search

UniversalDependencies / UD_English-EWT

English data
Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International
199 stars 42 forks source link

illicit plural compound dependents #408

Closed nschneid closed 1 year ago

nschneid commented 1 year ago

While plural nouns may be compound modifiers ("securities exchange", "political affairs director"), it is a relatively closed set. After going through the EWT ones, here are ones to fix—many are really possessives missing an apostrophe (#82): https://universal.grew.fr/?custom=649c960b3da18

lgessler commented 1 year ago

FWIW there's a paper arguing that plurals in compounds are productive, see page 261 (Punske and Jackson) http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/bls/previous_proceedings/bls43_1.pdf

nschneid commented 1 year ago

Yeah I dunno if I buy this. p. 265:

We claim that regardless of regularity [of the noun plural], singular modifiers are required when an individuating interpretation is required, plurals are required for a collective/group interpretation, and in cases where both are allowed, there are clear differences in meaning, such that the plurals support collective or idiosyncratic interpretations.

If it's purely semantic, why not *eggs carton? That refers to a group of eggs.

I think it's more likely to be the case that there are certain semantic classes where a plural is motivated, and sometimes possible, but we have item-based knowledge as well and it's not totally predictable.