Eckhard Bick - VISL

An example of argument-head polysemy disambiguation 224 are the
monotransitive verbs tirar and pôr. A common translation into Danish is ‘trække’ (tirar,
‘pull’) and ‘sætte’ (pôr, ‘put’), but with direct objects of the class (clothes), the
translation is ‘tage af’ [take off] and ‘tage på’ [put on], respectively. Which translation
is chosen, depends on the discriminator and whether or not it has been
removed by a CG-rule like the following:
REMOVE (@%+ACC-tøj) (*1 @) ;
In terms of (polysemy) disambiguation gain by selection restrictions, head-argument
disambiguation 225 is probably more important than argument-head disambiguation,
since the latter - as opposed to the former - can also draw on the valency tag
instantiation technique (cp. chapter 6.5.3) which is a very efficient tool. In the present
grammar, (semantic) head-argument disambiguation is most advanced for subjects. For
instance, the H/h atomic feature is disambiguated in subjects by checking for a
matching V-HUM main verb.
REMOVE (@=H) (0 @SUBJ>) (*1 @MV BARRIER CLB-ORD LINK 0 V-NON-HUM-SAFE OR V-
NON-HUM) ;
REMOVE (@=H) (0 @SUBJ>) (*1 CLB-ORD/VFIN LINK 0 CLB-ORD LINK *1 @MV LINK *1
@MV LINK 0 V-NON-HUM-SAFE OR V-NON-HUM) ;
REMOVE (@=h) (0 @SUBJ>) (*1 @MV LINK 0 V-HUM-SAFE LINK NOT *-1 CLB-ORD) ;
REMOVE (@=h) (0 @SUBJ>) (*1 CLB-ORD/VFIN LINK 0 CLB-ORD LINK *1 @MV LINK *1
@MV LINK 0 V-HUM-SAFE) ;
Another case of head-argument reasoning are rules stating that MOVE-verbs (correr,
viajar) need +MOVING subjects (feature I), and transitive MOVE-verbs (carregar,
levar) need +MOVABLE direct objects (feature J):
REMOVE (@=i) (0 @SUBJ> AND @=I) (*1 @MV BARRIER CLB-ORD LINK 0 V-MOVE);
REMOVE (@=i) (0 @SUBJ>) (*1 @MV LINK 0 V-MOVE LINK NOT *-1 CLB-ORD) ;
REMOVE (@=i) (0 @SUBJ>) (*1 CLB-ORD/VFIN LINK 0 CLB-ORD LINK *1 @MV LINK *1
@MV LINK 0 V-MOVE) ;
REMOVE (@=j) (0 @