Graph Theory - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 177

The degree sequence of a relative clause, written to the right of each graph, is
the same as that of the corresponding main clause.
The semantically interpreted DBS graphs show that relative clauses use their
modified (head nouns) as their subject, object, or prepositional argument. For
example, in The man who loves a woman (subject gap) the graph shows no
subject, just as in The man whom the woman loves (object gap) the graph
shows no object. The “shared” noun, i.e., the modified one, is directly con-
nected to the verb of the relative clause, which is no further than the distance
between a noun and the verb in the corresponding main clause construction.
Turning to center-embedded relative clauses, we begin with an intuitive
structural representation:

9.3.2 R ELATIVE CLAUSE CENTER EMBEDDING
German: Der Mann

singt

der die Frau liebt

die das Kind füttert

Trans-
literation: the man who the woman who the child feeds loves sings

Basedonthemeaningofthe“ ” lines, the DBS graph anal-

ysis of the center-embedded relative clause construction 9.3.2 turns out to be
simple:

/ ,” “ \ ,” “ | ,” and “ −

9.3.3 G RAPH ANALYSIS OF CENTER - EMBEDDED RELATIVE CLAUSES

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

sing

V

sing

1

10

N

man man

9

2

V

love love

8

3

N

woman woman

4 7

V

feed feed

6

5

N

child child

(iv) surface realization (German, center−embedded)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7−8 9−10