Compositional Semantics - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 136

This is different from structuralism and its later ramifications, which are
based on possible substitutions and combine whole constituents. The con-
glomeration into constituents is shown by the nonterminal nodes in PSG trees
(e.g., 7.1.1 and 7.1.2). In DBS graphs, nonterminals are absolutely absent.
In addition to the opaque extrapropositonal FA (functor-argument) relations,
there are also opaque intrapropositional FA relations in natural language. As
an example, consider the prepositional object in Julia put the flowers in a
vase. , which illustrates an opaque A V object-verb relation: 25

\

7.5.3 T HREE - PLACE VERB WITH PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE AS OBJECT
Julia put the flowers in a vase.

(i) semantic relations graph (SRG) (ii) numbered arcs graph (NAG)

put put

6

4

1 23

5

Julia flower in_vase Julia flower in_vase

(ii) signature

V

(iv) surface realization

1
Julia

2 3 4−5 6

. NNA

put the_flowers in_a_vase

The hear mode derivation of the prepositional phrase in a vase is analogous
to that in 7.2.4 and results in a single proplet, represented in the signature as
the A node. The content has the following proplet representation:

7.5.4 O PAQUE INTRAPROPOSITIONAL OBJECT , CONTENT OF 7.5.3
⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

noun: Julia
cat: nm
sem: sg
fnc: put
mdr:
prn: 26

verb: put
cat: decl
sem: past
arg: Julia flower in_vase
mdr:
prn: 26

noun: flower
cat: sn
sem: def pl
fnc: put
mdr:
prn: 26

adj: in_vase
cat: adnv snp
sem: indef sg
fnc: put
mdr:
prn: 26

The construction is opaque because the adj proplet in_vase has an additional
fnc attribute, and the verb proplet put has an adj argument instead of a noun.
As a lexical proplet, vase is an N, yet at the content level the corresponding
single proplet representing in a vase is an A. Thus the relation between the
put proplet and the prepositional object is N \ V (transparent) based on the lex-

ical proplet of vase ,butisA \ V (opaque) based on the content proplet in_vase .

25 Opaque constructions are frequent in Chinese, for example.