Eckhard Bick - VISL

The program module implementing the translational look-up (called trad), takes the
translation of a valency governed preposition from its head, removing and replacing the
original literal “dummy” translation at the preposition itself.
For prepositions that are not valency bound, the valency tag instantiation
technique is not practical since no valency tags are used in the first place. Also, there is
a higher degree of lexical variation in both head and dependent, which would lead to a
proliferation of tags - if they were added -, since most verbs and nouns would have to be
“dependency-potential” tagged for all prepositions ( ...). But since
“free” prepositions retain more of their literal meaning spectrum, the physical and other
semantic features of the @P< argument can be exploited (argument-head polysemy
disambiguation). To this end, the preposition in question is tagged with the relevant
markers for what could be called “semantic valency”. In the case of sobre, the following
cases can be distinguished:
semantic translation type of example
valency tag
argument
udover ADJ, N sobre rico, é inteligente
(‘apart from rich, he is intelligent’)
sobre poeta, é um bom narrador (‘besides
being a poet, he is a good story teller’)
henimod N sobre a noite, sobre o anoitecer
(‘towards nightfall’)
over N sobre a mureta, sobre o gradil
(‘over the wall, over the fence’)
These “semantic valency” tags can then be disambiguated and instantiated in the same
fashion as ordinary valency tags.
In some cases, the spatial semantics of the (nominal or verbal) head could be
used, too (head-dependent disambiguation), as in the following two translation mapping
rules. Typically, heads will be involved in terms of semantic category rather than
lexically (“one lexeme at a time”).
MAP (‘over’) TARGET (“sobre”) IF (0 @N