Mystery Number Two - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 48

auxiliary (function word) is a substitution value (cf. NLC'06, Sect. 6.4), while
that of a main verb is a concept. Non-finite verb forms differ from finite ones
by the absence of the constant v at the end of their cat value. The verbal moods
of the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative are coded as the sem values ind,
sbjv, and impv , respectively (Sect. 5.6; Quirk et al. (1985:149-150)).
There remain the traditional parts of speech 7. conjunction and 8. interjec-
tion . Conjunctions are function words which are used for connecting expres-
sions of the same part of speech (coordination, parataxis, cf. NLC'06, Chaps.
8 and 9) or of different part of speech (subordination, hypotaxis, NLC'06,
Chap. 7). Interjections are one-word sentences; their lexical analysis is not
constrained by the compositional considerations of establishing semantic re-
lations and they still await analysis as proplets in Database Semantics.
In summary, despite our using only three core attributes in DBS, the tra-
ditional parts of speech may be reconstructed using other properties. For ex-
ample, based on the lexical analysis of word forms in 3.5.2, pronouns as a
traditional part of speech are characterized by an indexical core value, while
determiners have a substitution variable instead. Similarly, based on the lexical
analysis in 3.5.3, prepositions as a traditional part of speech are characterized
by the cat value adnv and a substitution variable as their core value, adnomi-
nals by the cat value adn and a concept as their core value, indexical adverbs
by the cat value adv and a pointer as their core value, and so on.
These grammatical distinctions may be easily used to lexically define word
forms as proplets which have precisely the properties desired: Just invent a
nice attribute name and the associated value(s), and put them into your DBS
system. The grammatical distinctions are also used in the automatic defini-
tion of schemata for equally precise retrieval from the Word Bank. Like all
schemata, they constitute a particular view on the data (Sect. 4.5).
Finally, another remark on terminology. DBS distinguishes between the
three parts of speech noun, verb ,and adj , and between the three levels of
complexity elementary, phrasal ,and clausal (Hausser 2009). These are or-
thogonal to each other and combine as follows:
3.5.6 P ARTS OF SPEECH AND LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY
elementary phrasal clausal
noun Julia, she the beautiful girl that Fido barked
verb barked could have barked Fido barked.
adj here, beautiful in the garden When Fido barked
Accordingly, we say “phrasal noun” when we mean something like the man
in the brown coat rather than “noun phrase,” except in the discussion of the