Ling567 Lab 4 Writeup
Nigel Kilmer and Woodley Packard
Northern Frisian (frr)

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1, 2, 3
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- Matrix Yes-No Questions -

Yes-no questions are marked in Frisian by moving the finite verb to sentence initial position. The following two examples show this contrast:

Source: a:277
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: q
wet dü jir bliiv
wel-st dü jir bliiv
want-2SG you here stay
do you want to stay here?

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: wo
dü wet jir bliiv
dü wel-st jir bliiv
you want-2SG here stay
you want to stay here

It seems that the finite verb is often an auxiliary, though this is not required. Here is an example that uses an auxiliary:

Source: a:277
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: q
skel ik di en stek me.dö
skel ik di en stek me.dö
shall I you a piece with.do
shall I give you a piece to take along?

Negative questions are constructed in a manner consistent with what we know about the placement of the negation adverb and the location of the finite verb in question word order:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: q
et      hi höm ek
iit-t   hi höm ek
eat-3SG he it.OBJ not
does he not eat it?

To model this behavior, we chose the subject-verb inversion option in the questionnaire, with the specification that any verb can participate in this inversion.

- Coordination -

Frisian uses the monosyndeton coordination pattern. The conjunction is "en" (and), and coordination is treated exactly the same for all different phrase types. The forms "A, B, and C" and "A and B and C" are both grammatical, while "A, B, C" with no conjunction is not. The conjunction occurs before the coordinands.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: crd
diar laap di hingster en di fölken
diar laap di hingst-en en di fölk-en
there run the horse-PL and the foal-PL
there are horses and foals running around

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: crd
jü smilet en sleept
jü smile-t en sliip-t
she smile-3SG and sleep-3SG
she smiled and slept

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: crd
min aalern her ja salev swin en kin en molk
min aaler-en haa-t swin-en en kin-en en molk
my parent-PL have-PRET pig-PL and cow-PL and milk
my parents had pigs and cows and milk

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: crd
min aalern her swin kin en molk
min aller-en haa-t swin-en kin-en en molk
my parent-PL have-PRET pig-PL cow-PL and milk
my parents had pigs cows and milk

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: u
Phenomena: crd
min aalern her swin kin molk
min aaler-en haa-t swin-en kin-en milk
my parent-PL have-PRET pig-PL cow-PL milk
my parents had pigs cows and milk

An interesting point is that ellipsis of VPs seems to be used quite heavily with coordinated NPs:

Source: a:300
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: crd
Weesterlön wel det ja hol en di Aussendörfer
Weesterlön wel-t det ja hol en di Aussen.dörf-en
Weesterlön want-3SG that yes gladly and the outer.village-PL
Weesterlön and the outer villages want it

Many sentences within a discourse begin with the conjunction "en", which fulfills the discourse function of continuation. Many of our source sentences display this construction, but we have trimmed them out of the test suite examples for simplicity.

For the coordination section of the questionnaire, we selected the monosyndeton strategy for nouns, NPs, VPs, and sentences, marked by the word "en" which occurs before the coordinand.

- Adjectives -

Adjectives in Frisian occur in prenominal position, and after the determiner if one exists in the noun phrase. There is no agreement between adjectives and the nouns they modify.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: adj
di gurt soldaat sleept
di gurt soldaat sliip-t
the big soldier sleep-3SG
the big soldier sleeps

Multiple adjectives can occur between the determiner and the noun.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: adj
di gurt wunderbar soldaat sleept
di gurt wunderbar soldaat sliip-t
the big wonderful soldier sleep-3SG
the big wonderful soldier sleeps

- Adverbs -

Our source claims that adverbial phrases for time, manner, and location can be additional modifiers for verbs and can occur anywhere in the sentence, but the actual examples of these adverbial phrases suggest that they are actually prepositional phrases. For example, "üs jungen" (as child), or "fan Hessen" (from Hessen).

Since the source does not directly discuss the possible locations for adverbs of the type we are interested in, extrapolation from the word order patterns of other modifiers in Frisian and various scattered examples that do include adverbs suggest that adverbs can occur anywhere in the sentence as long as other constraints on word order (such as second-position verbs in declaratives) are not violated.

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: adv
di soldaat sleept aural
di soldaat sliip-t aur.al
the soldier sleep-3SG over.all
the soldier sleeps everywhere

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: adv
aural sleept di soldaat
aur.al sliip-t di soldaat
over.all sleep-3SG the soldier
the soldier sleeps everywhere

- Embedded Clauses -

Embedded clauses that are the complements of certain verbs usually occur with a complementizer. It is unclear whether the complementizer is required, since our source only mentions that they are optional for quotatives, and no non-quotative examples without a complementizer could be found. For declarative embedded clauses, the complementizer "dat" is used. The word order inside embedded clauses is more free than in matrix clauses, as the main verb can be in V2 position, at the end of the clause, or near the end of the clause with modifiers after it. Verb-initial word order still seems to be prohibited though.

# Adapted from a:295
Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: emb-d
ik gesi dat et sa es
ik gesi dat et sa sen-t
I guess that it so be-3SG
I guess that is so

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: emb-d
ik gesi dat et es sa
ik gesi dat et sen-t sa
I guess that it be-3SG so
I guess that is so

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: u
Phenomena: emb-d
ik gesi dat es et sa
ik gesi dat sen-t et sa
I guess that be-3SG it so
I guess that is so

Verbs such as "weet" (know) can take an embedded interrogative clause, as in this example:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: emb-q
ik weet ek weder det Russisch wiar
ik weet ek weder det Russisch sen-t
I know not whether that Russian be-PRET
I don't know whether that was Russian

There are many complementizers corresponding to the 'wh' words in English that can be used in interrogative clauses, but "weder" (whether) or "of" (also glossed as whether) seem to be the ones that are used for yes-no interrogatives.

There is a distinction between verbs that accept declarative versus interrogative embedded clauses. The verb "gesi" (guess) is one that can not occur with an embedded interrogative:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: u
Phenomena: emb-q
ik gesi weder det Russisch wiar
ik gesi weder det Russisch sen-t
I guess whether that Russian be-PRET
I guess whether that was Russian

And finally, an example showing that complementizers are optional for quotatives, as mentioned at the start of this section:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: emb-d
ik sair tö min maker ja haa en auto
ik sii-t tö min maker ja haa en auto
I say-PRET to my colleague they have a car
I said to my colleague they have a car

- Non-verbal Predicates -

Noun phrases, adjective phrases, and prepositional phrases can all be predicates in Frisian. The obligatory copula is an inflected form of either "wiis" (to be) or "uur" (to become).

# copula+PP
Source: a:235
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: cop
jü es fan Langeness
jü wiis-t fan Langeness
she is-3SG from Langeness
she's from Langeness

# copula+AdjP
Source: a:238
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: cop
en hi wiar gans, verrückt eeder Motor.räder
en hi wiis-t gans verrückt eeder Motor.räder
and he was-PAST whole crazy after motor.cycles
and he was really crazy about motorcycles

# copula+Adj
Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: cop
hi es gurt
hi wiis-t gurt
he is-3SG big
he is big

# copula+NP
Source: a:239
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: cop
min mooter wiar en hoog.dütsk.en
min mooter wiis-t en hoog.dütsk.en
my mother was-PAST a high.German.NOM
my mother was a (speaker of) High German

An example using "uur":

Source: a:238
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: cop
hi uur nü tö hārefst aacht.en.tachentig
hi uur-t nü tö hārefst aacht.en.tachentig
he become-3SG now to autumn eight.and.eighty
he'll be eighty-eight in the fall

- Information Structure -

In Frisian, the semantic agent is focused by default. There are several methods of shifting focus, including passivization, lexically specified focus on arguments of certain verbs, and defocusing pronouns.

Passivization is done using the verb "uur" (become) and defocuses the semantic subject of the verb:

Source: a:247
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: info
diar kür nün kuurn wuksi, det waar ek plaantet
diar kür nün kuurn wuksi det uur-t ek plaant-t
there could no grain grow that became-PAST not planted-PST.PTCP
no grain could grow there, it wasn't planted

The verb "fo" (get, receive) shifts focus to the semantic recipient:

Source: a:250
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: info
da fairst dü leeterhen uk jit din skuur
da fo-st dü leeterhen uk jit din skuur
then get-2SG you later.on too yet your shoes
Later on, you'll get your shoes.

Pronouns such as "em" (one) or "dü" (you.SG) can be interpreted in a generalizing way, which has the effect of defocusing the semantic role of that pronoun.

There was no evidence in our source for clefting constructions being used to explicitly focus certain parts of a sentence.

We had some difficulty transferring these observations into the questionnaire, especially since our source was very unclear in the sections that we could find relating to information structure. The semantic agent is usually in preverbal position and usually the focus of the sentence, and given the free word order of everything except the verb, it seems reasonable that the preverbal element is focused. The verb "fo" seems to act something like an overt topic marker where it appears, but it isn't an affix, adposition, or modifier, and contributes to the main semantics of the sentence, so it didn't fit into the topic section of the questionnaire. There was not enough information given in our source for us to say that anything special is done with contrastive focus in Frisian, so we have selected the "My language uses the same position to express contrastive focus as non-contrastive focus" option and left the rest of the focus section blank.

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4
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Coverage of the testsuite has gone down, mostly due to the phenomena that were added in this lab that are not covered by the grammar customization questionnaire. As many examples in our testsuite (both old and new) include modifiers of various kinds which are unsupported so far, there are lots of grammatical sentences that did not receive parses.

A lot of incorrect ambiguity has been added due to what seems to be a bad interaction between V2 word order, subject-verb inversion, and possibly argument optionality. Examples like:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: pronouns
ik iit höm
ik iit höm
I  eat it.OBJ
I eat it

are now getting odd parses with the V OBJ portion being analyzed as a VP with question word order and accepting the true subject of the sentence as a complement to the left of the verb.

This is causing some overgeneration in examples that are ungrammatical due to agreement as well... the grammar is parsing these examples as having the verb agree with what it thinks is the inverted subject, though it is actually the object, and the disagreement between the true subject and the verb is ignored as the grammar thinks that the subject is just another argument and doesn't require agreement. An example of an ungrammatical sentence that is parsing for this reason:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: u
Phenomena: agr
dü fo jil
dü fo jil
you.SG get.PRES money
you're getting money

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5
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There was one example in the test suite that was marked as ungrammatical but was actually a question and had to be relabeled:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: word order, q
haa  ik di  breev  dön       tö di  dreeng
haa  ik di  breev  dö-t      tö di  dreeng
have I  the letter give-PST.PTCP to the boy
have I given the letter to the boy?

Given that the majority of our sentences that aren't covered by the grammar so far are not covered due to modifiers, we did not do any major refactoring of the grammar for this lab.

A few more lexical items such as "aaler" (parent), "swin" (pig), "kin" (cow), and "molk" (milk) were added through the questionnaire to attempt to get some of the coordination examples to parse.

Unfortunately, the matrix has a bug that causes our indefinite determiner "en" and our conjunction "en" to get smashed together into one (inconsistent) lexical entry:

en := indefinite-det-determiner-lex & conj-lex &
  [ STEM < "en" >,
    SYNSEM.LKEYS.KEYREL.PRED "indef_q_rel" & "_and_coord_rel",
    CFORM "1" ].

By manually editing the tdl to look like this:

en_1 := indefinite-det-determiner-lex &
  [ STEM < "en" >,
    SYNSEM.LKEYS.KEYREL.PRED "indef_q_rel" ].

en_2 := conj-lex &
  [ STEM < "en" >,
    SYNSEM.LKEYS.KEYREL.PRED "_and_coord_rel",
    CFORM "1" ].

we were able to get two coordination examples to parse, e.g.:

Source: author
Vetted: f
Judgment: g
Phenomena: crd
ik her swin en kin en molk
ik haa-t swin-en en kin-en en molk
I have-PRET pig-PL and cow-PL and milk
I had pigs and cows and milk
