Simultaneous Amalgamation - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 153

cut, spiced, served, ..., and ate the potatoes (verb coordination); cf.
rule 6 (V V). (iii) The fuzzy clever little black hungry ... dog (adnom-

inal coordination); cf. rule 7 (A

−

− A).

2. Extrapropositional coordination
Example: Julia slept. Susanne sang. John read. ; cf. rule 16 (V

− x V)
in 8.2.1, 3.2.5 for a proplet representation, and 7.4.4 for a DBS analysis.
3. Iterated object sentences
Example: John said that Bill believes that Mary suspects that Suzy
knows that Lucy loves Tom ; cf. rule 13 (V \ x V) in 8.2.1, and 9.4.1 for a

DBS analysis. Related are the constructions of unbounded or long distance
dependency ,suchas Who did John say that Bill believes that Mary
suspects that Suzy knows that Lucy loves? , which are analyzed in
9.4.2. Iterated object sentences may also serve as a subject sentence, as
in That Bill believes that Mary suspects that Suzy knows that Lucy
loves Tom surprised John.
4. Iterated relative clauses
Example: The man who loves the woman who feeds the child who
has a cat is sleeping ; cf. rule 14 (V | x N) in 8.2.1, and 9.3.3 for a DBS

analysis.
5. Gapping constructions
Examples: (i) Bob ate an apple, walked the dog, read the paper, had
a beer, called Mary, ..., and took a nap. (subject gapping); cf. rule 1
(N V) in 8.2.1 and 9.5.5 for a DBS analysis. (ii) Bob ate an apple, Jim

a pear, Bill a peach, Suzy some grapes, ..., and Tom a tomato. (verb
gapping); cf. rules 1 (N

/

V), and 9.5.3 for a DBS analysis. (iii)
Bob bought, Jim peeled, Bill sliced, Peter served, and Suzy ate the
peach (object gapping); cf. rule 2 (N

/ V) and 2 (N \

V), and 9.6.2 for a DBS analysis.
(iv) Bob ate the red, the green, and the blue berries. (noun gapping);
cf. rule 3 (A

\

N), and 9.6.4 for a DBS analysis.
6. Iterated prepositional phrases
Example: Julia ate the apple on the table behind the tree in the gar-
den ... ; cf. rule 3 (A

|

N) in 8.2.1, and 7.2.4 for a partial DBS analysis.
Of these recursive constructions, only the last one could be construed as recur-
sively ambiguous: each time a new prepositional phrase is added (recursion),
there is a systematic ambiguity between (i) an adnominal and (ii) an adver-
bial interpretation. By (needlessly) multiplying out the semantic readings in
the syntax, one may obtain exponential complexity. However, as shown in

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