Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Jonathan Robie
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Another point about your trees is that the understood object of the verb ἐξέμαξεν is not going to show up by using this analysis, is it? Written out as it would be understood, the sentence would include the final object too, wouldn't it? ἔβρεξέν μου τοὺς πόδας καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν αὐτῆς ἐξέμαξεν μου τοὺς πόδας*
Right, the analysis appears below. But that doesn't bother me, I'm trying to analyze the sentences as written - after all, any rewrite you or I do might be wrong, and doesn't really count as original linguistic data.
ἐξέμαξεν.png
ἐξέμαξεν.png (40.71 KiB) Viewed 2375 times
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Stephen Hughes »

I'm not sure how to read that code, so let me ask a quick question...

Does the encoding say that the kai allows the sense of both the demonstrative pronoun auth AND the object mou tous podas of the first verb aleifein to be understood with the second verb ekmassein too?
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(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by cwconrad »

It occurs to me that, sooner or later, you're going to have to include genitive pronouns that fall into Dan Wallace's category of "Aporetic Genitive." That might be a bit problematic, or should we say, "aporetic"?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:I'm not sure how to read that code, so let me ask a quick question...

Does the encoding say that the kai allows the sense of both the demonstrative pronoun auth AND the object mou tous podas of the first verb aleifein to be understood with the second verb ekmassein too?
I would say "allows" rather than "states". The verb ἔβρεξέν has an explicit object. The verb ἐξέμαξεν does not. The markup says these two clauses are parallel. A smart reader might look for the implied object of ἐξέμαξεν in the parallel clause.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:I'm not sure how to read that code, so let me ask a quick question...

Does the encoding say that the kai allows the sense of both the demonstrative pronoun auth AND the object mou tous podas of the first verb aleifein to be understood with the second verb ekmassein too?
I would say "allows" rather than "states". The verb ἔβρεξέν has an explicit object. The verb ἐξέμαξεν does not. The markup says these two clauses are parallel. A smart reader might look for the implied object of ἐξέμαξεν in the parallel clause.
Sorry, yes βρέχειν, I was struggling with the error-multiplication software that fits within the keyboard of my phone. I used to type one letter wrong in a word and get a word misspelt by one letter, but now when I mistype a letter I get a completely different word or two. I was paying attention to make sure the English typing was okay, and misquoted the Greek. Anyway...

Would a verb list generator algorithm like the one that you are developing be counted as a smart reader?

Personally, I would say that the implied / parallel construction is reliable for supplying evidence of collocation, but not necessarily of which case goes with the verb.
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on November 19th, 2014, 11:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Jonathan Robie »

cwconrad wrote:It occurs to me that, sooner or later, you're going to have to include genitive pronouns that fall into Dan Wallace's category of "Aporetic Genitive." That might be a bit problematic, or should we say, "aporetic"?
Properly understanding the use of the genitive is important for labeling subject versus object.

These trees say that there is a genitive pronoun, and that it has a relationship to the other words in the noun phrase, but they do not assign a Wallace-style label to the use of the genitive. That could be done at a different layer - how useful that is depends on how useful you think Wallace's labels are in general. I may be obtuse here, but structurally, his aporetic genitives don't seem to be problematic.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Would a verb list generator algorithm like the one that you are developing be counted as a smart reader?

Personally, I would say that the implied / parallel construction is reliable for supplying evidence of collocation, but not necessarily of which case goes with the verb.
I think the way Micheal and I have restructured the GBI trees makes them much easier to query for the function of the verb. Now that we can do this kind of query, we're just starting to see what we can do, and with what degree of reliability. In our first steps, I'm not trying to make these queries overly smart, I'm trying to rely on things that are clearly present, not implied.

For the purposes of this genitive pronouns thread, I think the upshot is: (1) the GBI trees take a reasonable approach, (2) in our derived trees, we did some restructuring to eliminate verb phrases and represent verbs in terms of their relationship to the clause instead, we might decide to do the same thing in noun phrases if we're smart enough to do so, (3) whatever changes we make, we need to be able to preserve our relationship with GBI so we can incorporate any improvements they make, so this has to be defined as a transformation.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by cwconrad »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
cwconrad wrote:It occurs to me that, sooner or later, you're going to have to include genitive pronouns that fall into Dan Wallace's category of "Aporetic Genitive." That might be a bit problematic, or should we say, "aporetic"?
Properly understanding the use of the genitive is important for labeling subject versus object.

These trees say that there is a genitive pronoun, and that it has a relationship to the other words in the noun phrase, but they do not assign a Wallace-style label to the use of the genitive. That could be done at a different layer - how useful that is depends on how useful you think Wallace's labels are in general. I may be obtuse here, but structurally, his aporetic genitives don't seem to be problematic.
Well, I think I've adequately discussed the usefulness of those labels: I think most of them could actually be called "aporetic." That's probably less the case with genitive pronouns, but I doubt that an algorithm could resolve the question of whether a μου in ἀκούετέ μου τοὺς λόγους construes with ἀκούετε or with τοὺς λόγους. On the other hand, I can't imagine anybody but a grammar geek wanting to figure that out definitively.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by Jonathan Robie »

cwconrad wrote:I doubt that an algorithm could resolve the question of whether a μου in ἀκούετέ μου τοὺς λόγους construes with ἀκούετε or with τοὺς λόγους. On the other hand, I can't imagine anybody but a grammar geek wanting to figure that out definitively.
Ah, but the trees can represent both interpretations. Which can call attention to the possible ambiguity.

Let's distinguish two sets of algorithms:

1. Algorithms used to construct trees. At best, these are imperfect, and need to be supplemented by human editing. Ideally, we should allow multiple interpretations for a given sentence, each represented as a tree, perhaps with one main reading supplemented by alternate readings (because this is easier to query).

2. Algorithms used to query trees, e.g. to identify objects by case, relying on the interpretion used to construct the trees in the first place. This second set of algorithms is dependent on the interpretation of step #1. But here also, human interpretation is needed to see if the results are plausible and useful, and to decide how to interpret them.

As an example: suppose someone wanted to supplement Abbott-Smith with information on the use of cases in the objects of verbs. A query like the one I showed in XQuery, CSS, and XML Syntax Trees might list every verb and the set of objects associated with that verb for each call. Where there is ambiguity, the query should be written in a way that it does not throw away information that can be useful to the human interpreter. Where possible, I want the query results and the formatting to make it really easy to interpret the results.

I will improve that query based on what I have been learning.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Re: Genitive Pronouns in Noun Phrases in Syntax Trees

Post by MAubrey »

cwconrad wrote:On the other hand, I can't imagine anybody but a grammar geek wanting to figure that out definitively.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
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