Eckhard Bick - VISL

In some non-personal proper nouns, however, the pre-name term may be
capitalised (5a), suggesting a PROP reading. The rules concerned had to learn the
difference between pre-name terms that apply to persons (e.g. senhor, carioca,
typically lower case) and those that don't (e.g. Rua, Grupo, often upper case), thus
ignoring the upper case letter in the pre-name term and retaining its N reading, but
still assigning the same overall function pattern (i.e. postnominal function for all the
proper nouns in the chain, and nominal head function for the first word in the chain).
With the new, "harder" (i.e. less ambiguous already at the analyser level), name
tagging protocol, this case has become a lot easier, in terms of CG rule economy 29 ,
since for simple (underived) name chain initial nouns no PROP reading is generated
in the first place (i.e. on the lexical analyser's level).
In (5b) recognition of the pre-name term is easy (since it isn't capitalised),
whereas the hyphens in the name term have to be recognised by the preprocessor as
inter-word rather than intra-word, in order to make it possible for the parser to assign
the correct structure (the same as in 4b).
(5c), finally, is different in that the first word of the expression is marked as
part of the name structure by capitalisation, but could - internally - be described as a
prenominal attributive. In the old version, the lexical analyser establishes a word
class ambiguity between PROP and ADJ, which is then resolved in favour of the
PROP reading by the CG-rules, sacrificing the attributive reading, but gaining name
phrase continuity analogous to (4a) 30 . In the new version, in the case of a nonderivational
(simple) ADJ reading, no PROP reading is added (and thus no
disambiguation necessary). Here, the prenominal function will be recognised, but the
name chain continuity (expressed by the capitalisation of the adjective) is less
explicit.
Name chain final (capitalised) adjectives, as in (5d), are another matter - first,
already on the tagger level, a backward look is possible, so (unlike in the chain
initial adjective case in 5c) the tagger has a strong reason to make 'Oriental' part of
the name by adding a PROP tag, and, second, the postnominal @N< function tag
works for both the PROP and ADJ classes, so it is not (as in the chain initial ADJ
case) necessary to sacrifice the "part-of-the-name-ness" (expressed by the PROP tag)
in order to achieve a structurally accurate description.
(6a) is the prototypical case of a (foreign) firm name - a colourful string of
multinational names without immediately recognisable internal structure and usually
without any lexicalised proper noun anywhere in the chain. Firm names are nearly
29
meaning either fewer rules needed to achieve the same result, - or a better result achieved with the same number of
rules.
30
It is admittedly hard to make this choice. My general approach is to regard name chains as "leaning left", i.e. having
their head in the leftmost capitalized word. This is why premodifiers of names must either (if lower case) stay outside
the name chain proper (like the article in 'a Maria Moura') or (if upper case) become head of the name chain. Of course,
type nouns "tolerate" this treatment much better than adjectives, i.e. their chain internal function is described
more adequately. On the other hand, it is very hard to ascertain how long an etymological adjective retains is adjectivity
inside a name chain: Is 'pacific/atlantic' in 'The Pacific/Atlantic Ocean' still an adjective? Why, then, is it possible to
substitute 'The Pacific/Atlantic' for the whole chain? Why does 'Ocean' get stress marking, and not the modifier
'Pacific/Atlantic'? My present choice is to treat some fixed expressions ("Pacific=Ocean") as single lexical units in the
PALAVRAS lexicon, and to opt for the prenominal adjective reading in all the others.
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