Lab 5 (due 2/9 11:59pm)

Preliminaries

These instructions might get edited a bit over the next couple of days. I'll try to flag changes.

As usual, check the write up instructions first.

Requirements for this assignment

• 0. Make sure you have a baseline test suite corresponding to your lab 4 grammar.
• 1. Pick things from Labs 2-4 to fix. Post to Canvas required by class on Tuesday
• 2. Add adverbial modifiers; fix adjectival modifiers (if necessary). [Note Predicative adjectives are not part of this lab; don't worry about them.]
• 3. Add/refine demontratives and markers of definiteness (if any). [Note This part is only relevant if your testsuite has these.]
• 4. Refine the rules allowing for optional arguments (argument drop) to reflect the discourse constraints on when arguments can be dropped. [Note This part is only relevant if you implemented optional arguments.]
• 5. Beat back ambiguity.
• 6. Collect a small test corpus and create a testsuite file for it. [Note You should not expect any of the corpus sentences to parse this week. This week's task vis-a-vis the corpus is simply to collect it.]
• 7. Test your grammar using [incr tsdb()]. [incr tsdb()] should be part of your test-development cycle. In addition, you'll need to run a final test suite instance for this lab to submit along with your basline.
• 8. Write up the phenomena you have analyzed, your process for reducing ambiguity, and a summary of your test corpus.

Run a baseline test suite

Before making any changes to your grammar for this lab, run a baseline test suite instance. If you decide to add items to your test suite for the material covered here, consider doing so before modifying your grammar so that your baseline can include those examples. (Alternatively, if you add examples in the course of working on your grammar and want to make the snapshot later, you can do so using the grammar you turned in for Lab 4.)

Labs 2-4 fix-ups

This section requires posting to Canvas by Tuesday, preferably earlier.

Based on my feedback from Labs 2-4, propose something about your grammar to fix. Post this proposal to Canvas (by Tuesday), and I will reply with suggestions about how to go about fixing it and/or let you know that what you've picked is too complicated.

If you are also doing demonstratives/definiteness and cognitive status on optional arguments, you only need to post one thing to fix. If you aren't doing one or both of these, replace each you aren't doing with one other thing-to-fix. In other words, every group will proose one-three things to fix, and every group will have four phenomena handled in this lab (including adverbs, above).

Head-modifier rules

The Matrix distinguishes scopal from intersective modification. We're going to pretend that everything is intersective and just not worry about the scopal guys for now (aside from negative adverbs, if you got one from the customization system).

• See if you grammar already has an instance of head-adj-int-phrase, an instance of adj-head-int-phrase, or both, depending on whether you need only prehead modifiers, only posthead modifiers, or both. If your grammar doesn't have these (or whichever of them you need), to add them, add the following to rules.tdl:

  head-adj-int := head-adj-int-phrase.
  adj-head-int := adj-head-int-phrase.
  

• Try parsing a sentence without a modifier, and examine the parse chart. Did the head-adj phrase fire? If so, you'll need to constrain your non-adj/adv subtypes of head. You can do this by adding the following to your my_language.tdl.

  +nvcdmo :+ [ MOD < > ].
  

  That adds the constraint [MOD < > ] to the type +nvcdmo, which is the supertype of all the head types other than adj and adv. (Notes: You might already have this constraint or a functionally equivalent one if your customized grammar includes adverbial negation, or from the adjectives library. Constraining +nvcdmo isn't necessarily the best way to do this, as you might want to allow nouny or verby things to be modifiers. The alternative is to constrain the relevant lexeme types to have empty MOD values.)

• Try parsing the misbehaving sentence again.

Attributive Adjectives

• Parse your example sentences with attributive adjectives, and examine the MRSs. Are the adjective relations being predicated of the right indices? Are the grammatical sentences parsing (and without spurious ambiguity) and the ungrammatical ones not?
• If things aren't working as you expect, post to Canvas with details and we will work from there.
• Reminder: This week we are only working with attributive adjectives and are not concerned with predicative ones.

Adverbs

• Create one or more types for adverbs. The following type definition inherits from appropriately-defined Matrix supertypes, and constrains the modified constituent to be verbal.
• Note: By convention, the suffix for the PRED values of both adjectives and adverbs is _a_rel.

  adverb-lex := basic-adverb-lex & intersective-mod-lex &
    [ SYNSEM [ LOCAL [ CAT [ HEAD.MOD < [ LOCAL.CAT.HEAD verb ]>,
  			   VAL [ SPR < >,
  				 SUBJ < >,
  				 COMPS < >,
  				 SPEC < > ]]]]].
  

• Try parsing a sentence with an adverb and then generating to see where else the adverb can show up. If you language allows multiple attachment sites for the adverb, admire the results. If it doesn't, or doesn't allow *that* many, constrain them further.
• In order to constrain the possible attachment sites for adverbs, you may need to constrain the value of POSTHEAD, or the value of SPR inside MOD or the value of LIGHT inside MOD. ([LIGHT +] picks out lexical Vs, including both transitive and intransitive ones.)
• Parse sentences with your adverbs, and examing the MRSs. Are the adverb relations being predicated of the right indices?

Check your MRSs

The modifiers you are adding should share their LBL with the verb/noun they modify and take the ARG0 of the modifiee as their ARG1. Here are some examples that should what this looks like. (This is the "simple MRS" view.)

The hungry dog sleeps

The dog chases the cat quickly

Demonstratives and definiteness

The basics

We are modeling the cognitive status attributed to discourse referents by particular referring expressions through a pair of features COG-ST and SPECI on ref-ind (the value of INDEX for nouns). Here is our first-pass guess at the cognitive status associated with various types of overt expressions (for dropped arguments, see below):

Marker	COG-ST value	SPECI value
Personal pronoun	activ-or-more	+
Demonstrative article/adjective	activ+fam
Definite article/inflection	uniq+fam+act
Indefinite article/inflection	type-id

If you have any overt personal pronouns, constrain their INDEX values to be [COG-ST activ-or-more, SPECI + ].

If you have any determiners which mark definiteness, have them constrain the COG-ST of their SPEC appropriately. For demonstrative determiners, see below.

If you have any nominal inflections associated with discourse status, implement lexical rules which add them and constrain the COG-ST value appropriately, or add COG-ST constraints to the lexical rules defined by the customization system.

Note that in some cases an unmarked form is underspecified, where in others it stands in contrast to a marked form. You should figure out which is the case for any unmarked forms in your language (e.g., bare NPs in a language with determiners, unmarked nouns in a language with definiteness markers), and constrain the unmarked forms appropriately. For bare NPs, the place to do this is the bare NP rule (note that you might have to create separate bare NP rules for pronouns v. common nouns in this case). For definiteness affixes, you'll want a constant-lex-rule that constrains COG-ST, and that is parallel to the inflecting-lex-rule that adds the affix for the overtly marked case.

Some languages have agreement for definiteness on adjectives. In this case, you'll want to add lexical rules for adjectives that constrain the COG-ST of the item on their MOD list.

Demonstratives

Note This year you were not asked to systematically collect demonstratives, but some of you turned them up as part of your work on "the rest of the NP". These instructions are here in case you have demonstratives in your testsuite, but if you don't, you do not need to worry about this.

All demonstratives (determiners, adjectives and pronouns [NB: demonstrative pronouns are not on the todo list this year]) will share a set of relations which express the proximity to hearer and speaker. We will arrange these relations into a hierarchy so that languages with just a one- or two-way distinction can be more easily mapped to languages with a two- or three-way distinction. In order to do this, we're using types for these PRED values rather than strings. Note the absence of quotation marks. We will treat the demonstrative relations as adjectival relations, no matter how they are introduced (via pronouns, determiners, or quantifiers).

There are (at least) two different types of three-way distinctions. Here are two of them. Let me know if your language isn't modeled by either.

demonstrative_a_rel := predsort.
proximal+dem_a_rel := demonstrative_a_rel. ; close to speaker
distal+dem_a_rel := demonstrative_a_rel.   ; away from speaker
remote+dem_a_rel := distal+dem_a_rel.      ; away from speaker and hearer
hearer+dem_a_rel := distal+dem_a_rel.      ; near hearer

demonstrative_a_rel := predsort.
proximal+dem_a_rel := demonstrative_a_rel. ; close to speaker
distal+dem_a_rel := demonstrative_a_rel.   ; away from speaker
mid+dem_a_rel := distal+dem_a_rel.         ; away, but not very far away
far+dem_a_rel := distal+dem_a_rel.         ; very far away

Demonstrative adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives come out as the easy case in this system. They are just like regular adjectives, except that in addition to introducing a relation whose PRED value is one of the subtypes of demonstrative_a_rel defined above, they also constrain the INDEX.COG-ST of their MOD value to be activ+fam.

Demonstrative determiners

Demonstrative determiners introduce two relations. This time, they are introducing the quantifier relation (Let's say "exist_q_rel") and the demonstrative relation. This analysis entails changes to the Matrix core, as basic-determiner-lex assumes just one relation being contributed. Accordingly, we are going to by-pass the current version of basic-determiner-lex and define instead determiner-lex-supertype as follows:

determiner-lex-supertype := norm-hook-lex-item & basic-zero-arg &
  [ SYNSEM [ LOCAL [ CAT [ HEAD det,
			   VAL[ SPEC.FIRST.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK [ INDEX #ind,
				  			     LTOP #larg ],
                                SPR < >,
                                SUBJ < >,
                                COMPS < >]],
		     CONT.HCONS <! qeq &
				 [ HARG #harg,
				   LARG #larg ] !> ], 
	     LKEYS.KEYREL quant-relation &
		   [ ARG0 #ind,
		     RSTR #harg ] ] ].

This type should have two subtypes (assuming you have demonstrative determiners as well as others in your language --- otherwise, just incorporate the constraints for demonstrative determiners into the type above).

1. The subtype for ordinary (non-demonstrative) determiners should add the constraint that the RELS list has exactly one thing on it, by adding the supertype single-rel-lex-item.
2. The subtype for demonstrative determiners should specify a RELS list with two things on it: the first should have the "exist_q_rel" for its PRED value. (It's already constrained to be a quant-relation because the type norm-hook-lex-item inherited by determiner-lex-supertype identifies the first element of the RELS list with the LKEYS.KEYREL.) The second one should be identified with LKEYS.ALTKEYREL and should be an arg1-ev-relation (the type we use for the relations of intransitive adjectives). The HOOK.INDEX.COG-ST inside the SPEC value should be constrained to activ+fam. Finally, the LBL and ARG1 of the arg1-ev-relation should be identified with the SPEC..HOOK.LTOP and SPEC..HOOK.INDEX of the determiner, respectively. (This will result in the demonstrative adjective relation sharing its handle with the N' the determiner attaches to.)

Make sure your ordinary determiners in the lexicon inherit from the first subtype, and that your demonstrative determiners inherit from the second subtype. Demonstrative determiner lexical entries should constrain their LKEYS.ALTKEYREL.PRED to be an appropriate subtype of demonstrative_a_rel.

Check your MRSs

Here is a sample MRS showing what an NP with a demonstrative should look like. Note that whether the demonstrative_a_rel comes from a determiner or an adjective, it should end up looking the same. I have expanded the first instance of the variable x4 so that you can see the cog-st value.

That dog sleeps

Optional arguments

The customization system includes an argument optionality library which we believe to be fairly thorough, regarding the syntax of optional arguments. The goal of this part of this lab therefore is to (a) fix up anything that is not quite right in the syntax and (b) try to model the semantics, and in particular, the cognitive status associated with different kinds of dropped arguments. Regarding (a), if the analysis provided by the customization system isn't quite working, post to Canvas and we'll discuss how to fix it with tdl editing.

Regarding (b), you need to do the following:

• Determine the cognitive status of the different types of dropped arguments in your language. For example, dropped subjects might always be the equivalent of unstressed pronouns, i.e., [COG-ST in-foc], while objects might be [COG-ST activ-or-more] (like the dropped argument of told in I already told you!) and others might be [COG-ST type-id] (like the dropped argument of eat in Did you already eat?). Languages with object markers might forgo the object markers in the case of [COG-ST type-id] arguments. In addition, the COG-ST of the dropped argument might depend on the verb.
• Edit the lexical rules and lexical entries involved in licensing dropped arguments to provide the COG-ST value. Since the same argument might be overtly realized in most cases, rather than constraining the COG-ST directly, use the feature OPT-CS instead. This feature takes the same range of values as COG-ST, and the phrase structure rules that discharge the optional arguments check it for the value of put in COG-ST.
• Test examples and examine the MRS to see if the expected COG-ST values are appearing.

Note that the Matrix currently assumings that dropped subjects are always [COG-ST in-foc]. This may not be true, especially in various impersonal constructions. If it's not true for your language, please let me know.

This part requires posting to Canvas!

Run your testsuite and examine the results to see if any sentences have >1 analysis. Use the Parse | Compare functionality to determine the sources of ambiguity, and try to decide whether any of the extra parses are (likely) warranted, or if they are just silly and should be ruled out. For those that should be ruled out, post to Canvas for ideas on how to go about doing so.

In order to get a sense of the coverage of our grammars over naturally occurring text, we are going to collect small test corpora. Minimally, these should consist of 10-20 sentences from running text. They could be larger; however, that is not recommended unless:

• Your language has a simple enough morphophonology that your grammar is directly targeting surface forms.
• You have easy access to large digitized texts (i.e., you don't have to type something in by hand).
• Someone has already provided the glossing (IGT) for those large digitized texts. You don't necessarily need IGT, but it is much harder to work with unglossed text.

Note: 1,000 sentences is the maximum practical size for any single [incr tsdb()] skeleton. You could of course split your test corpus over multiple skeletons, but I'd be surprised if anyone got close to 1,000 sentences!

Note also that our grammars won't cover anything without lexicon. If you have access to a digitized lexical resource that you can import lexical items from, you can address this to a certain extent. Otherwise, you'll want to limit your test corpus to a size that you are willing to hand-enter vocabulary for. (If you have access to a Toolbox lexicon for your language, contact me about importing via the customization system.)

For Lab 5, your task is to locate your test corpus (10-20 sentences will be sufficient, more only if you want and you have access to the resources described above) and format it for [incr tsdb()]. If you have IGT to work with in the first place, it may be convenient to use the make_item script to create the test corpus skeleton. (Note that you want this to be separate from your regular test suite skeleton.) Otherwise, you can use [incr tsdb()]'s own import tool (File | Import | Test items) which expects a plain text file with one item per line. The result of that command is a testsuite profile from which you'll need to copy the item (and relations) file to create a testsuite skeleton.

Check list:

• tsdb/skeletons directory should include two subdirectories: one for the test corpus, and one for the test suite.
• tsdb/skeletons/Index.lisp should include two items in the list of directories: one for your test corpus and one for your test suite.
• When the Skeletons Root is pointed at your tsdb/skeletons directory, File | Create should show two possibilities (test suite and test corpus).
• The items in your test corpus should be in the format (standard orthography or transliteration, morpheme segmented or not) that your grammar expects.

For each of the following phenomena, please include the following your write up:

1. A descriptive statement of the facts of your language. (You may reuse the descriptions you wrote in previous weeks, but please expand if my previous comments suggested they were too terse.)
2. Illustrative IGT examples from your testsuite. (Be sure that these either parse, or fail to parse for one, relevant reason.)
3. A statement of how you implemented the phenomenon, in terms of types you added/modified and particular tdl constraints. That is, I want to see actual tdl snippets with prose descriptions around them. If the tdl as given on this page worked, please include it anyway, and note that it wasn't changed. If you needed to make modifications, document what those were.
4. If the analysis is not (fully) working, a description of the problems you are encountering.

• Adjectival and adverbial modifiers.
• Demonstratives and/or markers of definiteness.
• Argument optionality.
• Anything else you fixed.

Describe the process you went through to beat back ambiguity. What was the average ambiguity when you started, and what was it when you finished? What were the sources of ambiguity, and what constraints did you add to the tdl to remove them?

In addition, your write up should include a statement of the current coverage of your grammar over your test suite (using numbers you can get from Analyze | Coverage and Analyze | Overgeneration in [incr tsdb()]) and a comparison between your baseline test suite run and your final one for this lab (see Compare | Competence).

Finally please briefly describe your test corpus, including: where you collected it, how many sentences it contains, and what format (transliterated, etc) it is in.

Submit your assignment

• Be sure your write up and the text-file version of your test suite are included in your grammar directory.
• Likewise, make sure to include your baseline and most current tsdb profiles in the grammar directory (ideally inside tsdb/home/) --- and that baseline and current profiles are the only ones there.
• If you're using svn, export the grammar so I don't get all your .svn files:

  svn export yourgrammar iso-lab5

  For git, please do the equivalent.
• Create a tarball:

        tar czf iso-lab5.tgz iso-lab5
      

• Upload the tarball to Canvas under the name of the partner who did the write up.