Towards a proper treatment of coercion phenomena * 
Dani~le Godard 
CNRS, Universit6 Paris 7, UFRL 
case 7003, 2 Place Jussieu 
75005 Paris France 
godard@parisT.jussieu.fr 
Jacques Jayez 
EHESS-CELITH 
54 Boulevard Raspail 
75006 Paris France 
jayez~divsun.unige.ch 
Abstract 
The interpretation of coercion construc- 
tions (to begin a book) has been recently 
considered as resulting from the operation 
of type changing. For instance, a phrase of 
type o (object) is coerced to a phrase of type 
e (event) under the influence of the predi- 
cate. We show that this procedure encoun- 
ters empirical difficulties. Focussing on the 
begin/commencer case, we show that the co- 
ercion interpretation results both from gen- 
eral semantic processes and properties of 
the predicate, and we argue that it is best 
represented at the lexical level. The solu- 
tion is formulated in the HPSG formalism, 
where the lexical description of heads in- 
cludes a specification of the argument and 
articulates syntax and semantics. We pro- 
pose that the properties attached to the 
complement remain the same as they are 
oustside the construction, but that the se- 
mantics of the predicate is enriched to in- 
clude an abstract predicate of which the 
complement is an argument. 
1 Introduction 
Predicates require that their arguments be of a given 
type. However, as is well-known, certain acceptable 
constructions exhibit a mismatch between the type 
of the argument, as constructed from a possible para- 
phrase, and the type that the argument has outside 
*We are indebted to Anne Abeilld, Nicolas Asher, 
Michel Aurnague, Andrde Borillo, Annie Delaveau, Jean 
Marie Marandin, Jean-Pierre Mantel, Alex Lascarides, 
Patrick Saint-Dizier, Annie Zaenen and our referees for 
helpful comments, criticisms and suggestions. 
the construction. This traditionM problem has been 
recently rephrased within type theory, where types 
(like e for events, p for material objects, ~¢ for kinds, 
etc.) classify the domain of entities (cf. \[Bach, 1986; 
Carlson, 1977; Chierchia, 1984\]). Pustejovsky pro- 
poses in particular that the mismatch is solved by the 
operation of "type coercion" (cf.\[Pustejovsky, 1991; 
Pustejovsky and Anick, 1988; Boguraev and Puste- 
jovsky, 1991\]). In essence, it confers to the predicate 
the ability to change the argument type. For ex- 
ample, the sequence in (1) is accounted for in the 
following way: 
(1) John began the book. 
The predicate associated with begin requires that the 
argument corresponding to the complement be an 
event (type e). Since the type associated with book 
is different (we will suppose it is "material object", 
p) it is coerced to e. Accordingly, (1) is given an 
event reading, which, in this case, is associated with 
two possible interpretations: "John began to read 
the book", and "John began to write the book". 
This is an interesting way of looking at the phe- 
nomenon, and typing certainly plays a crucial role 
in building a coercion interpretation. However, the 
hypothesis of type coercion itself is not supported 
by linguistic evidence, and is not sufficiently con- 
strained to account for the impossibility of some com- 
binations. Instead of type change on the argument, 
we propose an enrichment of the semantics of the 
predicates which give rise to coercion interpretation. 
Predicates may be finitely polymorphic; for instance, 
begin combines with arguments of type p as well as 
of type e. The correct interpretation is obtained at 
the interpretive level, where it results both from gen- 
eral processes and specific semantic properties of the 
predicate. When begin has a complement of type 
168 
It, the interpretation makes use of a morphism be- 
tween events and objects (\[Krifka, 1992\]); this mor- 
phism itself is not noted in the grammar, but the 
result of its being resorted to can be noted, as well 
as the semantic properties of the item commencer. 
Thus, the phenomenon will be correctly expressed at 
the lexical level. More precisely, we will use lexical 
rules in the HPSG format (\[Pollard and Sag, 1987; 
Pollard and Sag, 1993\]). We illustrate the phe- 
nomenon in French and focus on the commencer (be- 
gin) example, which is a very clear case of a pred- 
icate allowing coercion interpretations. We provide 
glosses, NOT English translations. 
2 Linguistic evidence 
2.1 Preservation of the original type 
Anaphora, relativization, and coordination are three 
phenomena which involve identity of type. If the 
coerced complement had acquired a new type, we 
would expect it to behave like a phrase with this 
new type. But it does not: le livre (the book) in 
commencer ie iivre (to begin the book) has proper- 
ties of phrases of type It, not of type e (the type of 
entities with temporal constitution). 
That the antecedent and the anaphoric NP must be- 
long to the same type (\[Milner, 1982\]) is exemplified 
below: an NP of type "individual" may not have a 
type n (the type of kinds) as its antecedent. 
(2) Le cheval est herbivore. 11 a quatre pattes 
The horse is herbivorous. It has four legs 
(3) Je ne connais pas ce cheval. II a d~ s'gchapper 
d'un barns. 
I do not know this horse. It must have escaped from a 
stud farm. 
(4) * Le cheval est herbivore. 11 a dTi s'gchapper d'un 
haras. 
The horse is herbivorous. It must have escaped from a 
stud farm. 
Quitter (to leave) takes a complement of type It, not 
e: quitter la table vs *quitter sa lecture (to leave the 
table, one's reading). Yet, the clitic complement of 
quitter in (5) can have le livre, the coerced comple- 
ment of commencer, as its antecedent. 
(5) Jean a commencd son livre ~ 10 heures et ne l'a 
pas quittg de la nuit. 
John began his book at ten and did not leave it all night. 
Conversely, the complement of arr~ter is of type e, 
not p: arr~ter de life, arr~ter sa lecture vs *arr~ter 
un livre (to stop reading, one's reading, a book). It 
usually takes a null complement anaphora, which can 
refer to an event complement; it cannot refer to ie 
livre as complement of commencer. 
(6) Jean a commencd sa lecture it 10 heures et n'a 
pas arr~t~ de la nnit. 
John started his reading at ten and did not stop all night. 
(7) q. q." Jean a commencd son livre ~ 10 heures et n'a 
pas arr~tg de la nuit. 
Similarly, the antecedent of a relative clause and 
the relativized NP may not belong to different types 
(\[Godard, 1992\]). 
(8) ~ Le cheval, qui a da s'gchapper d'un haras, est 
herbivore 
The horse, which must have escaped from a stud farm, 
is herbivorous 
In this structure also, ie livre, complement of com- 
mencer retains its type It and does not acquire type 
e . 
(9) Jean a commencg la lecture de ce livre, qui dur- 
era deux heures 
John has begun the reading of this book, which will take 
two hours 
(10) Jean a commencd un iivre qui est dnorme 
John has begun a book which is huge 
(11) * Jean a commencd un iivre qui durera deux 
henres 
John has begun a book which will last two hours 
Finally, it is well-known that conjoined categories 
are of the same type: the violation of this require- 
ment can give rise to the rhetorical zeugma (dit-il en 
lui-m~me et en anglais, he said, speaking to himself 
and in English). Conjunction of a coerced comple- 
ment with an NP which has the type expected from 
the predicate is certainly very strange, if the speaker 
does not want to produce some stylistic effect. 
(12) ?? L'dtd dernier j'ai commencd mon dernier 
roman et la r~novation de la maison. 
Last summer I began my last novel and the refurbishing 
of the house 
Conversely, the complement of manger (to eat) is of 
type It; yet, manger can share its complement with 
commencer. 
(13) Jean a commencd et finalement mangg le 
saumon 
John has begun, and finally eaten the salmon 
2.2 Asymmetry between subjects and 
objects 
If coercion means type change operated by a predi- 
cate on its arguments, it is difficult to see why it does 
not apply to subjects in the same way as it does to 
complements, with identical or closely related pred- 
icates. Commencer, as an intransitive verb related 
to transitive commencer, combines with subjects of 
type e; thus, we would expect it to combine with co- 
erced subjects having a different original type, but 
this is not the case. 
(14) La confgrence a commencd ?t I0 heures. 
The lecture began at ten 
(15) ~ Le livre a commencg la semaine derni~re. 
The book began last week 
As examples of predicates which coerce their subject 
arguments, \[Pustejovsky, 1991\] offers psychological 
169 
predicates such as frighten, upset, please, etc. But 
in fact there is little evidence of coercion sentences 
such as (16). 
(16) Mary bores me 
This class of verbs seems rather not to constrain the 
types of the subject: even if paraphrases are taken to 
be correct indications as to type, they cannot be used 
to show that the subject of bores in (16) is coerced to 
an event, since we have a series of acceptable para- 
phrases for the subject like "her face, her chatter", 
as well as "listening to her, that she stays here", etc. 
Confirmation that psychological predicates are poly- 
morphic as regards their cause argument is given by 
the following coordination (cf. \[Copestake and Bri- 
scoe, 1991\]): 
(17) John ate and enjoyed the salmon 
If eat selects a p complement and enjoy coerces a/~ 
complement to an e, then it is difficult to see how 
they can share the same complement. The prob- 
lem disappears if enjoy is dimorphic, and the type of 
salmon is p. 
2.3 Interpretation is not type changing 
The interpretive process which fills in information in 
such cases as commencer le livre does not ENTAIL a 
type change. This is shown by well-known examples 
invoked by proponents of coercion, such as a long 
book. While we agree that one reading for this NP 
is "a book which it takes a long time to read" (see 
\[Briscoe et al., 1990\]), it is clear that it is not associ- 
ated with a phrase coerced to an event. Achcter does 
not allow a complement of type e, while combining 
easily with the above NP. 
(18) * Jean a achetd une sdance de cindma. 
John bought a movie performance 
(19) Jean a achetd un long roman 
John bought a long novel 
In the same way, the fact that the salmon in (17) is of 
type p does not prevent the construction of the inter- 
pretation "John ate the salmon and enjoyed eating 
it". Thus, one must find an account of the interpre- 
tive phenomenon illustrated in (1) which does not 
appeal to type change. 
3 Properties of the phenomenon 
There are three main properties which point towards 
the desirability of a lexical treatment. (i) The phe- 
nomenon is lexically driven rather than a general 
process; (it) for each lexical item, it is possible to ex- 
press general constraints on interpretation; (iii) the 
properties of the coerced complement which play a 
crucial role in the acceptability of the construction 
or on its range of interpretation are selected by the 
predicate. The complement of commencer must be 
(i) "bounded" and (it) intentionally controlled. 
3.1 Coercion is lexically driven 
The notion of coercion owes much of its attractive- 
ness to its potential generality: having a separate 
general set of rules able to generate a set of accept- 
able interpretations would significantly alleviate the 
task of storing and handling semantic information. 
This program, at least in this strong form, encoun- 
ters empirical difficulties. For instance, it is not the 
case that the class of aspectual verbs which subcate- 
gorize for an NP of type e behaves uniformly. Com- 
mencer, flair, se mettre h allow for coercion, but not 
cesser or arr~ter. 
(20) Jean a arr~td sa lecture/* son livre 
John stopped his reading/his book 
Similarly, the temporal prepositions avant, aprds, 
depnis may coerce their complement, but not pen- 
dant. 
(21) Apr~s trois martinis, Jean se sentait bien 
After three martinis John was feeling well 
(22) * Pendant son martini, Jean a aperfu Marie 
During his martini John saw Mary 
As we have seen, the adjective long in a long novel 
may be interpreted as modifying a reading event, but 
the adjective intermittent does not apply to novel. 
(23) Jean a commencd nn livre long/* nn livre in- 
termittent. 
John has begun a long/intermittent book 
3.2 Lexical information and paraphrase 
A VP like commencer la salle de bains (to begin the 
bathroom) can be understood as meaning, for exam- 
ple, "to begin to build/to paint/to refurbish/to clean 
the bathroom". However, this does not imply that 
such paraphrases should be present in the descrip- 
tion of the V or the VP. It is clear that the events 
denoted by these paraphrases share a feature: they 
are all events of modification of the p complement, of 
which they constitute a specification; it is this com- 
mon interpretation which is part of the semantic con- 
tent of the lexical item commencer. Thus, the rele- 
vant distinction here is between abstract constraints, 
which are part of the semantic content, and para- 
phrases which exploit these constraints by checking 
their consistency with additional information. An 
abstract constraint for commencer, when it combines 
with an argument of type/~, is that the reconstructed 
event should be some kind of modification. 
The question whether the additional information, 
from which the more specific paraphrase is con- 
structed in a given linguistic and situational environ- 
ment, is purely lexical, depends on world knowledge, 
or has some intermediate status, is philosophically 
and computationally important, but is not relevant 
to the coercion problem. One could perfectly use 
the qualia structure proposed by eustejovsky (\[1991\]) 
and consider accordingly that bathroom is equipped 
with a set of roles such as constitutive or formal roles, 
170 
which help to retrieve such verbs as paint, for in- 
stance, as far as they are consistent with the general 
constraint. 
3.3 Constraints on the NP complement of 
commencer 
3.3.1 Boundedness 
The very possibility of a coercion construction de- 
pends on the compatibility between semantic prop- 
erties of the predicate and of the complement. Look- 
ing more precisely at the case of commencer, we ob- 
serve the following requirements on the complement: 
the complement must refer to a "bounded" entity 
as opposed to an "amorphous" one. The data are 
the following. The complement of commencer is ei- 
ther an infinitival VP or an NP denoting an event or 
an object. In the latter case, partitives (with mass 
nouns) or indefinite plurals (with count nouns) are 
not allowed 1. Although it appears that NPs which 
denote an event function in the same way as NPs 
which denote objects, we will leave the event case 
aside because of its complexity. 
(24) Jean a commenc( le fromage/*du fromage 
John has begun the cheese/(of the) cheese 
(25) Jean a commenc~ un livre/??des livres cet ~t~ 
John has begun a book/(of the) books this summer 
To account for (24)-(25), we propose that the par- 
titive complement has the property of being amor- 
phous, while the complement of commencer must be 
bounded. We define this predicate using Krifka's 
approach (\[Krifka, 1992\]) to the aspectual predicate 
telic/atelic, whose relevance to linguistic phenomena 
has been stressed by Vendler (\[Vendler, 1967\]). In- 
tuitively, the idea is the following. All events have 
a terminal point, but telic events (as well as objects 
denoted by count constructions) have a set termi- 
nal point, while atelic events (and objects denoted 
by mass constructions) lack a set terminal point. 
To this distinction, we add a new distinction be- 
tween bounded entities, which have a terminal point, 
and amorphous entities, which do not. Krifka de- 
fines telic/atelic as a predicate of predicates; the lat- 
ter have objects as well as events in their domains, 
and, linguistically, they are nominal as well as ver- 
bal predicates. In the same way we define amor- 
phous/bounded as a predicate of predicates whose 
domain comprises events as well as objects. But we 
will not assume that nominal and verbal predicates 
behave in a totally parallel fashion. 
Let us first summarize Krifka's model and his defini- 
tion ofatelicity or strict cumnlativity (str. cum. ) and 
telicity or quantization (qua). Let P be a predicate 
defined on X, a complete join semi-lattice without 
a bottom element, where X can be the domain of 
events (E), or objects O. The po C of the lattice is 
viewed as a "part-of" relation. P is cumulative (wrt 
1Further investigation is necessary for generic NPs 
which exhibit restrictions 
X) iff P holds for z t_l y whenever P holds for x and 
y in X. A predicate is singular on X iff it holds for 
exactly one element of X. A predicate is str. cum. 
when it is cumulative and not singular. A predicate 
is qua. iff, when it applies to z E X, it does not ap- 
ply to any proper part of z. Let T be the domain of 
times, and r an homomorphism E ~ T preserving 
II. The notion of terminal point of an event (TP) is 
defined by: 
Ve, t(TP(e) = t ¢~ (t E TAt E r(e)AVt'(t' C r(e) 
t' < t))). 
A predicate has a set terminal point iff, for any event 
e to which it applies, any subevent of e to which it 
applies has the same terminal point as e. Note that 
all events have a terminal point (given by r), but only 
a subclass of predicates, telic or qua. predicates, im- 
pose a set terminal point to the events they denote. 
Str. cum. predicates which apply to at least two dif- 
ferent events with different terminal points have no 
set terminal point. On the other hand, qua. predi- 
cates have a set terminal point. Assuming that ver- 
bal predicates like eat and nominal predicates like 
bread are (strictly) cumulative, Krifka shows that 
constructions like to eat bread are (strictly) cumula- 
tive. On the other hand, constructions such as to 
eat the bread, which use the qua. nominal predicate 
the.bread, are demonstrably quantized. Such an ap- 
proach accounts for well-known contrasts like to eat 
bread for ten minutes/* in ten minutes vs to eat the 
bread * for ten minutes/in ten minutes. Although 
str. cure. characterizes French partitives and indef- 
inite plurals, it appears that another distinction is 
needed when one takes the full range of the comple- 
ments of commencer into account. Such NPs corre- 
spond to str. cum. predicates, since when they apply 
to two objects or groups of objects they apply to 
their join. Thus predicates such as manger du pain, 
gcrire des livres are str. cum., while manger le pain 
and ~crire un livre are qua.. The contrast observed 
in English translates directly into French (eft \[Bo- 
rillo, 1989\]): manger du pain pendant dix minutes/* 
en dix minutes, gcrire des livres pendant plusieurs 
annges/* en plusieurs annges vs manger le pain * 
pendant dix minutes/ca diz minutes, gcrire un livre 
?? pendant une semaine2/en une semaine. 
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to use Krifka's dis- 
tinction to account for (24)-(25): commencer takes 
VP complements which can be either str. cum. or 
qua. 
(26) Jean a commenc~ ~ manger du pain/le pain 
Thus, there is nothing in the meaning of commencer 
which prevents its combining with str. cum. comple- 
ments. We introduce an aspectual predicate labelled 
"amorphous" (vs bounded). Amorphous entails str. 
cure. ; bounded predicates may be either str. cum. 
or qua. 
2We exclude here the partitive interpretation "to write 
some part of a book". 
171 
AMORPHOUS I BOUNDED \] 
STRICT. CUM. I QUANTIZED 
Intuitively, an event or an object are amorphous 
when they have no temporal or spatial bounds, and 
in particular no initial or terminal point. Although 
amorphousness applies to both events and objects, 
we need two different definitions. The intrinsic or- 
dering relation (E or "part-of") on the event domain 
E is one-dimensional, so that the mapping to the 
temporal linear order is straightforward. For objects 
(most notably spatial objects) we must allow for an 
indefinite number of dimensions. 
Bounded events do not satisfy AMORPHOUS and 
belong to the domain of the function TP. The con- 
straint for events is as follows: 
AMORPHOUS(P) =ez Ve(P(e) =v -~Bt(t U_ r(e) A 
((Vt'(t' E ~(e) ~ t < t')) v ((Vt'(t' E r(e) ~ t' __. 
t))))) 
For a single object z, there are usually several ways 
of "moving through" x, along different paths. For a 
given path p the proper parts of x can be mutually 
localized wrt a linear order <p. This gives us a new 
constraint for AMORPHOUS when P is applied to 
objects: 
AMORPHOUS(P) =~ Vx(P(x) =¢, -~3z',p(x' E 
A E • x" % E • x' _% 
Linguistically, the predicate AMORPHOUS is as- 
sociated with partitive and indefinite plural deter- 
miners. It is interesting to note that such NPs have 
a characteristic property: they may not occur as the 
subjects of predication s 
(27) * Du pain est toujours boa h manger 
(Of the) bread is always good to eat 
(28) ?? Des livres sont toujours utiles 
(Of the) books are always useful 
(29) ?? Do pain m'a rdconfortd 
(Of the) bread cheered me up 
(30) ?? Des livres m'ont beaucoup aidd 
(Of the) books were of great help to me 
If there is no equivalent operator on verbal predi- 
cates, it follows that they cannot be amorphous. If 
additional evidence confirms this line of reasoning, it 
suggests that, in spite of strong aspectual similarities 
between verbal and nominal predicates (e.g. \[Bach, 
1986; Krifka, 1992\])i some important distinction(s) 
must be made. 
It is easy to see now why the meaning of commencer 
requires that the complement be bounded. As a func- 
tion on events, commencer returns the initial part of 
its argument (or is undefined): we will associate to 
commencer the function first_part_of = ~e( I P(e) ), 
IP being the initial point of the event e. As a func- 
tion on objects 4, first_part_of returns the initial 
3see \[Galmiche, 1986\] on the role of contextual factors. 
4 For simplicity, we will ignore here the "non coercive" 
use of commencer as "be the first part of", to which we 
return in the last section. 
part of any event which is associated with the ob- 
ject by the interpretive procedure described in sec- 
tion 4. This procedure exploits the fact that there 
is a morphism between parts of objects and parts 
of time, as noted in \[Krifka, 1992\]. It requires that 
the beginning of the event correspond to the "ini- 
tial" part with respect to some order, usually spa- 
tial. Since amorphous objects have no initial part 
the procedure fails, even if a plausible event has been 
found (e.g. manger for commencer dn fromage). For 
each object x, we must have an event e and a path 
p in x such that the models (O~, <p) and (Te, <), 
where O~ and Te are the restrictions of O and T to 
x and e, are isomorphic. Then (by basic model the- 
ory) they are elementarily equivalent, and e satisfies 
AMORPHOUS, which means that e has not initial 
point and that first_part_of is undefined for e. It 
follows that commencer cannot apply to amorphous 
predicates, which lack any initial part. 
3.3.2 Intentional control 
The second constraint on the complement of com- 
mencer in its coercion use is interpretive: the recon- 
structed event is an event in which the object de- 
noted by the NP is controlled by the entity denoted 
by the subject of commencer. This results from two 
factors: (i) the subject of commencer retains the in- 
terpretation which it has when the complement is an 
NP of type e, and (ii) there is nothing to construct 
the event from, except the NP of type o itself. 
The controller of an event is the entity which triggers 
and causally maintains it (for a general analysis of 
control, causality and related notions see \[Brennen- 
stuhl, 1982; Croft, 1991\]). When the complement 
NP denotes an event, the subject is an intentional 
controller of the event, as the following observations 
indicate. First, this NP must denote an event, that 
is, an entity which allows for a controller: nomi- nals 
denoting psychological states and properties are 
excluded 5 
(31) * Ace moment Jean a commencd an grand 
mdpris pour les politicien 
At that moment John began a great contempt for politi- 
cians 
(32) * Jean a commencd une honn~tetd remarqnable 
John has begun a remarkable honesty 
Second, it is not enough that the subject denote the 
initiator of the event, who simply triggers it, or the 
inanimate cause. It must be a full-fledged inten- 
tional controller. Thus (33) is not acceptable, since 
the referee signals the beginning of a match, even has 
the power to stop it, but does not control its devel- 
opment 
5There is a restricted dass of complements, denoting 
common diseases as in commencer une grippe, un rhume, 
with which the subject is not interpreted as a controller. 
This seems to be a marginal use which we leave aside 
here. 
172 
(33) ?? L'arbitre a commencg le match a 14 heures 
The referee began the match at 14 h 
(34) Les gquipes oat commencg le match fi 14 heures. 
The teams began the match at 14 h 
Similarly, (35) isodd, although the acid is considered 
as the cause of the event. 
(35) * L 'acide a commencg la destruction du marbre 
The acid has begun the destruction of the marble 
Furthermore, it is not enough that the subject be 
the controller of some process related with the main 
event. For instance, commencer la conf#rence (to be- 
gin the lecture) may not be understood as "to begin 
to listen to the lecture", it means "to begin to de- 
liver the lecture": listening to a lecture is an activity, 
of which the agent may be said to be the controller, 
but it does not causally impinge on the process of 
lecturing itself. It should be noted that these re- 
strictions do NOT characterize commencer when it 
takes a verbal complement. The subject does not 
have to be an intentional controller, and may even 
be non-referential as in l'acide a commencg it atta- 
quer (corrode) le marbre or il a commencg it pleuvoir 
(it began to rain). 
Turning now to the coercion interpretation, we see 
that it is necessary, but not sufficient, to say that 
the subject is interpreted as the controller of some 
event in which the object is involved. For instance, 
the two following interpretations are excluded: 
(i) the interpretation in which the object undergoes a 
change of position under the action of the controller: 
commencer la pierre, la voiture (the stone, car) may 
not mean "to begin to move the stone, to drive the 
ear". Yet, moving an object and driving a car are 
causal processes, causally controlled by human be- 
ings. 
(it) The interpretation in which the subject changes 
its position along a path denoted by the complement; 
in Dowty's terms (\[Dowty, 1991\]), the complement 
cannot be an "incremental path": commencer ie tun- 
nel, le dgsert de Gobi (the tunnel, the desert of Gobi) 
do not mean "to begin to go through the tunnel, the 
desert of Gobi". 
Thus, it would be a mistake to simply state that 
the reconstructed event is any event associated with 
the object (as in the qualia structure for instance), 
even adding the condition that the subject of com- 
mencer must be a controller. The complement does 
not get a default interpretation either. In this ease 
one would expect the patient interpretation, given 
that the subject is a controller, which is a strong 
form of agentivity. But the interpretations in (i) and 
(it) are instances of what Dowty calls the "proto- 
patient" interpretation. 
The requirement is stronger: not only must the sub- 
ject be a controller of the event, it must control the 
object itself. Driving a ear, rolling a stone, going 
through a tunnel, or crossing a desert do not af- 
fect the object in any significant way. In fact this 
requirement follows directly from the semantics of 
commencer and the only information which is avail- 
able, that is, the type of the object. The subject may 
be a controller in an event thoroughly constructed 
from an NP of type o only if it controls the object. 
When this obtains, the event is in most cases a mod- 
ification of the object. The object comes into be- 
ing (commencer une maison = "to begin to build a 
house"), is consumed (commencer le vin= "to begin 
to drink the wine"), or undergoes a definite change 
of state (commencer la salle de bains = "to begin 
to paint/clean the bathroom"). In other words, we 
accept that the information associated With the lex- 
ical items in the qualia structure helps to specify 
the interpretation in a given context, as mentionned 
above, but it does not contribute to the semantics of 
the construction itself. The only information which 
contributes to the semantics is borne by the lexical 
iten commencer: (i) commencer is a "function" which 
applies to an event and returns its initial part, (it) 
the subject of commencer with an NP complement is 
the controller of the event, (iii) the event is denoted 
by the complement e or constructed by isomorphism 
from the complement o. However, there is a class 
of objects which seem to raise difficulties. We have 
considered material objects; there are also objects 
which me may call informational, and which occur 
as complements of commencer. At first sight, their 
interpretation does not involve a modification. Such 
are a book, a list, a story, a student's paper, a mag- 
azine, a listing, etc. Consider (1) again. As noted in 
\[Pustejovsky, 1991\] commencer le livre/to begin the 
book does not only mean "to begin to write the book" 
but also "to begin to read the book", an activity 
which is not immediately seen as an event of modifi- 
cation of the book. This example contrasts with com- 
mencer une symphonic/to begin a symphony which 
may mean "to begin to compose/perform a sym- 
phony", not to "to begin to listen to a symphony". 
The problem is the following: why does the book al- 
low the interpretation "to read" while the symphony 
does not allow the interpretation "to listen"? We 
propose that in fact "to read a book" is a modifica- 
tion of the book while "to listen to a symphony" is" 
not a modification of the symphony: there is no par- 
allelism between reading and listening. Reading is a 
process by which the reader interprets an organized 
sequence of signs, thus adding to the material object 
a new informational layer. This layer does not exist 
independently of the reading operation, which is to- 
tally controlled by the reader. On the other hand, 
listening does not modify the music: nmsical sounds 
are not signs, they are stimuli, i.e. they provoke re- 
actions but are not systematically associated with 
information according to some definite set of rules 
(at least in our culture). The difference between ma- 
terial modification and informational modification is 
that in the first case the result is objectivized, while 
it is internal in the latter. 
173 
4 Lexical descriptions 
Our treatment is twofold. On one hand, we propose 
lexical descriptions in accordance with the preceding 
analysis, which do not use type change and contain 
an abstract pattern, allowing for coercion interpre- 
tation. On the other hand, we must make sure that 
our approach meets basic requirements of computa- 
tional tasks. Coercion phenomena can raise prob- 
lems for understanding or generation systems, since 
they need to interpolate predicates to issue correct 
interpretations or syntactic forms (\[Gerstl, 1992\]). 
An understanding system should be able to interpret 
a sentence like Jean prit ses pinceauz et commenfa 
la porte (John took his paint-brushes and began the 
door) as "John took his brushes and began to paint 
the door". Similarly, a generation system should be 
able to contract commencer ~ life le livre into com- 
mencer le livre. 
We will briefly address here the problem of match- 
ing potential paraphrases with a phrase of form com- 
mencer + NP. For instance, a sound system should 
accept to match commencer la porte and commencer 
peindre la porte (to paint the door), while it should 
forbid the pairing of commencer le t~l@hone with 
commencer ~ ntiliser le t~l@hone (to begin to use 
the telephone). Our pairing system will use the type 
constraints present in the descriptions of the lexical 
items which allow for coercion interpretation, and 
supposes that the candidate verbs are already there. 
A more ambitious system would start from a phrase 
commencer + NP and retrieve all the candidate verbs 
(e.g. the candidate phrase peindre from the phrase 
commencer la porte). 
4.1 The lexical description of commencer 
Using HPSG-style feature structures, we propose the 
two following descriptions of commencer with a nom- 
inal complement: 
CAT 
SUBJ 
COMP 
CONT 
CAT 
SUBJ 
COMP 
CONT 
commencer1 
NP 
NP 
OUTP Ie(z))~) 
ARG \[~ T 0. 
RELN' T ~r 
ARG2 ARG 1 ' 0.1 
ARG 2 ' 0"2 
commencer2 v> 
NP 
REL I INP OUTP 
ARG I \[~ T ~x 
ARG2 12\[ I" 0.2 
The type of IP is e --~ c A o --* o. The function ~b is 
~zC{y : y = ZPCz) A y = \[~)) 
In this structure the atomic arguments of relations 
are typed (sorted). Let EAT be an alphabet of 
atomic types and E be the set of boolean or func- 
tional (--~) combinations of elements of EAT; we use 
z T ~, where ~ E E to say that any value of z must 
be of type ~ (other notations would use xq). We will 
suppose that we have at our disposal a boolean lat- 
tice (E, _<) on E. 
As shown in section 3.3, commencer with a coerced 
interpretation is the same lexical item as commencer 
with a complement NP of type e. There are four 
possible patterns for a form \[NP commencer NP\], 
the first three of which realize the same lexical item 
commencer 1. 
pattern 1: Jean commence la con f6rence (lecture) 
pattern2: Jean commence la chambre (room) 
pattern3: Jean commence ie iivre (book) 
pattern4: Ce mot (word) commence la phrase ( sen- 
tence) or son num6ro (performance) commence le 
spectacle (show) 
Each pattern exhibits dependencies between the 
types of its elements. 
pattern h ~1 = animate, ~2 = e A bounded, ~ = 
execute 
pattern 2:~1 = animate, ~2 = material A bounded, 
= modify A intentional 
pattern 3:~1 = human, el2 = info A sequential A 
bounded, a = signprocess 
pattern 4:~1 = oVe, a2 = alAsequentialAbounded, 
= positional A part_of 
The type hierarchy is as follows (T denotes the top 
of the lattice): 
T > o, e,property 
o > material, info, animate 
animate >_ human 
e >_ control 
control >_ execute, modify 
modify >_ produce, internal_change, sign_process 
property >_ amorphous, positional, sequential, 
part_of, intentional 
The hierarchy obeys the constraint -,(e A o) = 
-.(material A human) = -,(info A human) = T. 
bounded is short for -,amorphous. 
Here modify is intended to mean any sort of internal 
and durable change affecting the object (thus redec- 
orating and refurbishing a house are modifications, 
but not hanging up a picture or moving a heavy piece 
of furniture). Sequential accounts for the contrast 
between commencer un livre (book) vs *commencer 
un plan (map) in pattern 3 (it may mean "to begin 
to draw a map" not "to read a map"). 
It should be noted that we do not equate the mean- 
ing of commencer with the function first_part_of 
(AxlP(x)), which is in fact only an element of it. 
The notion of type change relies partly on a more di- 
rect association between a lexical item and a typed 
function. Instead of changing the argument type, 
174 
we enrich the semantic structure associated with the 
predicate itself. This solution is in the same spirit 
as that proposed by \[Pollard and Sag, 1993\] to treat 
a similar problem concerning the control interpreta- 
tion in infinitival complement sentences. 
Pattern 4 is an instance of commencer2. As in the 
preceding case, the meaning of commencer is a com- 
plex structure, but the value of ARG2 is not itself 
complex, and the type of ARG1 subsumes the type 
of ARG2. This is necessary since the value of the 
function first_part_of is identified with the value of 
ARG1. 
4.2 The matching procedure 
The input to the procedure is a pair (H1, H2) where 
H1 is the value of ARG2 in commencerl and H2 is a 
\[ RELN uTa3 \] 
structure of form: ARG 1 u' T a4 
ARC2 u" T as 
corresponding to the semantic part of a full lexical 
description for a a verb.The procedure succeeds only 
if the values of RELN, ARGI', ARG2' for HI and 
those of RELN, ARG1, ARG2 for H2 unify respec- 
tively for some given pattern. Consider the /-/2 for 
peindre. 
\[ RELN peindreT(modifyAintentional) x,human 
ARG2 Y T (material A bounded) 
In this case, since human < animate, the unifica- 
tion succeeds for pattern 2. It would fail in the 
case of ddplacer (move) which has a RELN slot 
ddplacer T (control A intentional A ",modify). 
One cannot reasonably suppose that we have lexi- 
cons containing the right information at our disposal. 
The importance of enriching the semantic structure 
for exploiting on-line information has been rightly 
emphasized in \[Anick and Bergler, 1991\] and \[Puste- 
jovsky el al., 1992\]. Unfortunately, it seems difficult 
to exactly parallel the techniques decribed there, be- 
cause they have been devised mainly for nouns and 
adjectives. Consider the entry chambre (room) in a 
medium size French dictionary (\[RM, 1987\]): for the 
current meaning corresponding to bedroom, the def- 
inition is pidce oa l'on couche (a room where one 
sleeps). The entry for ranger (to tidy) mentions 
ranger sa chambre as an illustration of the mean- 
ing mettre/remetlre de l'ordre dans un lieu (to put a 
place in order). So the verb ranger, which is a good 
candidate for matching, is available from the dictio- 
nary itself. However, this is only one facet of the 
information which is necessary to control the match- 
ing efficiently: we need to know that ranger has the 
correct feature modify, to put it in the matchers 
set, and that chambre is not an info (to avoid to 
put coucher dans in the marchers set). Let us sup- 
pose that the second problem is resolved simply "by 
failure", i.e. by failing to find any relevant connec- 
tion with terms which exhibit the info feature. The 
first problem would get a satisfying solution if we 
could put mettre de l'ordre dans un lien into corre- 
spondence with a structure as the following: 
of_type (ACTION, act ionl) 
ACTOR(actionl, i) PATIENT(actionl, j) 
CONTENT (actionl, control1) 
of_type (CONTROL, control 1) 
CONTROLLER (contro11, i) 
CONTROLLED (controll, transit ionl) 
of_type (TRANSITION, trans it ion1 ) 
STARTS (transitionl ,statel) 
ENDS (trans itionl, star e2) 
of_type (STATE, star e I ) of_type (STATE, star e2) 
CARRIER(statel, j) CARRIER(state2, j) 
This in turn would require that we link mettre de 
l'ordre ("put ...in order") with an action of control 
over a transition from a state (of disorder) to a new 
one (order). The carrier of these states would be 
the relevant place (a bedroom in our example). It 
is not clear how this information could be extracted 
from standard dictionaries in this case. Other cases, 
where classifiers are present in the definition, seem 
more amenable to general procedures of extraction. 
Such difficulties are lucidly acknowledged and com- 
mented upon in \[Pustejovsky el al., 199.2\]. Since 
accessing the needed feature is unrealistic in some 
cases, a natural question is whether we can resort to 
other strategies. We note that the features combina- 
tions are few, which allows to list some of the verbs 
and nouns which exhibit them, and to check whether 
a given verb is an hyperonym of some member in the 
list. A temptative list for commencer is: 
Verbs = (consommer, ranger, construire, ddtruire, 
rdparer, life, interpr6ter, exdcuter, crder) 
Nouns = (nourriture, boisson, texte, lieu, appareil, 
b~timent, veuvre, matidre) 
Starting from a pair (commencer + NP, V) we may 
obtain a first rough diagnosis by searching the Verbs 
and Nouns lists for NP and V, or hyperonyms of 
them, as indicated in dictionaries like \[du Chaz- 
aud, 1989; Delas and Demon, 1989\]. This simple 
test would capture normal matchings, such as (com- 
mencer le charbon (coal), braler (to burn)). This is 
because br~ler is is an hyperonym of consommer (to 
consume) in \[du Chazaud, 1989\]. If the procedure is 
sensitive to simple preferences, it should dismiss de- 
viant pairs as (commencer le charbon (coal), manger 
(to eat)). 
Yet, it would not filter out abnormal candidates 
as (commencer le charbon (coal), ranger (to tidy)). 
There is no preference violation, since it is perfectly 
possible to put some heap of coal in the right place. 
The problems stems from the violation of the se- 
mantics for modification mentionned in our previ- 
ous analysis: moving an object does not count as 
an internal change. Thus, it is necessary to capture 
the relevant features at the level of pairs of elements 
of Verbs and Nouns. In this case ranger should be 
paired with lieu (place). This agrees with the fact 
that b~timents (buildings), which are hyponyms of 
175 
lieu can be tidied up. 
We propose the following pairing for the sake of il- 
lustration (we do not take it to be the one and true 
pairing): 
consommer nourriture, boisson, matidre 
ranger lien 
constrnire, ddtrnire appareil, lien 
rdparer, nettoyer 
life, interpreter texte 
ex~cuter, crier oeuvre 
Odd examples like commencer une symphonic, with 
the "begin to listen to" interpretation, will be ex- 
cluded if symphonie is classified as an hyponym of 
oeuvre (work). On the other hand the interpreta- 
tion "begin to play" will be accepted if joner (to 
play) is related to exdcuter (to perform). Thesauri 
are usually better tools than synonyms dictionaries 
for checking the existence of such connections. E.g. 
\[Delas and Demon, 1989\] allows the following path: 
symphonic ::~ musiqne ~ joner. 
Such examples point to the desirability of exploiting 
existing thesauri. However, a good deal of restruc- 
turing will be necessary to exploit them in a prin- 
cipled way. This is a general problem which is far 
beyond the limits of this paper. 
4.3 Apr~s 
Let us briefly consider the interpretation of the nomi- 
nal complement of aprds (after), ignoring cases where 
this complement is simply an event (this is the stan- 
dard temporal case), and cases of parallelism, where 
the NP complement is understood as sharing with 
an NP in the S the same predicate and the same ar- 
gument slot wrt this predicate 6. 
(36) Apr~s le fauteuil, je voudrais acheter des 
rideaux 
After the armchair, I would like to buy curtains 
Coercion is illustrated in (37) and (21), repeated be- 
low: 
(37) Apr~s ce livre, je me seas fatigu~ 
After this book I feel tired 
(21) Apr~s trois martinis, Jean se sentait bien 
As with commencer, the interpretation of the com- 
plement is an event, whose predicate is not to be 
found in the context. The predicates which are ex- 
cluded with commencer are equally impossible or 
clumsy here. The NP is not simply understood as 
a proto-patient: 
(38) ?? apr~s Keith Jarrett, nous irons diner 
After Keith Jarrett we will go dinner 
(39) * Apr~s eerie robe, nous irons ~nne exposition 
After (buying) this dress, we will visit an exhibition 
But the interpretation is more restricted: modifica- 
s Note the analogy with the procedure used in gapping 
constructions as studied in \[Dalrymple et al., 1991\] 
tion is not sufficient. 
(40) * Apr~s la chambre, tu travaiileras 
After (cleaning) the room you will work 
In fact, the only possible predicates point to bringing 
an object into existence or to making it disappear. 
Furthermore, the connection between the two events 
is not strictly temporal: succession is not enough 
to make coercion acceptable: eventl (reconstructed 
from the NP) must be understood as the cause of 
event2 (denoted by the S): 
(41) 
?? Apr~s trois martinis, Jean a apercu Marie 
After three martinis John saw Mary 
Note that "cause" in some cases is really a form of 
enablement, a fact hidden by the use of a generic 
label cause in the next rule. E.g. in (42), terminat- 
ing an action (drinking a coffee) makes possible to 
go out, while there is a pure temporal connection in 
(43). 
(42) Aprds un caf~, je suis sorti 
After a coffee, I went out 
(43) ?? Apr~s an card, j'ai refn nn coup de fll 
After a coffee, somebody called me 
A rule for apr$s 
REL \[ RBLN ~\]T O" \] 
CONT ARG1 / ARGI' \] 
J 17IT o 
ARQ2 l~J T e 
¢ = ~z~y(after(y, z) ^ cause(z, y)) 
= produce V destroy 
after(z,y) ~-* VuVv((IP(z) = u ^ TP(y) = v) =~ v<u) 
5 Conclusion 
While it is generally held that natural langage pro- 
ceasing can only benefit from taking into account 
"non literal" meaning, i.e. phenomena pertaining 
to metaphor, metonymy, and coercion, there is no 
agreement on the best way to attack them. We have 
addressed here the problem of coercion, which seems 
to entail a "strong" type shift (from o to e), while 
metonymy is more properly analyzed as a codified 
facet shift inside complex structures, and metaphor is 
generally conceived as based over analogy. The very 
nature of coercion phenomena suggests that tasks 
such as studying types hierarchies and methods for 
positioning lexical items in these hierarchies are pre- 
requisites for an acceptable treatment. It is likely 
that the use of thesauri, and more generally of lex- 
ical descriptive tools, will prove helpful. Our future 
research is oriented in this direction. We do not ex- 
176 
pect to find "rules" in a strong sense, that is, fixed 
procedures that would lend themselves to a simple 
algorithmic adaptation, but rather complex systems 
of constraints, whose study should allow to organize 
the descriptive tools in a more rigorous and princi- 
pled way. 
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