[Attempto] Parsing questions and affirmations

[Kaarel Kaljurand]

Hi,

I think the parser is correct (i.e. consistent with the ACE spec)
here, but the of course the DRS might not represent what the normal
English meaning of the input sentence is. Notice that "late" is an
adverb that modifies the copula verb "is". Consider e.g.:

Every project is Alpha initially. There is a project. Is it Alpha late?

[A]
   [B]
   object(B,project,countable,na,eq,1)-1/2
   =>
   [C]
   predicate(C,be,B,named(Alpha))-1/3
   modifier_adv(C,initially,pos)-1/5
object(A,project,countable,na,eq,1)-2/4
   QUESTION
   [D]
   predicate(D,be,A,named(Alpha))-3/1
   modifier_adv(D,late,pos)-3/4

Best,
Kaarel

On Sat, Dec 14, 2019 at 1:49 PM Norbert E. Fuchs <fuchs at ifi.uzh.ch> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 14 Dec 2019, at 12:48 , Marco Zanchi <mzanchi at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I have been playing with the parser recently and noticed a strange behaviour, not sure if it is down to the language definition or not. I can ask a question:
> >
> > Is the project Alpha late?
> >
> > And this parses well:
> >
> > <DRS domain="">
> >   <Question>
> >     <DRS domain="A B">
> >       <object
> >  ref="B"
> >  noun="project"
> >  struct="countable"
> >  unit="na"
> >  numrel="eq"
> >  num="1"
> >  sentid="1"
> >  tokid="3"/>
> >       <predicate
> >  ref="A"
> >  verb="be"
> >  subj="B"
> >  obj="named('Alpha')"
> >  sentid="1"
> >  tokid="1"/>
> >       <modifier_adv ref="A" adverb="late" degree="pos" sentid="1" tokid="5"/>
> >     </DRS>
> >   </Question>
> > </DRS>
> >
> > But if I try the equivalent affirmation:
> >
> > The project Alpha is late.
> >
> > then I get a parsing error.
> > ERROR: [sentence] at 1-4: 'The project Alpha <> is late.'. This is the first sentence that was not ACE. The sign <> indicates the position where parsing failed.
> >
> > Has anyone encountered anything of the sort?
> > _______________________________________________
> > attempto mailing list
> > attempto at lists.ifi.uzh.ch
> > https://lists.ifi.uzh.ch/listinfo/attempto
>
>
> Marco
>
> There is a grammar error occurring in both of your examples. Namely
>
>         Variables can be introduced as noun phrase apposition, and can then be used as noun phrases.
>         Variable names consist of a single upper case letter, optionally followed by an integer.
>
> Thus your noun phrase "project Alpha" violates this construction rule since "Alpha" is not a correct variable.
>
> However, your first example "Is the project Alpha late?" points to a bug of the parser APE since - though being translated – it is translated wrongly as the DRS
>
> []
>    QUESTION
>    [A,B]
>    object(B,project,countable,na,eq,1)-1/3
>    predicate(A,be,B,named(Alpha))-1/1
>    modifier_adv(A,late,pos)-1/5
>
> that does nor reflect the question correctly. Again, the variable "Alpha" should trigger an error message.
>
> Best regards.
>
> Norbert E. Fuchs
> Institute of Computational Linguistics
> University of Zurich
>
>
>
>
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