Compositional Semantics - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 141

7.6.5 E XTRAPROPOSITIONAL RELATIONS OF E NGLISH
12

V / x V sentential_subject / x verb (opaque)

13 V \ x V sentential_object \ x verb (opaque)

14 V | x N sentential_adnominal | x noun, a.k.a. relative clause (opaque)

| x V | x verb (opaque)

15 V sentential_adverbial

− x coordination (transparent)
Four elementary signatures are opaque (12-15) and one is transparent (16).
The relations 12, 13, 14, and 16 have intrapropositional counterparts in 7.6.4,
namely 8, 9, 10, and 6, respectively. We found altogether 8 transparent and 8
opaque elementary signatures in English.
The small number of altogether 16 intra- and extrapropositional elementary
signatures out of potentially 72 should make for easy language acquisition -
at least as far as the composition of content is concerned. 26 The binary nature
of elementary signatures is essential for the strictly time-linear, strictly surface
compositional processing of natural language.
As an example of a more complex construction consider the following con-
tent (see also 8.6.9):

16 V − x V extrapropositional

7.6.6 C ONTENT ANALYSIS CORRESPONDING TO A 20- WORD SENTENCE

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

0

persuade

persuade

1 24 16

12

17

13

find buy woman find

buy woman

2

8 9

23

1011

7 14 15

18

dog quickly bone collar pretty dog quickly bone

collar pretty

19 22

3 6

21

little black nice new 5

nice new

little black

4 20

(ii) signature

V

V V N

NAN N A

AA A A

26 Contents are essential for language acquisition insofar as they serve as the goal structure of the hear
mode and as the start structure of the speak mode.