MatrixDoc_YesNoQ

Documentation for the Grammar Matrix Customization Yes/No Questions Library

• [ This documentation is under construction. When it is more complete, this section should describe the effects of the various options provided in this library in terms of the behavior of the grammar. It is also a good place for tips on how to get the most from the library. ]

Introduction

This document explains how to fill out the Matrix Yes/No Questions page of the Grammar Matrix Customization questionnaire and presents background information on the Matrix Yes/No Questions library of the Grammar Matrix Customization System (Bender et al., 2002; Bender and Flickinger, 2005; Bender et al., 2010). General instructions on using the questionnaire can be found here.

Citing the Matrix Yes/No Questions Library

The standard reference for the Matrix Yes/No Questions Library and its implementations is Bender & Flickinger, 2005. The full reference and .bib entry can be found here.

Options

The Matrix Yes/No Questions page allows you to specify a strategy that your language uses to form matrix yes-no questions. You can either choose from three pre-defined options below or skip this section entirely, in which case your grammar will not include a question-forming strategy.

• A separate question particle:

  • sentence initial

  • sentence final

  Spelling of question particle:

• Verbal inflection: Checking this box enables a features called question with possible value plus for use in defining morphemes on the lexicon page. Defining morphemes that specify [QUESTION plus] will produce lexical rules that add the semantics of questions.

• Subject-verb inversion:

  • main verbs only

  • auxiliaries only

  • any verb.

If your language uses a separate question particle to form matrix yes/no questions, please specify whether this question particle occupies an initial or final position in the sentence. If this question particle occupies a different position in the sentence, you can skip this section. An example of a question clitic that occupies neither sentence initial, nor sentence final position is Russian clitic ли that usually attaches to the first constituent in the sentence. If a question clitic in your language behaves similarly to this Russian clitic, you can skip this section and move to the next one. Note that you will have to manually modify your grammar files accordingly, if you want your grammar to cover yes/no questions.

Analyses

(((The values you assign to the GENDER feature will be available to use later in the customization system, especially the Morphology and Lexicon pages. Gender will appear as one of the features of the lexical rule types on Morphology page and as one of the features of the lexical types on Lexicon page.)))

The choices you make on the Matrix Yes/No Questionscustomization page will also affect the lexical types (your_language_name.tdl file) and possibly inflectional rules (irules.tdl file).

As mentioned in the questionnaire, if your language uses verbal inflection for yes/no question forming and you choose a corresponding option on the Matrix Yes/No Questions page, your grammar will include feature [QUESTION] with possibly a value [PLUS] to be used in defining morphemes on the Lexicon page. If/when you define a morpheme with value [QUESTION plus], this will create lexical rules adding question semantics to your grammar.

If your language uses inversion of the subject and the main verb for yes/no question forming, this strategy is implemented through a lexical rule that (1). relocates the subject (SUBJ ) to the first position in the COMPS list, and (2). assigns a positive value to inverted feature INV on verbs.

If your language uses inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb for yes/no question forming, this strategy is implemented through constraining the basic inversion lexical rule (for inversion of the subject and the main verb, as described above) to apply only to auxiliary verbs.

If you have selected any of the yes/no question marking strategies above, your grammar will assign [ques] value to SF in semantic INDEX for questions because of this constraint in matrix.tdl:

interrogative-clause := basic-non-rel-clause & 
  [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK.INDEX.SF ques ].

Upcoming Work

This library is one of the original ones from Bender and Flickinger 2005 and has yet to be reworked and put on a firm typological foundation. While there is no current plans to do so, this would make a good MA/MS-sized thesis topic.

(from Bender & Flickinger 2005: "Future work on this module includes support for ‘intonation questions’, where the same string can be associated with either proposition or question semantics, as well as the integration of declarative/interrogative punctuation contrasts."

References

Bender, E., & Flickinger, D. 2005. Rapid prototyping of scalable grammars: Towards modularity in extensions to a language-independent core. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing IJCNLP-05 (Posters/Demos), Jeju Island, Korea.

• bibtex:

  @article{Bender & Flickinger:05,
  author = {Bender, E., & Flickinger, D.},
  year = {2005},
  title = {Rapid prototyping of scalable grammars: Towards modularity in extensions to a language-independent core},
  conference = {In Proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing IJCNLP-05 (Posters/Demos)},
  location = {Jeju Island, Korea} }