Parsing decomposable idioms 
Ingrid Fischer and Martina Keil 
IMMDII, University of Erlangen 
Martensstr. 3 
91058 Erlangen, Germany 
{idfische, keil}@informat ik. uni-erlangen, de 
Abstract 
Verbal idioms can be divided into two 
main groups: non-compositional id- 
ioms as kick the bucket and composi- 
tional/decomposable idioms as spill the 
beans. In the following we will point 
to the fact that there are German de- 
composable idioms which can be decom- 
posed into components, having identifi- 
able meanings contributing to the mean- 
ing of the whole. These idiom compo- 
imnts are taken to have referents. Taking 
these facts into account we propose an 
adequate way to represent the idiomatic 
meaning by Kamp's Discourse Represen- 
tation Theory (DRT). Furthermore, we 
show how to parse idiomatic sentences 
and how to process the proposed seinan- 
tic representation. While parsing id- 
ioms, the necessary idiomatic knowledge 
of the idioms' syntax and semantics is ex- 
tracted from a special idiomatic knowl- 
edge base called PIIRASEO-LI.\]X. 
1 Introduction 
Today it becomes more and more evident that a 
too restricted view on idiomatic phenomena is of 
limited use for the purpose of natural language 
processing. Therefore, it is now widely accepted 
that we have to distinguish at least two groups 
of figurative verbal phrasal idioms: first, there 
is a group of syntactically frozen idioms as kick 
the bucket, meaning "die", which are called non- 
compositional. Second, there is a group which 
shows more syntactic and semantic flexibility. An 
example for the ,latter group, often called compo- 
sitional or decomposable I idioms, is spill the beans 
1 By classfying idioms with the terms compositional 
respectively decomposable the same property is de- 
cribed by two different point of views. The first notion 
is a more structural term, the second notion a more 
process oriented term. See (Geeraerts, 1992). 
nleaning "divulge infbrnmtion". With this group 
we are dealing here in depth. In this paper we 
propose an adequate semantic representation for 
idiomatic knowledge and show a way of processing 
syntax and semantics of decomposable idioms. 
In the following we will first; deal with the idea 
of decomposability of idioms in section 2. In sec- 
tion 3 we will present our proposal of an ade- 
quate representation of the idioms' meaning by 
means of DRT. Before we will outline a way of 
processing decomposable idioms in section 5, we 
will briefly introduce the necessary tools for the 
parsing process in a few brief words in section 4. 
Finally, in section 6 we show some possible exten- 
sions. 
2 Decomposable idioms and the 
referential status of their idiom 
chunks 
hi contrast to non-compositional idioms, decom- 
posable idioms arc; able to undergo several syntac- 
tic operations that lead to the opinion that "pieces 
of an idiom typically have identifiable meanings 
which combine to produce the meaning of the 
whole" (Wasow, 1982). 
As example, we consider the syntactic behavior 
of the German verbal idioms cinch Bock schieflcn 
(lit.: "shoot; a buck", fig.: "make a mistake", 
fig. eq.: "make a bloomer") 2 and jmdm. einen 
B&'cn aufbindcn (lit.: "tie sb. a bear on", fig.: 
"tell a tall tale to sb.", fig. eq.: "pull sb.'s leg"; 
"spin sb. a yarn") 
In the following examples sew:ral modifications 
2Since a high degree of language competence is 
necessary when judging about grammaticality of id- 
iom constructions, we • as German native speakers 
choose German idioms as examples. We establish 
the following convention for translation: literal: lit- 
eral English word-by word translation of the German 
idiom; figurative: English paraphrase of the figurative 
meaning; fig. equivalent: English idioms with an equiv- 
alent meaning. 
388 
(1) Tom hat mtf der Sitzung cinch groflen \]dock geschossen. 
Tom has on the meeting a big |)uek shot. 
einige 135eke gcschossen. 
several bucks shot 
Tom made ;t big mistake on the meeting. 
(2) ~lbln hat in seineI,l Leben sehon 
Tom has in his liti~ already 
Tom already made several mistakes in his life. 
(3) :l)ic.ser~ Pcml~ hat Toni 9cschosscn. 
This bu(:k has '\['om shot. 
q.bnl made. this misl;~ke. 
(4) 'lTom binder; Kin\] cinch 'l*'ngla'ablich, en 
Tom t;ies Kin\] ;t mdmlievabh~' 
'Pom |;ells Kim an mfl)eliev;tble tall tale. 
(5) Was fiir cinch IKiren h, at Tom Kim a'ufqcb,lmden? 
What for a t)em' has 'Ibm Kim ~ied..otf? 
Wh~t~ kind of l;a.ll tah; did Tom tell to Kim? 
lffiren a'@ 
bear on. 
can be found: adjectival modifications in (1, 4), 
(lu;mtifieation in (2), and focussing \])y (lemonstr;> 
tive determiner (3) and by question in (5) apply C() 
the idioms internal NPs. It is ilnl)orta.tfl; to notice. 
that these oi)erations mid mo(lili(:;ttions in (I) (5) 
are not result of tmns or word l)lays but gratnmat- 
ieally a.nd stylistically unmarked ('onstructions. 
Similm" examples (:an be ~bttnd in other lan- 
guages, too. The first German exmnple has a 
Dutch equivalent: een bok ~schicten, where inter- 
na\] inodifications mul quantific;~tion are 1)ossible. 
A french decomposable i(liom is lever u'n li&n'e 
(lit.: "raise a hm:e", fig.: "touch a (lelieate sub- 
jeet"); p','cndcre una cantonata (lit.:"take a cor- 
Iler') incmling "to make a mistake" is &it italian 
one. Therefore, internal modifiability of idiolns 
seems not to be restri(:ted on the (;enmm lan-- 
guage. 
2.1 Decomposabh,. idioms are structured 
entities 
It ix evident f, hat a component like bucket of a 
non COml)ositional idioln as kick the bucket (:an- 
not undergo such kind of synta(:ti(: operations. 
Therefbre, the ineanillg of non eompositional \]d- 
loins is seen :4.8 aAl tlnstrllctllred ('.om\]\[)lex. (,~otnt)o- 
nents like bucket which do not carry a.ny individual 
mea.ning are called quasi-argument.s with a non 
referential function (Chomsky, 1981). In opposite 
to this, components of decolnI)osa.ble idioms d() 
carry some individual meaning! "Of" (:ourse, these 
memfings ;~re not the literal memfings of the parts" 
is stated in (Wasow, 1982). q?hen, the questions 
arise, which kind of inemfing do these pm:ts carry? 
Which is the hidden semantic stuff of Beck or 13&" 
rest)e(:tively, that is modified, inquired, quantified, 
and emphasized? 
We adopt the i)oint of view that itenis as l\]ock 
or /\]a~' C3dlllOt be (:onsidered as quasi argmnents 
but as Jigurativc. awumcnts, lhlrthermore, we fol- 
low th(~ el)in\]on that such idiomatic strings m'e 
1lOt llllSLrll(;tlll'e(\[ (:()lIlplexe~,q: bill strll(:tltre(1 en- 
I;ities. Their sla'ueturing takes t)la(:e in t)ar;fi- 
M to the structuring of the literally interpwted 
sLring (l}urger, 1973). ()ur intuition suggests to 
paraI)hrase cinch I3ock schicflen t)y "e, inen ~%hler 
machen" (lit.: "make ;t misl;ake") a.nd jmdm. einen 
13&'en aufbinden by "jlll(hn. eille Liigenges(:hieltte 
erzithlen", (lit.: "tell a tall tale to sb."), lilt ix evi- 
dent for tim t)m:al)hrase and the idiom to hnve at 
least the same syntactic stru(;ture as showll ill the 
next table. 
\[ -(.'\]imn \] \[ 1~()(:1~ s(:t~iet3(;i, 
a __H t,.,,:a: .~hoot 
einen ~ Fehler m~tehen 
a ~L ..... mistake, make 
i °,'b. ~>_ _l b~.a,. ,,i,,,-o~ 
jmdm. I eine | I,iigengeschichte~ erziihhm 
o ,s~z ___\[ tall tale tell 
In addition it; is importmlt that also the seman- 
I;i(-s of the paraphrase and the idiom can be struc- 
I;ured in paralM. 
2.2 Figuratiw,. referents of idiom chunks 
To explain this, lel; us now consider the prob- 
lem Dora I;he referential point of view. We claim 
that individu~fl components of decolnposable ill- 
iotas can lm (:onsidered figurative arguments and 
that these figurative t~rgmnents lmve referents on 
their own. 
Following (Nunberg, \].978) who first discussed 
the referential aspect of idioms let "us consider 
that verb phn~ses 'refer' to states and ~mtivi- 
\[;ies, and transitive verb phrases normally refer 
to states and activities thn,t are best identified as 
%pen relations' of tile form ll, xb where tt~' stands 
\['or \],he relation referred to 1)y the ve.rb, 'x' is a. 
variable for the referent of the sentence subje(:t, 
and 'b' stands for the referent of the object NP." 
389 
(6) 
xyz 
Kim(x) 
Tom(y) 
bear(z) 
incredible(z) 
tic-on(x,y,z) 
xy 
Kim(x) (7) To, (y) 
incredible(?) 
lic-to(z,y) 
xyvwu 
Kim&) 
Tom(v) incredible(?) 
(8) lic-to(x,y) 
V~--X 
w----y 
tall-talc(u) 
bclicvc(w,v,u) 
u----? 
(9) 
zyz 
Kim(x) 
Tom#) 
incT~dible (z) 
tall-tale(z) 
tcll-to(x,y,z) 
(10) 
xyzuvw 
Kim (x) 
incredible (z) 
tall-talc(z) 
tcll(x,y,z) 
v~2g 
~t =Z 
bdicve(w,v,u) 
On this basis, an idiom is called decomposable be- 
cause the situation to which it refers can be seen 
as an open relation Rxb. 
For the idiom eincn Book schicflen this means 
that schicflcn is a two-argument relation with a 
variable tbr the subject NP, the noun phrase cincn 
Bock referring to the concept a mistake and the 
verb schicflen denoting a situation where someone 
is acting. Extending this idea to the decomposable 
idiom jmdm. cinch Biiren aufbinden, it is neces- 
sary to suppose a three-argument--relation Rxyb 
with two open variables: x represents the sub- 
ject NP and y the indirect object NP. The idiom 
jmdm. einen B&'en anfbinden is now decompos- 
able into the noun phrase cinen Biiren, referring 
to a tall tale, and the verb aufbinden, referring to 
the activity of telling. 
By paraphrasing decomposable idioms, the 
identifiable parts of nmaning are taken into ac- 
count. That means that the concept of the un- 
derlying referent, which often may be an abstract 
entity lacking a physical extension, should be ver- 
balized and included into the paraphrase. 
Notice that in the above cases the relation be- 
tween the idiom components Bock, Biir and its 
paraphrased referents Fchler, Liigcngcschichte is 
not a metaphorical one, but a conventional one. 
There are also decomposable idioms where decom- 
posability is based on metaphoriocal knowledge. 
Besides our introspective intuition, evidence for 
the proposed paraphrases is found through text 
analyses. The strongest support comes from the 
everyday usage of language being observed for ex- 
ample in textcorpora with newspapers, literature 
etc. (Keil, 1.995). 
3 Semantic representation of 
decomposable idioms via DRT 
In the following, we will point out the problematic 
nature of meaning representation of idiomatic lml- 
guage with the help of DIRT (Kamp, 1993). We 
will show the advantages of our theoretical con- 
siderations above, that can be best illustrated by 
DRT already including mechanisms to handle ref- 
erents. 
Consider example (4) Kim bindet Tom einen 
unglaublichen Biiren an/(fig.:"Kim tells Tom an 
incredible tall tale"). DRS (6) shows the result 
of processing the in this case senseless -- lit- 
eral reading of sentence (4) without any idiom 
handling procedures, a DRS (7) represents a non 
compositional solution: after analysing the struc- 
ture syntactically, the literal meaning of the multi: 
word lexeme jmdm. einen Biiren aufbindcn is sub- 
stituted by the "complex meaning" of the simple 
verb phrase as "jmdn. belfigen" ("lie to sb."). 
Note that it is now a problem to represent the 
internal adjectival modifier incredible correctly. 
There is no discourse referent for that the con- 
dition incrcdible as semantic representation of the 
adjective unglaublich holds. Furthermore, if we 
want to represent the sentence Er glaubte ihr die 
Liigcngeschichtc ("He believes her the tall tale") 
continuing example (4) --, the connection of 
the discourse referents cannot be made correctly 
as shown in DRS (8). The connection of the re- 
sumed constituent cincn unglaublichcn Biiren and 
the resuxning definite description dic unglaubliche 
Liigcngeschichtc, which definitively exists, cannot 
be mapped into the DRS. 
We claim that a more appropriate semantic rep- 
resentation of this idiom should respect its kind 
of composition and take its referents into con- 
sideration. On the base of the discussed para- 
phrase "eine Liigengeschichte erz~ihlen", we of- 
fer the solution shown in (9). This representa- 
tion now includes the condition incredible(z), tall- 
talc(z), tell(z,y,z) to represent the idiom, in (10) 
the continuation of our sentence is shown. Refer- 
ence identity between bear' and tall-tale is estab- 
lished by the equation u=z. 
What decomposable idioms concerns, now the 
aFor the reason of simplification, we choose 
English predicate names for the conditions in the 
DRSs, e.g. instead of logical clmlses a~s b&'(x), auf- 
bindcn(x,y,z), or bdiiqen('x,y) we present the sentence 
meaning with bear(x), tie-on(x,y,z), or lic-to(x,y). 
This way the expenditure of translation c~m be re- 
duced in this paper. 
390 
base for adequate anapllora resohltion and reso- 
lution of definite deseriplions resuming em'lier in- 
troduced discourse material is created. 
4 Used Tools: The Basic Parser 
and the Lexicon 
In |;lie following we introduce the tools we have 
used R)r parsing idiomatic sentences. We give a 
short description of the underlying chart parsing 
system (Fischer, 1995) and our idiomatic lexical 
database, called PIIRASEO-LEX, that we use in 
the sense of an additional idiom list proposed by 
(Wcinreich, 1969). 
'\['he, design of our l)arsing system was governed 
I)y two main goals: paralh'lism and incrcmcntality. 
Nevertheless different formalisms m'c used to rap- 
resent syntactic and semantic features, having the 
adwmtage that for syntax as well as for semantics 
thc most appropriate tbrmalism can be chosen. 4 
Conseqnently, to guarantee parallelism, this also 
requires a connection nlechanisnl t)etween these 
formalisms is necessary. In the following sections 
tim structure of I, hc parser will t)e describe(l along 
these lines. 
The grammar formalism of our systenl is 
an extension of the well known I)ATR-H. Synta(:- 
tic inibrmation is encoded in feature structures. 
With the help of constraint equations these fea- 
ture structures can be modified. The underlying 
unification mechanism is enriched with sequences 
as well as simple wflue disjunctions. 
For our application the se, mantic formalism is 
of more interest. We de, cided to adopt l)inkal's at)- 
l)roach (13os, 1996) of I)I//F. In contrast tO Karat) 
l)llSs are not constructed in a to t) down fashion 
from a phrase structure tree, but bottom-up ltS- 
ing a version of A calculus. When coml)ining ~- 
cah:ulus and I)RT, two different kinds of abstrac- 
tion are possible. First one can abstract over a 
complete DRS (partial DRS) or one can abstract 
only over a single discourse, referent (predicative 
DRS). The h)llowing example shows both kind of 
abstraction with the A 1)RS for the indetinite tie- 
term|net and the noun mistake, a 
Feature structures are, use(t to encode the A-I)li,Ss. 
The main operation on A DRSs is the, fltnctional 
4This is the so called co-descriptive apprvach. Us- 
ing the stone fl)rmalism for syntacl;ic and scman~i(: 
construction is called the integrated approach, in tit(', 
descriptive approach they are build up sequentially. 
-b indicates the union of DRSs. 
compost|on on a partial DR S as flmctor and a 
predicative DRS as argument. It is implemented 
with the helt) of unification on the feature struc- 
tures. 
Our parsing engine is an active chart parser. 
'1)he chart edges arc marked, as usual, with cat- 
e, gory symhols. Additionally, syntactic %ature 
structures and )v I)RSs are attached to every edge,. 
1,br the extension of active edges according to the 
flmdamental rule of active chart parsing, all syn- 
ta('tic and semantic constraints of the resi)ective 
granunar rule must be satisfied. 
A grammar rule consists of three parts: 
Context free rule, s over category symbols (',onsti- 
tutc the l)aekt)onc of every grammar. They are an- 
notate, d with equations, the solutions of which re- 
sult in syntactic feature stractures. Iil the, so equa- 
tions the category symbols are used as projections 
to mark the structures to be used. The category 
symbols are also used in the, senmntic operations 
on DllSs. For semanl;ics, besides an operator com- 
pose for functional composition, an operator id for 
identity is used. 
An interface module he, lps to connect (lifl~realt 
lexicons to the, t)arse, r. At the inoment, a synt;ac- 
tic lexicon containing t'e, atllrC strllCtllres, a senlan- 
l;ic lexicon with A- I)RSs and a special lexicon for 
idioms, calle, d PIIRASI~:o-LEx (Keil, 1994), (Kcil, 
1995) are commcted to the parser. 
Phraseo-Lex is a computational lexicon which 
was specially develot)ed for idiomatic knowledge. 
Of all dive, rsed syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic 
iifformal,ion provided by 1)IIRASI.;O-LEX, we only 
ne, c(l for our i)url)ose h'mmata, base lexemes, (id- 
iom t)artMt)ating lcxi(:al words: Bock, ,schicfl(,n), 
tim inte~rnal syntacti(: structure encoded as a syn- 
tactic tre, e, the internal sclnantic structure ell- 
coded as predicate argument structure and the 
logical tbrm. 
As example, we show the lexical entries of our 
first examplary decomt)osablc idiom. 
len,nta: einen Bock schieBen 
base lexelnes: Boek, schie\]3en 
internal syntactic structure: 
(vpll 
(np-acc (det einen) 
(n Bock)) 
(v schieBen)) 
internal semantic structure: 
Idiom Paraphrase 
subje, ct subject 
x > X 
-dlre~ct object direct object 
einen Bock -7 a mistake 
predicate 1)red|care 
schieJ3en ~ make 
logical form: make (x,y), mistake (y) 
391 
During the parsing process this necessary id- 
iomatic information is extracted from PHRASEO- 
Ll,~x and mapped into feature structures the 
parser can handle. 
5 Processing decomposable idioms 
When parsing decomposable idioms with the 
parser described in the previous section, the fol- 
lowing steps are taken: 
While initializing the ehart, it is important 
to control whether potential parts of an idiom are 
found or not. For ('.very word of a sentecne to 
be parsed it is checked if it is a base lexeme of an 
idiom. If this test was positive, an additional chart 
edge is inserted for every idiom the word can occur 
in. This edge is marked as usual, but with tile 
syntactic feature structure and the A DRS built 
from the idiomatic information of PtIRASEO-LI,',X. 
The feature structure of this idiom edge con- 
tains information al)out how the idiom has to be 
completed and its underlying syntactic structure. 
This information is extracted from tile PHRASEO 
LEX syntax tree. The following examples show 
the feature structures of schicflcn and Bock of ore" 
running example. 
case: nominative- 
agrm: |number:singular 
kperson: two 
stem: sehieBen_vpll3 
\[head \[stem: b°ck-vple31 1 
\[rest: nil 
Fcase: nominative- 
\]number:singular 
agrm. \]person: two 
gender: mast 
stem: boek_vpll3 
vpl: \[verb:schieflen_vpll3\] 
The features val (for valency) respectively vpl 
(for verbal phraseologism) contain the information 
necessary to find other relevant parts for build- 
ing the idiom. While in the case of verbs the 
feature val just contains more information than 
usual, namely the stems of the missing parts of the 
idiom, the feature vpl is used to mark idiomatic 
information in other syntactic feature structures. 
Every part of the idiom is marked with an extra 
ending, in our example _vpll& This is due to the 
fact that the same words can occur in different id- 
ioms and should not be mixed up during parsing, 
because of the corresponding semantic structures. 
For example, the words Katzc and Sack occur as 
well in die Katzc aus dcm, Sack lassen (fig. eq. "let 
the cat out of the bag") as in die Katze im Sack 
km@n (fig. eq. "buy a pig in the poke"). 
The A-DRS of the idiomatic edge already con- 
tains the literal referent of the part of the idiom 
they represent. This means the senmndc entry for 
schicficn as part of cinch Bock schicflen already 
contains the predicate make(z,y). 
£xAy \[ make(x,y) \] £x mistake(x) 
For the same reasons the A DRS for bock con- 
tains the predicate mistake(x). This information 
is take.n from the internal semantic structure of 
the idiom encoded in PIIRASEo-LEx aS shown 
above and translated into the A-DRS. 
It is important to notice that the information 
concerning decomposable idioms is distribute.d 
among all its base lexemes. Nevertheless, we only 
have one entry for every idiom in our idiomatic 
database. Only when initializing the chart, this 
information is spread over several edges. 
In the grammar, special rules must he written 
to handle the idiomatic edges. In these rules it 
must be checked whether a complete idiom can be 
constructed. This is done with the help of extra 
equations over the special features val and vpl of 
the idiomatic featm'e structures. The following 
example shows a rule connecting an object and 
the verb phrase of a sentence, checking if both the 
verb and the noun are 1)arts of the same idiom. (~ 
(VP --~ V NP 
((V val hcad) =- (NP agrm) 
(V val head stem) = (NP stem) 
(NP vpl verb) - (VP stem) 
(VP val) = (NP val rest) 
(VP obj head) = NP 
(VP stem) = (V stem)) 
(compose NP V)) 
No changes were necessary neither to the chart 
parser itself nor to the fundamental rule. All fea- 
tures concerning idioms are handled in the lexi- 
cons or the grammar. 
The result of the parsing process are two 
readings of the sentence: the literal one, and the 
idiomatic one. The syntactic feature structures of 
the literal and the idiomatic reading are the same, 
as there is no pure syntactic difference between tile 
two readings. Only the semantic structures differ: 
one DRS represents the literal idiomatic and one 
the idiomatic reading. 
6Feature structures and rules are reduced to a min- 
imum in our examples to keep the structures cleat'. 
392 
This technique allows us to pm'se sentences like 
(1) (5) where, one part of the idiom is modified 
ail(1 ilot the idiom as whole. A discom'se referent 
for biir or hock respectively tall tale or mi,stakc 
is already introduced dm'ing the initialization of 
the chart. This referent can serve as an anchor 
for an I)ossible adjectival modifier as unglanblich. 
With the help of the rule connecting a(ljeetives 
and nouns (not especially written for idioms!), 
the predicates incredible(z) and tall-tale(z) are in- 
serted in the DRS. This approach also works for 
anaphoras. The discourse referent introduce.d for 
B"ar is the. antecedent for the anapher in l;he. next 
sentence\] 
6 Extensions 
It is quite simt)le to add the t)rocessing of non- 
compositional idioms to our parser. In this (:as(;, 
the whole literal meaning is bound to the main 
part of the idiom, in inost eases the verb. The se- 
mantic of all the other parts is considered empty, 
l;he empty k I)RS is bound l;o the eorresi)onding 
edges. Whe, n parsing a sentence where a part of 
a non-compositional idiom is modified, the corre- 
sponding rules fail, t)e(:ause no discourse referent 
can be found this modification mw be bound to. 
The only result will be ttm literal meaning of the 
~;elltenee. 
Our sysl;em starts processing a potential idiom 
as soon as one base lexeme was foutl(1. An im- 
proved version of our approach will lmndle an 
idiom after some inore base lexeines appeared. 
This will reduce the munber of lexical lookups to 
PItRASI,;O LEX as well as the number of edges in 
the t)arser. 
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