ErgSemantics_Compounding

ESD Test Suite Examples

  The garden dog barked.
  The Abrams picture arrived.
  Kim Browne arrived.
  Professor Browne arrived.
  The tobacco-happy dog barked.
  The state and local dogs barked.

Linguistic Characterization

Compounding comprises a variety of (semantic) head–modifier structures that can often be paraphrased using overt prepositions. But in instances of compounding there is a syntactic construction contributing an underspecified two-place relation. Medicine delivery, for example, could be paraphrased as delivery of medicine, whereas home delivery might be paraphrased as delivery at home. The phenomenon is characterized by the underspecified compound relation (and its compound_name counterpart; but see below), whose shape and use are parallel to the semantics contributed by regular prepositions. While prototypical heads in compounds are nominals (introdcing a referential index), there can be exceptions: tobacco-happy is analyzed in terms of an event head. Compounding can interact with coordinate structures (e.g. in state and local dogs), when modifiers of the same head are conjoined.

MRS Fingerprints

The phenomenon can be sub-divided according to the (semantic) types of the head and modifier. The most basic instances, arguably, involve non-quantified or quantified modifiers to a nominal head, e.g. garden dog [3] and Abrams picture [3], respectively.

  h0:compound(ARG1 x1, ARG2 x2)
  h0:_(ARG0 x1)
  udef_q(ARG0 x2)
  _(ARG0 x2)

  h0:compound(ARG1 x1, ARG2 x2)
  h0:_(ARG0 x1)
  _(ARG0 x2)

When the head is a proper name, a variant (but still underspecified) two-place relation is used (as of mid-2013; but see below), but otherwise a parallel sub-division arises according to the type of modifier, e.g. Kim Browne [2] vs. Professor Browne [2]:

  h0:compound_name(ARG1 x1, ARG2 x2)
  h0:_(ARG0 x1)
  _(ARG0 x2)

  h0:compound_name(ARG1 x1, ARG2 x2)
  h0:_(ARG0 x1)
  udef_q(ARG0 x2)
  _(ARG0 x2)

With event heads, the structure is very similar, except for the type of the ARG1 in the compound relation, e.g. for tobacco-happy [3]:

  h0:compound(ARG1 e1, ARG2 x1)
  h0:_(ARG0 e1)
  udef_q(ARG0 x1)
  _(ARG0 x1)

When conjoining different types of modifiers (to a nominal head), compounding and coordination interact in syntactically subtle ways, but result in a comparatively straightfoward semantics, e.g. for state and local dogs [3]:

  h0:compound(ARG1 x1, ARG2 x2)
  _(ARG0 x2)
  h1:_(ARG0 e1, ARG1 x1)
  h2:_and_c(L-HNDL h0, R-HNDL h1)
  h2:_(ARG0 x1)

Open Questions

Seeing that proper name heads in compound construction can be unambiguously identified by their (proper_q) quantifier, distinguishing compound_name from compound seems redundant.