Climb_GClimb_German

gCLIMB for German

General

This page provides background information on phenomena and implementations included in gCLIMB for German.

In this document, I and me refers to AntskeFokkens.

Disclaimer

1. This documentation is under construction and incomplete. At present, the only way to get detailed into implementations of gCLIMB is by looking at the grammars.

2. I am currently finishing my thesis. In the near future, this page will therefore mostly contain background information that completes work described in my PhD. If you have request on other explanations or documentation, please contact me and I'll see if I can shift priorities around.

3. This documentation will be restructured soon

Where to get gCLIMB

For now, e-mail me. The repository should be accessible for guest accounts soon.

Phenomena

This section provides an incomplete list of phenomena implemented in gCLIMB for German. It describes when the phenomenon was added, when revised and what decisions were made concerning the scope of the phenomenon (i.e. what to do rare constructions, examples that are awkward, but not ungrammatical etc.)

Word order for verbs (left and right brackets, relative order in right bracket)

In principle covered since Fokkens (2011).

Old Bug report

In previous versions there was a problem with interaction between polar questions and restricting the verbal cluster. The arg-comp analysis incorrectly accepted the following sentences:

Topological fields:	Vorfeld	Left Bracket	Mittelfeld	Right Bracket	Nachfeld
German:	*	Hat		schlafen der Mann können
Transliteration:		have.3rd.sg		sleep.inf the.nom man.nom can.nf
German:	*	Hat	mich	sehen der Mann können
Transliteration:		have.3rd.sg	me.acc	see.inf the.nom man.nom can.nf

The problem was corrected at a later stage. More information can be found in the repository overview below.

Development stages

repository version	addition/revision
19613	Addition of polar questions, including bug for arg-comp analysis
...	...
23282	Bug known to be fixed

Split verbal clusters

Split verbal clusters are a specific form of partial VP fronting, where the main verb is placed in the Vorfeld (optionally accompanied by one or more arguments) and at least one auxiliary is left in the Right Bracket. An example (meaning you should be able to sleep here):

Topological fields:	Vorfeld	Left Bracket	Mittelfeld	Right Bracket	Nachfeld
German:	Schlafen	solltest	Du hier auf jeden Fall	können
Transliteration:	sleep.inf	should.2nd.sg	you.nom here in any case	can.inf

Split verbal clusters are beyond doubt grammatical, but marked and rarely used. gCLIMB allows you to either include or exclude them. These two possibilities have been present in gCLIMB since Fokkens (2011), though revisions have been made.

Old Bug report

At certain stages in the past, the argument-composition analysis in gCLIMB required the fronted main verb to fit subcategorization requirements of the finite verb in the left bracket. This is incorrect, it should fit subcategorization requirements of the auxiliary in the Nachfeld that governs it. The auxiliary+construction analysis in this version is correct. The repository table below provides the information that is currently available about this bug. Where it was introduced exactly and when it was fixed is still under investigation.

Development stages

repository version	addition/revision
Older branch	Split cluster already optionally included. The aux-rule analysis uses a hack that violates principles of semantic compositionality
19578	Bug on subcategorization requirements for arg-comp analysis identified
...	...
23282	Bug known to be fixed, more principled analysis for aux-rule and split clusters (Fokkens, in progress)

Adverbial Negation

Comments:

• Fronting of the negative adverb in German sounds unnatural, but could be acceptable in poetry. In the initial implementation it is accepted by the grammar (i.e. parsed and generated)

?Nicht schläft           der     Mann.
Not    sleep.pres.3rd.sg the.nom man.nom.
''The Man doesn't sleep.''

Development stages

• repository version	addition/revision
  19613	Initial implementation of nicht with free position of adverbial

References

Fokkens, Antske (2011) Metagrammar engineering: Towards systematic ex- ploration of implemented grammars. In Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Lan- guage Technologies, pages 1066–1076, Portland, Oregon, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics.

Fokkens, Antske (in progress) Enhancing empirical research for linguistic precision grammars. PhD thesis. Saarland University.
NB References to this work in the documentation are already written. Please contact me if you are interested in this information before the PhD is done.