EdsConversion

Background

Basic Procedure

Disambiguation Heuristics

Up until the 1214 release of the ERG at least, there are some predications that encode aspects of information structure rather than core predicate–argument relations. These include the ‘discourse’ relations introduced by the grammatical constructions of passivization and topicalization, as well as two-place relations that effectively express an identity relation between two (distinct) instance variables. The latter class includes the appos(ition) relation and the id(entity) relation (used in tag questions and some coordinate structures). These relations are generally dis-preferred (and are likely to be recast in terms of ‘indvidual constraints’ in forthcoming versions of the MRS framework), and there is a grammar-specific ‘black list’ of these predicate names (called *eds-non-representatives* in the LKB).

The most common cause of one-to-many correspondences between a variable and a set of predications are labels shared with (non-scopal) modifiers, e.g. in a structure like she arrived very quickly. Here, the degree specifier is a non-scopla modifier on the adverb, which in turn is a non-scopal modifier on the arriving event; thus, all three share one label, and arrive is the ARG1 of quickly, which is the ARG1 of very. To pick out arrive in this scenario, we dis-prefer candidates that take any of the other candidates as their argument. This is a sound topological heuristic, essentially operationalizing a notion of semantic heads in groups of (logically) conjoined predications.

Far less frequent than the above are cases of two or more predications sharing their label but lacking argument relations among them. In the 1214 release of the ERG, the ‘existential be’ constructions can give rise to such configuration, e.g. in there were cats in the garden (mrs/991). Here, the preposition shares its label with the _be_v_there, but its external argument (ARG1) is the cats instance variable.

Predicate Modification