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<Paper uid="C02-1043">
  <Title>Computation of modifier scope in NP by a language-neutral method</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="1" end_page="1" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The fact that (II) works so well across a variety of languages is of inherent linguistic interest, as it suggests that the cross-linguistic variation in word order within NP, while considerable, is nevertheless subject to universal principles that enable the relative scope of modifiers to be recovered. These principles take account primarily of the type of modifier, but also of their placement relative to one another and, at least in the case of postnominal restrictive modifiers, their internal structure, assigning wider scope to modifiers that are themselves modified, perhaps because they are intersecting. Application of the algorithm to more languages would of course be required to fully substantiate this claim.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The success of (II) is of substantial practical interest, as well, since it does not make unreasonable demands on the. For example, although (II.3) may ultimately derive from a deeper principle that assigns wider scope to intersecting modifiers, it is not necessary to identify modifiers as (non-)intersecting for (II.3) to work, since syntactic complexity works well enough. To work correctly, (II) requires quantifiers to be distinguished from adjectives, adjectives to be identified as superlative, comparative, ordinal or as able to occur before a determiner, and postnominal modifiers to be marked as nonrestrictive. The first two requirements are reasonable things to expect of any parser; the third requirement is not easily met in all languages, but even in those languages where nonrestrictives are not easily identifiable, (II) works reasonable well.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>