: verb (run, ran, running)
• X: other
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https://universaldependencies.org/u/pos/index.html
Constituents
• Words within sentences form intermediate groupings called
constituents
• Kim [read a book], [gave it to Sandy], and [left].
• Kim read [[a very interesting book] [about grammar]].
• Kim read [it].
• A syntactic head determines the internal and external dependencies
• Kim planned to give Sandy books.
• [Kim] [planned to give] [Sandy] [her physics books, which] [she had purchased] [from a bookstore] [in
Chandani Chowk].
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Dependencies
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Dependencies to Arguments
a. Kim gave Sandy [the book….].
b. Kim gave [the book….] to Sandy.
c. Kim sent Sandy the letter.
d. Kim sent the letter to Sandy.
e. Kim threw Sandy [a party at….].
f. Kim threw [a party at….] for Sandy.
g. Kim baked Sandy [a cake with ….].
h. Kim baked [a cake with ….] for Sandy.
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Arguments and Functions
• Thematic roles
• Agent
• A participant who does or causes something (represented by a verb) possibly intentionally
• Subjects of: eat, kill, love
• Patient
• A participant who is affected by something
• Objects of: eat, kill, love
• Experiencer
• A participant who experiences or is aware of something
• Subjects of: love; Object of: annoy
• Theme
• A participant who undergoes a change because of something
• Objects of: give, make; Subjects of: die, walk
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VerbNet
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https://verbs.colorado.edu/verb-index/
Selectional Preferences
• He can read.
• He read the newspaper.
• He read Marquez in college.
• He read her mind.
• He read the delicious food.
• Kumar bought a pen and a book. It was a pirated copy of
Thinking Fast and Slow.
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Characteristics of informativeness
• Clause
• Assertion: expression of belief
• Tense and aspect
• Transitivity
• an agent is acting on a patient that is directly affected by this action (energy flows
from agent to patient)
• Kumar killed Kumari
• Kumar loves Kumari
• Kumar drank the milk
• Kumar drank some milk
• Voice
• Nominalization
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0148.xml
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Clause
• A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb that have a
relationship
• A sentence can have one or more clauses
• She quickly fixed the sink.
• She fixed the sink without facing difficulty.
• My friend who rides a motorcycle said it’s a great weekend
to ride.
• Types
• Independent or main clause
• Dependent or subordinate clause
• Relative clause (modifies a noun or noun phrase)
• Restrictive and non-restrictive
• The astronaut who first stepped on the moon was Neil Armstrong.
• The cat was allowed on the bed, which annoyed the dog.
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https://www..com/blog/commonly-confused-words/using-that-and-which-is-all-about-restrictive-and-non-restrictive-clauses/grammarly
Informativeness of clause
• Non-restrictive clause: background
• Appositives: background
• Hermione Granger, a witch at Hogwarts School, is accomplished
at spells.
• Main clause: foreground
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/punctuation-capitalization/appositive/ 13
Morphosyntax of Verbs
• Tense
• grammaticalized location in time (past, present, future)
• She purchased a book
• Aspect
• grammaticalization of expression of internal temporal consistency (unitary,
continuous)
• She had been purchasing books every month
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Examples
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https://www.grammarly.com/blog/parts-of-speech/verb-tenses/
Types of times
• Speech Time, Event Time and Reference Time
(a) I have lost my watch.
(b) Yesterday, I lost my watch.
(c) but I have found it again
(d) Chapman breathed a sigh of relief.
(e) When Nixon was elected, Chapman breathed a sigh of
relief.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tense-aspect/ 16
Reichenbach, H., 1947, Elements of Symbolic Logic, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Transitivity
• Kinetic
• throw
• to be
• walk?
• stood?
• Telic: action with a natural end point
• Kumar was making chair
• Kumar was reading
• Punctual: difficult to decompose into sub-actions
• Kumar kicked the ball
• Kumar studied for 4 hours
• Volitional: intentionality of an action
• Kumar slipped on the wet floor
• Affirmative
• Kumar ate one pizza
• Kumar did not eat a slice of pizza
• Realis: actuality of an action
• Kumar should read those books
• Kumar read those books
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Agents
• Proper nouns
• Humans
• Animate entities
• Concrete
• Singular
• Count
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Nominalization
• Converting verb to noun
• elect ---> election
• nominate ---> nomination
• Election: a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an
individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, endorsed by Joe Biden
to be a new Democratic presidential nominee.
She said that she intends to "earn and win" the nomination
of the party and unite the nation to defeat her Republican
rival Donald Trump in upcoming election in November 2024.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election
News Articles: Syntax and Discourse
• Information is presented in descending order of importance
• Paragraphs as blocks: no link to adjacent paragraphs
• More than one episodes:
1. Chronology of the main events
2. References to the related past and possible future
events
3. Texture: division of material as foreground vs
background
4. Text, context and texture
Texture in written text arises as the writer attempts to
monitor and control the flow of information through
the text in a manageable way so that the reader is
guided towards the kind of interpretation intended by
the writer.
https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/stratcommwriting/chapter/inverted-pyramid-style/ 20
https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/books/article/viewFile/BOOK-209-520-4/33980
Characteristics of informativeness
• Clause
• main clause
• Assertion: expression of belief
• positive assertion
• Tense and aspect
• simple past
• Transitivity
• high transitivity verbs with strong agents
• nominalization has low transitivity
• Voice
• active
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0148.xml
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Applications
• Summarization
• Ordering of events
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Extensions
• Wikipedia articles
• Scientific documents
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