Elicitation Corpus

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Elicitation Corpus

• April 12, 2003

2
Agenda

• Tagging with feature vectors or feature
  structures
• Combinatorics
• Extensions

3
Annotating the corpus

• Feature Vectors
• Maria saw the girls.
• Snum-s, stype-prop, sanim-an, scount-na,
  sdef-def, vtype-perc, vtime-past, onum-pl,
  odef-def, etc.
• Feature Structures
• ((SUBJ ((num sg) (type prop) (anim an) (count na)
  (def def))) (vtype perc) (vtime past) (OBJ
  ((etc.
• These are easy they come right out of the parser.

4
Adapting parser output

• Do we need to filter out irrelevant features?
• E.g., features about have and be to make the
  English auxiliary system work.
• E.g., (AUX- TYPE) have

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Not covered by the parser

• Derived features
• does the subject outrank the object in animacy?
• Constructional features
• Counterfactual conditional If I had gone, I
  would have seen him.
• Do we want to extend the parsing grammar to label
  these automatically?
• Discourse/semantic/context features
• Context Who saw John?
• Elicitation sentence Bill saw John.
• Feature subject is new information.
• Elicitation sentence He must see it.
• Feature evidential or deontic (obligation)
• Features that arent used in English
• Context weyou and me (inclusive we)
• Elicitation sentence We are tall.

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Example of Combinatorics subject verb agreement

• five numbers (singular, plural, dual, trial,
  paucal)
• three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter,
  and more for Bantu languages)
• four persons (first, second, third, and fourth),
• several levels of animacy (animate, inanimate,
  first and second person, third person)
• two levels of definiteness (definite and
  indefinite)
• huge number of tenses and aspects (present, past,
  future, non-past, non-future, near past, remote
  past, near future, remote future, continuous,
  perfective, etc.).

Two steps? (1) Which features are involved? (2)
Which values are involved?
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Example of combinatorics determiners and
possessive pronouns

• See handout.

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Current Coverage of the Elicitation Corpus

• Basic word order intransitive verb and subject
  transitive verb with subject and object noun
  phrase with determiners, adjectives, an
  possessors.
• Definiteness and animacy special treatment of
  indefinite subjects, inanimate subjects, definite
  direct objects, animate direct objects, and
  sentences where the object outranks the subject
  in definiteness or animacy.
• Agreeement (in number, gender, person, etc.)
  subject and verb object and verb determiner and
  noun adjective and noun possessor and noun
  relative pronoun and noun.
• Possessive NPs with inalienable possession
  (body parts) kinship terms alienable
  possession pronominal possessors full NP
  possessors.
• Inflectional Features gender, number, person,
  case, tense.

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Not covered by the elicitation corpus

• Subcategorization frames for major verb classes
  stative, change of state, change of location,
  change of possession, creation, filling and
  covering, experience, cognition, perception,
  saying and telling, causatives, etc.
• Voice active, passive, and oblique voices.
• Negation sentences and noun phrases
• Relative clauses inflectional features of the
  relative pronoun possible locations of the gap
  headed or unheaded, etc.
• Embedded clauses argument clauses adjunct
  clauses nominalized clauses.

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Not Covered

• Coordination sentences (switch reference and
  same subject), noun phrases, and other
  constituents.
• Questions Yes-no questions (positive answer
  expected and negative answer expected)
• Open questions (possible locations of gaps).
• Other constructions comparatives, conditionals,
  causatives, desideratives, imperatives, possessor
  ascension, quantifier float, noun incorporation
  (polysynthesis).
• Each of these has a few parameters to check
  e.g., does the causee come out in dative or
  accusative case can the incorporated noun take
  an unincorporated modifier which NPs can
  possessors ascend from/quantifiers float from,
  etc.
• Further coverage of tense, aspect, and modality
  present, past, and future time ongoing and
  completed actions punctual and non-punctual
  activities habituality iteration realized and
  non-realized.
• Cross product of these with lexical aspect
  state, activity, accomplishment, punctual.

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Not Covered

• Information structure treatment of topic (given
  information) and focus (new information),
  including clefted and topicalized sentences.
• Other meanings that are typically
  grammaticalized yet, still, only, distributive
  (each), etc.
• Other noun phrase phenomena quantification,
  deictic determiners, classifiers, etc.