Simultaneous Amalgamation - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 157

construction) doesn't have a fnc attribute. In the LA-hear derivation 8.4.1, the
fnc attribute is provided by the lexical to proplet, which receives the value try
in line 2, before the read proplet is absorbed.
Because the object-verb relation between to read (infinitival object) and
try (matrix verb) is opaque, it is not characterized by any of the transparent
schemata in 7.3.3. Let us therefore define the following schema for the opaque
object-verb relation V \ V:

8.4.3 S CHEMA CHARACTERIZING AN ELEMENTARY V \ V SIGNATURE

(9) verb \ verb
⎡ ⎤

verb: α
arg: γβ Y

verb: β

⎣ ⎦

fnc: α

arg: γ X

to read try (examples of matching proplets for illustration only)

The number (9) corresponds to that of the corresponding elementary signature
in 7.6.4. 15 The first verb pattern matches the infinitive serving as the object of
the matrix verb. The variable appears in the core attribute of the infinitive

and in the object position of the arg slot of the matrix verb (second pattern),
while the variable

β

appears in the core attribute of the matrix verb and in the
fnc slot of the infinitive. Furthermore, the variable

α

representing the subject
of the matrix verb appears in the arg slot of the infinitive as subject, coding
the implicit subject of the infinitive in the result of 8.4.1 (subject control).
Based on the proplet set 8.4.2 and the schemata 1 and 2 of 7.3.3 and 9 of
8.4.3, the procedure described in Sect. 7.3 will automatically derive (i) the
SRG and (ii) the signature of the following DBS graph analysis:

γ

8.4.4 DBS GRAPH ANALYSIS OF A CONTENT CORRESPONDING TO
John tried to read a book

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

try try

6

3

read 1 read

2 5

4

John book John book

15 The same holds for the numbering of the transparent schemata in 7.3.3, which also correspond to the
numbers of the associated elementary signatures in 7.6.4.