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A webapp for the syntax-prosody analyst working in Optimality Theory, with automated Gen, Con and Eval. Download build files from syntax-prosody-ot/build
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Interaction of heads and clitics #559

Closed jbellik closed 3 years ago

jbellik commented 3 years ago

When we use "Label some terminals as clitics", we end up with structures like [a b.clitic] even without choosing "Treat non-branching XPs as X0s". These are problematic from the perspective of syntactic theory and should not be included in the candidate set.

Proposed solution: Wrap those clitics in an X0 layer so that they aren't invisible to filters that eliminate adjacent heads.

jbellik commented 3 years ago

@rbibbs Would it cause any problems in your Chamorro analysis if the algorithmically added clitics have an X0 layer above them in the syntactic representation? For example:

  1. [[a [b]] [[x0 x.clitic]]] instead of [[a [b]] [ x.clitic]]
  2. [[[a] [b]] [[x0 x.clitic]]] instead of [[[a] [b]] [ x.clitic]]

I'm thinking about this because I realized we're currently generating problematic structures because SPOT doesn't recognize that things with category clitic are really heads (x0) as well, and I'm trying to fix that. But I don't want to break something else along the way. I couldn't think of any issues it would create for you since all your clitics are wrapped in a DP layer anyway, but just in case...

rbibbs commented 3 years ago

So I'm a little worried that this will essentially undo the headedness requirement for GEN, which was in place to prevent clitics from being within their own phi. If they don't end up getting mapped as words then it's still fine. Otherwise I think this kind of runs against the assumptions I make in my analysis (and affects evaluations of things like Equal sisters and such if the clitic is in it's own phi).

Happy to discuss this further or in more detail!

On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 8:53 PM jbellik notifications@github.com wrote:

@rbibbs https://github.com/rbibbs Would it cause any problems in your Chamorro analysis if the algorithmically added clitics have an X0 layer above them in the syntactic representation? For example:

  1. [[a [b]] [[x0 x.clitic]]] instead of [[a [b]] [ x.clitic]]
  2. [[[a] [b]] [[x0 x.clitic]]] instead of [[[a] [b]] [ x.clitic]]

I'm thinking about this because I realized we're currently generating problematic structures because SPOT doesn't recognize that things with category clitic are really heads (x0) as well, and I'm trying to fix that. But I don't want to break something else along the way. I couldn't think of any issues it would create for you since all your clitics are wrapped in a DP layer anyway, but just in case...

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/syntax-prosody-ot/main/issues/559#issuecomment-784760111, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIO6KP3ZADATRWV7ATAS753TASA47ANCNFSM4XLRZ47Q .

jbellik commented 3 years ago

Oh yes, that's important to think about. The way output GEN is set up, terminals that are clitics are always parsed as syllables, regardless of whatever category of parent they may have. I just checked this and even with the x0 layer in the syntax, the prosodic trees still label the clitics as .syll, and enforcing headedness still excludes structures of the form (x.syll) where () represent phi boundaries.

rbibbs commented 3 years ago

Oh, okay, great! In that case it should be fine I think.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 4:55 PM jbellik notifications@github.com wrote:

Oh yes, that's important to think about. The way output GEN is set up, terminals that are clitics are always parsed as syllables, regardless of whatever category of parent they may have. I just checked this and even with the x0 layer in the syntax, the prosodic trees still label the clitics as .syll, and enforcing headedness still excludes structures of the form (x.syll) where () represent phi boundaries.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/syntax-prosody-ot/main/issues/559#issuecomment-785496039, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIO6KP7PM4NQVYNCZJSGM63TAWNXRANCNFSM4XLRZ47Q .

jbellik commented 3 years ago

[I was already typing this long comment when I saw your comment above; posting this partially for documentary purposes since I didn't spell things out when I made the issue originally.]

The major goal here is to make the head requirements still apply to clitics. With the current master branch, if you use the "label some terminals as clitics" option in the syntax GEN, you end up with 20 inputs for 2 terminals when there are no requirements on head location ("Heads can be anywhere") and you leave out adjunction:

  1. [a [b [c]]]
  2. [a [[b] c]]
  3. [[a [b]] c]
  4. [[[a] b] c]
  5. [a.clitic [b [c]]]
  6. [a.clitic [[b] c]]
  7. [[a.clitic [b]] c]
  8. [[[a.clitic] b] c]
  9. [[a.clitic b] c]
  10. [a [b.clitic [c]]]
  11. [a [[b.clitic] c]]
  12. [a [b.clitic c]]
  13. [[a [b.clitic]] c]
  14. [[[a] b.clitic] c]
  15. [[a b.clitic] c]
  16. [a [b [c.clitic]]]
  17. [a [[b] c.clitic]]
  18. [a [b c.clitic]]
  19. [[a [b]] c.clitic]
  20. [[[a] b] c.clitic]

If you select "Heads must be at the left edge of an XP", then this should go way down, and it does, but there are some structures where the clitic (actually a head) is adjacent to another head, or is at the right edge of an XP:

  1. | [a [b [c]]]
  2. | [a.clitic [b [c]]]
  3. | [a [b.clitic [c]]]
  4. | [a [b [c.clitic]]]
  5. | [a [[b] c.clitic]] <-- this is right-headed but SPOT can't tell since the clitic isn't labeled as an x0
  6. | [a [b c.clitic]] <-- this is really a two-headed XP (bicephalous?) but again SPOT can't tell
  7. | [[a [b]] c.clitic] <-- right headed bc of the clitic which again SPOT doesn't recognize

With the proposed changes, you instead get:

  1. | [a [b [c]]]
  2. | [[x0 a.clitic] [b [c]]]
  3. | [a [[x0 b.clitic] [c]]]
  4. | [a [b [[x0 c.clitic]]]] which is a little hard to read bc of the [x0 ] brackets, but is all the correct structures.

Another way to address this would've been to make SPOT treat all clitics as x0s in its syntax filters on the backend. That would have created simpler bracket representations but would be less transparent in some ways; I worry about breaking it somewhere else if I write some other code that is looking specifically at x0s and I forget to take clitics into account.

I guess really the best thing might be to redo SPOT's internal representation of clitics altogether so that they are actually objects with cat: 'x0' and an attribute clitic: true... That shouldn't change anything on the front end though.

Happy to hear any further thoughts on this!

jbellik commented 3 years ago

Great, I think I will go ahead and merge these changes, then. Unless you think the [x0 a.clitic] representation is horrifically ugly / unreadable.

rbibbs commented 3 years ago

Great! I think that representation looks fine. More transparency in this case I think is good, and it's not terribly cluttered.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 5:13 PM jbellik notifications@github.com wrote:

Great, I think I will go ahead and merge these changes, then. Unless you think the [x0 a.clitic] representation is horrifically ugly / unreadable.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/syntax-prosody-ot/main/issues/559#issuecomment-785502951, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIO6KP7ZITDDGYDD6DKXRK3TAWP3HANCNFSM4XLRZ47Q .

jbellik commented 3 years ago

Awesome, thanks for the feedback!

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 5:29 PM rbibbs notifications@github.com wrote:

Great! I think that representation looks fine. More transparency in this case I think is good, and it's not terribly cluttered.

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 5:13 PM jbellik notifications@github.com wrote:

Great, I think I will go ahead and merge these changes, then. Unless you think the [x0 a.clitic] representation is horrifically ugly / unreadable.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub < https://github.com/syntax-prosody-ot/main/issues/559#issuecomment-785502951 , or unsubscribe < https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIO6KP7ZITDDGYDD6DKXRK3TAWP3HANCNFSM4XLRZ47Q

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-- Jennifer Bellik, PhD Post-doctoral researcher & lecturer UC Santa Cruz https://people.ucsc.edu/~jbellik/