Eckhard Bick - VISL

’algumas de’ would be that of DETA ( or predeterminer), which also seems to
be fitting for ’um tanto de’, ’algo de’ and ’uma pinga de’ in (b) and (c). However, this
analysis is syntactically awkward in that it strands a preposition in a constituent of
which it is not head, but dependent. In the CG-terminology used here, ’de’ would have
to be tagged as adverbial post-adject (@AN
(constituent bracketing added):
((algumas @>N de @AN maçãs @NPHR)
(((uma @>N pinga @>N) de @AN água @NPHR)
Not to speak of the unorthodoxy of this analysis, it is in conflict with ordinary CG-rules
trying to establish PP dependencies. A preposition’s ”need” for an argument is very
strong in the parser’s rule set, and without major grammar surgery, ’maçãs’ and ’água’
are bound to receive the @P< tag. Therefore, I have opted for an analysis with the
quantifier as head postmodified by a PP in which the ”semantic head” functions as
argument of preposition:
(algumas @NPHR (de @N< (as @>N maçãs @PN píngua @NPHR (de @N< água @PN estúpido @NPHR (de @N< rapaz @PN estúpido @>N de) @A< rapaz @NPHR)
The remaining, non-DET, fields of an np, 5, 6 and 7, could be called for pre-attributive,
head and post-attributive, respectively. Though many adjectives and nouns can appear
in several of these three slots, a few are restricted to one slot and can be used for
substitution testing. ‘Mero’ and ‘meio’ define the pre-attributive field (5), ‘seu’, ‘tal’,
‘assim’ and pp-attributes define the post-attributive field (7), and concrete object nouns
like ‘árvore’, ‘faca’ or ‘sol’ define the head position (6).
When disambiguating nouns and adjectives, it is important for the CG-rules to be able
to “trust” the distributional fact that determiners come in a certain order, and especially
that determiners come left of nouns, and adjectives and participles right. Therefore, the
few exceptions are marked in the lexicon as (possessives, ‘próprio’, ‘todo’)
and -adjectives (‘grande’, ‘novo’, ‘velho’ ...), respectively. The tag
does not mean that @>N is the preferred function of these adjectives. Rather, it implies
that all other adjectives are not , but post-nominal (@N