Eckhard Bick - VISL

Therefore, the @ADV-@ADVL distinction 178 can be made almost entirely at the "early"
syntactic level - i.e., the mappings section of the CG-rules file, where most @ADV
cases can be identified, depending heavily on lexical context (especially, lexical valency
information), and less on syntactic reasoning.
Material-wise, CG will map morphological adverbs only as @ADVL, @ADV on
the clause level, and mostly @>A or @A< on the group level. Prepositional phrases
(PPs), however, will in addition be mapped as @PIV (prepositional object) @SC
(subject complement) or @PRED (free predicative) on clause level, and @N< (postnominal)
on group level. In addition, the internal structure of PPs can be much more
complex than that of most adverb-phrases, which makes relevant clause level context
more distant and less visible to the CG disambiguation rules. I will therefore focus on
the syntactic function of PPs throughout the rest of this chapter.
Though valency bound, and therefore marked lexically on the verb, @PIV is
much more difficult to disambiguate than a PP @ADV, since it covers a wide range of
prepositions and semantic roles. PP @N< is somewhat easier to handle - at least where
there is relevant valency information on the head -, since group level attachment allows
my CG to rule out interfering clause level complements or adjuncts. At the same time,
in the case of PP @N< hierarchies, leftward attachment can be left underspecified. In
analogy to the clause-level distinction between @PIV/@ADV and @ADVL, also PP
@N< can be differentiated into valency-bound "objects" and circumstantial "adjuncts":
discussão sobre a Dinda (discussion about Parliament) vs. discussão na Dinda
(discussion in Parliament). Again, the first invites lexical solutions, while the second is
a real competitor to the @ADVL reading.
Just how big the syntactic ambiguity potential of PPs is in my CG-description,
can be seen in (1). A simple adverbial tag (@ADVL) would be the obvious default
reading for most of the categories below, - if the tag set was to be reduced for
pedagogical reasons, to ensure a very low error rate, or for transformation into or
comparison with other - less detailed - tagging systems. In my discussion of the other
function tag alternatives for PPs, I will therefore focus on those traits that distinguish
them from the @ADVL "prototype", as well as on the disambiguation tools employed.
(1a) @ADVL VEJA, 30. Dez. 92
(1b) @ Em 1992, o desemprego foi recorde.
Ao retornar, em 1986, encontrou o país transformado ...
(1d) @ No Rio, onde morava antigamente.
178 After this, one of the two classe, @ADVL, will still be ambiguous, - with regard to other adverbial classes like @>A
(adverbial pre-modifier).
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