# DEMONSTRATIVES AND DEFINITENESS (AND MORE)

PRONOUNS

In order to model the cognitive status role of pronouns, we
constrained their INDEX values to be [COG-ST activ-or-more, SPECI + ].
This was done by creating a pronoun supertype that all of our pronouns
inherited from. This also served to clean up the names of the
pronouns, which were still rather nouny in their nomenclature.


pers-pron-lex := no-spr-noun-lex &
  [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK.INDEX [ COG-ST activ-or-more,
                                   SPECI + ] ].


DEFINITENESS ON DETERMINERS

Yiddish marks definiteness through the form of the determiner, having
both definite and indefinite determiners:

# Case agreement on determiners.
Source: author based on a:224
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: {determiner,case,agreement}
Der lerer shraybt di zatsn.
Der lerer shrayb-t di zats-n.
DEF.NOM.M teacher write-1SG  DEF.PL.ACC.F sentence-PL.
The teacher writes the sentences.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: {agreement}
A man zingt.
A man zing-t.
INDF.SG man sing-1SG.
A man sings.


DEMONSTRATIVE DETERMINER

In addition to the definite and indefinite determiners, there is also
the one demonstrative determiner yen-, which is inflected for person,
number, gender and case, and is translated as 'that'.

Source: a:248
Vetted: t
Judgment: g
Phenomena: {demonstratives}
Di mame git yenem kind yents bukh.
Di mame git yenem kind yents bukh.
DEF.NOM.F mother give;1SG DEM.DAT.N child DEM-ACC.N book.
The mother gives that child that book.

To implement the handling of determiners, we copied the
determiner-lex-supertype as instructed, and this was then inherited
from by three determiner subtypes which model the different kinds of
determiners in Yiddish: definite determiners (def-determiner-lex),
indefinite determiners (indef-determiner-lex) and demonstrative
determiner (dem-determiner-lex). The first two of these subtypes
inherit from the single-rel-lex-item type, as well as constraining the
value of the COG-ST value belonging to the noun the determiner is the
specifier of to be uniq+fam+act for definite determiners, and type-id for
indefinite determiners. 


def-determiner-lex := determiner-lex-supertype & single-rel-lex-item &
  [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT.VAL.SPEC.FIRST.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK.INDEX.COG-ST uniq+fam+act ].

indef-determiner-lex := determiner-lex-supertype & single-rel-lex-item &
  [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT.VAL.SPEC.FIRST.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK.INDEX [ COG-ST type-id,
                                                            PNG.NUM sg ] ].

We then created the type dem-determiner-lex so as to model the two relations
we are analyzing demonstratives as introducing determiners as per the
instructions, and our lexical entries for determiners then inherited
from these three subtypes as relevant for each entry.


dem-determiner-lex := determiner-lex-supertype &
[ SYNSEM [ LOCAL [ CAT.VAL.SPEC.FIRST.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK [ INDEX #index & [ COG-ST activ+fam ],
                                                        LTOP #ltop ],
                   CONT.RELS <! relation & [ PRED "exist_q_rel" ], 
                               #rel & arg1-ev-relation & [ LBL #ltop,
                                                           ARG1 #index ] !> ],
           LKEYS.ALTKEYREL #rel ] ].


Yiddish makes no mid-far distinction within demonstratives, so we
chose the following hierarchy for the demonstrative relation that
they introduce:
 

demonstrative_a_rel := predsort.
proximal+dem_a_rel := demonstrative_a_rel. ; close to speaker
distal+dem_a_rel := demonstrative_a_rel.   ; away from speaker
remote+dem_a_rel := distal+dem_a_rel.      ; away from speaker and hearer
hearer+dem_a_rel := distal+dem_a_rel.      ; near hearer


We had already added the various forms of yen- individually, as the
form does not follow any existing inflection patterns we have
modeled. All we had to do then was make the PRED feature of the
ALTKEYREL of every lexical entry for yen- take the value
distal+dem_a_rel.

After coding this all up, we looked at the indexed MRSs of various
sentences to see if this was all hooked up and working with the cog-st
and speci values as appropriate. Indeed, everything was working
correctly, except for dropped arguments in opt-comp phrases -- which
of course comes up in the next section.

Proximal demonstrative determiners in Yiddish are realized by placing
stress on the definite articles. Since this is not amenable to being
captured via the orthography, we will not handle this. However, there
is a particle/suffix form that modifies determiners to intensify
proximate determiners, which we can implement as a proximal
demonstrative:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: {demonstratives}
Di mame git dos-o kind dos bukh.
Di mame git dos-o kind dos bukh.
DEF.NOM.F mother give;1SG DEM.DAT.N-DEM child DEF.ACC.N book.
The mother gives this child the book.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: {demonstratives}
Di mame git ot dos kind yents bukh.
Di mame git ot dos kind dos bukh.
DEF.NOM.F mother DEM give;1SG DEM.DAT.N child DEF.ACC.N book.
The mother gives this child the book.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: {demonstratives}
Di mame git ot-o dos kind yents bukh.
Di mame git ot-o dos kind dos bukh.
DEF.NOM.F mother DEM-DEM give;1SG DEM.DAT.N child DEF.ACC.N book.
The mother gives this child the book.


This we can model, however we have not yet done so this week, and will
be on the priority number one list for the leftovers pile next week.
(Yes, this information should have been in the write up, two weeks ago!! 
We've added these examples to the test suite)


# ARGUMENT OPTIONALITY

We firstly fixed up the one residual issue with the syntax of argument
optionality. This was the bug that was discussed on Go Post, where
OSV sentences with optionally transitive verbs were failing to parse. The fix,
discovered by Emily, was to remove the 'unexpressed' type constraint as follows:

nocons := nolist & cons &
  [ FIRST unexpressed & [ OPT - ],
    REST  nolist ].

Became:

nocons := nolist & cons &
  [ FIRST unexpressed & [ OPT - ],
    REST  nolist ].

In order to handle the semantics of the lexically licensed object
dropping in Yiddish, we took advantage of the OPT-CS feature, which,
through the magic of the Matrix machinery, populates the desired
COG-ST automatically, but only when the object has actually been
dropped. In order to do this we made the OPT-CS feature of the
complement of the verb take the value type-id, the value that we want
the COG-ST feature of the dropped noun to have.

trans-verb-lex := nom-acc-transitive-verb-lex & 
  [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT.VAL.COMPS < [ OPT-CS type-id ] > ].

Checking this out with relevant parsing sentences shows that the
COG-ST of an unexpressed referent is indeed coming up with the value
type-id.
