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Predicate ADVs #279

Closed nschneid closed 2 years ago

nschneid commented 2 years ago

ADV tokens heading a cop relation:

Some of these ("alone", "late") are better tagged as adjectives.

Some of these are core adverbs (e.g. "really") that cannot be be-complements; the predicate is missing, and the analysis of ellipsis is incorrect (the copula should be the head).

Many of these are spatial terms that CGEL calls prepositions (that framework stipulates that adverbs cannot be be-complements).

"if you think it should be better, please help it be so": should this be a pronoun (cf. "that way")? ADJ because it substitutes for an adjective phrase ("better")? CGEL treats it as a maverick: "we prefer to classify anaphoric so simply as a pro-form; its properties are unquestionably unique, and we do not believe that anything is gained by forcing it into one or more of our general part-of-speech categories" (p. 1538).

nschneid commented 2 years ago

"The food was good, and so was our waitress." Should "was" be promoted to head of the 2nd clause? Right now the head is "so".

nschneid commented 2 years ago

In #200 we decided ADV for predicative close/far. So I'll leave those alone.

nschneid commented 2 years ago

EWT ADVs with a subject but no cop: most are incorrect handling of ellipsis

amir-zeldes commented 2 years ago

I think in general there is no problem with adverbs being copula predicates; if PPs can be predicates, than why not adverbs? From "outside" they are basically the same:

So notwithstanding possible errors, I don't see an issue here.

nschneid commented 2 years ago

I think in general there is no problem with adverbs being copula predicates; if PPs can be predicates, than why not adverbs? From "outside" they are basically the same:

  • Kim is in the house
  • Kim is there

But it is normally only certain spatiotemporal adverbs (including "outside", "there", and "now") that can be predicate complements. Usually an adjective phrase, NP, or PP is required:

If we treat "so" as an ADV predicate complement, I think the justification would be that ADV is basically a garbage category for grammatical words that don't easily fit any other POS.

amir-zeldes commented 2 years ago

I'm not sure I'm on the right level of the discussion here: is this a question about English grammar and what kinds of adverbs do we find in predicate position, or is it an annotation question about "what do we do when we see a non-spatio-temporal adverb in predicate position"?

If it's the latter, then if I actually saw the sentence "The team's loss was suddenly", then I think I would still go with root(suddenly). Are you saying you would prefer "was" in this situation because it's non-standard?

nschneid commented 2 years ago

No I'm questioning whether "so" is really an adverb here. It is a pro-...something, I just don't know what is the best POS. If we call it ADV (a pro-adverb) it would be an exception to the pattern of what kinds of adverbs occur as predicate complements (in perfectly grammatical English). But I don't love calling it PRON either.

Or maybe it's not a predicate complement, but an adverb modifying "be" in a similar fashion as do-so substitution. In which case "be" should be promoted to head of the clause. How about:

The infinitive "be" sounds a bit awkward if both the "to" and "so" are omitted, but maybe it's OK with the right intonation.

amir-zeldes commented 2 years ago

Yes, I think it's a pro adverb, but I think so is "there", and we don't question the tag for that one. I would say being an ADV outranks being somehow pronominal as well, but I guess this shows that our POS scheme is not really targeting the same level across the board (ADV is a functional category, PRON is a semantic one).

All of the examples above look possible to me, and I think of "so" as an ADV in all of these positions. Consider also that although "so" is conventionalized as the pro-ADV and is especially linked with the "do so" construction, it is still basically substitutable with "thus" (I wanted it to be cold and it was thus on Christmas). For me "thus" is also clearly an adverb.

nschneid commented 2 years ago

OK. "So" is a grammatically weird word and ADV seems as good a tag as any. So I'll leave the annotations as is.