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<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <Paper uid="E93-1021"> <Title>Towards a proper treatment of coercion phenomena *</Title> <Section position="3" start_page="168" end_page="169" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 2 Linguistic evidence </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"/> <Section position="1" start_page="168" end_page="168" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 2.1 Preservation of the original type </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> 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 properties of phrases of type It, not of type e (the type of entities with temporal constitution).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> That the antecedent and the anaphoric NP must belong to the same type (\[Milner, 1982\]) is exemplified below: an NP of type &quot;individual&quot; may not have a type n (the type of kinds) as its antecedent.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> (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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> I do not know this horse. It must have escaped from a stud farm.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> (4) * Le cheval est herbivore. 11 a dTi s'gchapper d'un haras.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> The horse is herbivorous. It must have escaped from a stud farm.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> 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 complement of commencer, as its antecedent.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> (5) Jean a commencd son livre ~ 10 heures et ne l'a pas quittg de la nuit.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> (6) Jean a commencd sa lecture it 10 heures et n'a pas arr~t~ de la nnit.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> John started his reading at ten and did not stop all night. (7) q. q.&quot; Jean a commencd son livre ~ 10 heures et n'a pas arr~tg de la nuit.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> Similarly, the antecedent of a relative clause and the relativized NP may not belong to different types (\[Godard, 1992\]).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="12"> (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 commencer retains its type It and does not acquire type e .</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="13"> (9) Jean a commencg la lecture de ce livre, qui durera 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 requirement 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 complement 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="14"> 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="15"> (13) Jean a commencd et finalement mangg le saumon John has begun, and finally eaten the salmon</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="2" start_page="168" end_page="169" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 2.2 Asymmetry between subjects and objects </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> If coercion means type change operated by a predicate 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 predicates. Commencer, as an intransitive verb related to transitive commencer, combines with subjects of type e; thus, we would expect it to combine with coerced subjects having a different original type, but this is not the case.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> (14) La confgrence a commencd ?t I0 heures.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> The lecture began at ten (15) ~ Le livre a commencg la semaine derni~re.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> The book began last week As examples of predicates which coerce their subject arguments, \[Pustejovsky, 1991\] offers psychological predicates such as frighten, upset, please, etc. But in fact there is little evidence of coercion sentences such as (16).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> (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 paraphrases for the subject like &quot;her face, her chatter&quot;, as well as &quot;listening to her, that she stays here&quot;, etc. Confirmation that psychological predicates are polymorphic as regards their cause argument is given by the following coordination (cf. \[Copestake and Briscoe, 1991\]): (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 problem disappears if enjoy is dimorphic, and the type of salmon is p.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="3" start_page="169" end_page="169" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 2.3 Interpretation is not type changing </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> 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 &quot;a book which it takes a long time to read&quot; (see \[Briscoe et al., 1990\]), it is clear that it is not associated with a phrase coerced to an event. Achcter does not allow a complement of type e, while combining easily with the above NP.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> (18) * Jean a achetd une sdance de cindma.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> 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 interpretation &quot;John ate the salmon and enjoyed eating it&quot;. Thus, one must find an account of the interpretive phenomenon illustrated in (1) which does not appeal to type change.</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> <Section position="4" start_page="169" end_page="171" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 3 Properties of the phenomenon </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> There are three main properties which point towards the desirability of a lexical treatment. (i) The phenomenon is lexically driven rather than a general process; (it) for each lexical item, it is possible to express 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) &quot;bounded&quot; and (it) intentionally controlled.</Paragraph> <Section position="1" start_page="169" end_page="169" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 3.1 Coercion is lexically driven </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> The notion of coercion owes much of its attractiveness to its potential generality: having a separate general set of rules able to generate a set of acceptable interpretations would significantly alleviate the task of storing and handling semantic information.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> This program, at least in this strong form, encounters empirical difficulties. For instance, it is not the case that the class of aspectual verbs which subcategorize for an NP of type e behaves uniformly. Commencer, flair, se mettre h allow for coercion, but not cesser or arr~ter.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> (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 pendant. null (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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> (23) Jean a commencd nn livre long/* nn livre intermittent. null John has begun a long/intermittent book</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="2" start_page="169" end_page="170" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 3.2 Lexical information and paraphrase </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> A VP like commencer la salle de bains (to begin the bathroom) can be understood as meaning, for example, &quot;to begin to build/to paint/to refurbish/to clean the bathroom&quot;. However, this does not imply that such paraphrases should be present in the description 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 common interpretation which is part of the semantic content of the lexical item commencer. Thus, the relevant distinction here is between abstract constraints, which are part of the semantic content, and paraphrases 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> The question whether the additional information, from which the more specific paraphrase is constructed in a given linguistic and situational environment, 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, which help to retrieve such verbs as paint, for instance, as far as they are consistent with the general constraint.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="3" start_page="170" end_page="171" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 3.3 Constraints on the NP complement of commencer 3.3.1 Boundedness </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> The very possibility of a coercion construction depends on the compatibility between semantic properties of the predicate and of the complement. Looking more precisely at the case of commencer, we observe the following requirements on the complement: the complement must refer to a &quot;bounded&quot; entity as opposed to an &quot;amorphous&quot; one. The data are the following. The complement of commencer is either 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> (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 partitive complement has the property of being amorphous, 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 (\[Vendler, 1967\]). Intuitively, 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 terminal point, while atelic events (and objects denoted by mass constructions) lack a set terminal point.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> To this distinction, we add a new distinction between bounded entities, which have a terminal point, and amorphous entities, which do not. Krifka defines telic/atelic as a predicate of predicates; the latter have objects as well as events in their domains, and, linguistically, they are nominal as well as verbal predicates. In the same way we define amorphous/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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> Let us first summarize Krifka's model and his definition 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 &quot;part-of&quot; relation. P is cumulative (wrt</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> y in X. A predicate is singular on X iff it holds for exactly one element of X. A predicate is str. cum.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> when it is cumulative and not singular. A predicate is qua. iff, when it applies to z E X, it does not apply 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 C/~ (t E TAt E r(e)AVt'(t' C r(e) t' < t))).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> 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, impose a set terminal point to the events they denote. Str. cum. predicates which apply to at least two different events with different terminal points have no set terminal point. On the other hand, qua. predicates have a set terminal point. Assuming that verbal predicates like eat and nominal predicates like bread are (strictly) cumulative, Krifka shows that constructions like to eat bread are (strictly) cumulative. On the other hand, constructions such as to eat the bread, which use the qua. nominal predicate the.bread, are demonstrably quantized. Such an approach 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 indefinite plurals, it appears that another distinction is needed when one takes the full range of the complements of commencer into account. Such NPs correspond 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 \[Borillo, 1989\]): 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> Nevertheless, it would be wrong to use Krifka's distinction to account for (24)-(25): commencer takes VP complements which can be either str. cum. or qua.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> (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. complements. We introduce an aspectual predicate labelled &quot;amorphous&quot; (vs bounded). Amorphous entails str. cure. ; bounded predicates may be either str. cum.</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> <Section position="5" start_page="171" end_page="173" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> AMORPHOUS I BOUNDED \] </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> 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 ordering relation (E or &quot;part-of&quot;) 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> Bounded events do not satisfy AMORPHOUS and belong to the domain of the function TP. The constraint for events is as follows:</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> For a single object z, there are usually several ways of &quot;moving through&quot; 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:</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> A E * x&quot; % E * x' _% Linguistically, the predicate AMORPHOUS is associated with partitive and indefinite plural determiners. It is interesting to note that such NPs have a characteristic property: they may not occur as the subjects of predication s (Of the) books were of great help to me If there is no equivalent operator on verbal predicates, 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> It is easy to see now why the meaning of commencer requires that the complement be bounded. As a function 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 function on objects 4, first_part_of returns the initial use of commencer as &quot;be the first part of&quot;, to which we return in the last section.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> part of any event which is associated with the object by the interpretive procedure described in section 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 &quot;initial&quot; part with respect to some order, usually spatial. 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 theory) 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> The second constraint on the complement of commencer in its coercion use is interpretive: the reconstructed event is an event in which the object denoted 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 interpretation 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> 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 \[Brennenstuhl, 1982; Croft, 1991\]). 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 politicians null (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 intentional 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- null 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> (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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> (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 begin the lecture) may not be understood as &quot;to begin to listen to the lecture&quot;, it means &quot;to begin to deliver the lecture&quot;: 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 restrictions 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 attaquer (corrode) le marbre or il a commencg it pleuvoir (it began to rain).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="12"> 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 &quot;to begin to move the stone, to drive the ear&quot;. Yet, moving an object and driving a car are causal processes, causally controlled by human beings. null (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 &quot;incremental path&quot;: commencer ie tunnel, le dgsert de Gobi (the tunnel, the desert of Gobi) do not mean &quot;to begin to go through the tunnel, the desert of Gobi&quot;.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="13"> 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 commencer 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 &quot;protopatient&quot; interpretation.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="14"> 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 affect the object in any significant way. In fact this requirement follows directly from the semantics of commencer and the only information which is available, 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="15"> When this obtains, the event is in most cases a modification of the object. The object comes into being (commencer une maison = &quot;to begin to build a house&quot;), is consumed (commencer le vin= &quot;to begin to drink the wine&quot;), or undergoes a definite change of state (commencer la salle de bains = &quot;to begin to paint/clean the bathroom&quot;). In other words, we accept that the information associated With the lexical 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 &quot;function&quot; 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 magazine, a listing, etc. Consider (1) again. As noted in \[Pustejovsky, 1991\] commencer le livre/to begin the book does not only mean &quot;to begin to write the book&quot; but also &quot;to begin to read the book&quot;, an activity which is not immediately seen as an event of modification of the book. This example contrasts with commencer une symphonic/to begin a symphony which may mean &quot;to begin to compose/perform a symphony&quot;, not to &quot;to begin to listen to a symphony&quot;. The problem is the following: why does the book allow the interpretation &quot;to read&quot; while the symphony does not allow the interpretation &quot;to listen&quot;? We propose that in fact &quot;to read a book&quot; is a modification of the book while &quot;to listen to a symphony&quot; is&quot; not a modification of the symphony: there is no parallelism 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 totally 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 reactions but are not systematically associated with information according to some definite set of rules (at least in our culture). The difference between material modification and informational modification is that in the first case the result is objectivized, while it is internal in the latter.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="6" start_page="173" end_page="175" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 4 Lexical descriptions </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> 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 interpretation. On the other hand, we must make sure that our approach meets basic requirements of computational tasks. Coercion phenomena can raise problems for understanding or generation systems, since they need to interpolate predicates to issue correct interpretations or syntactic forms (\[Gerstl, 1992\]).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> 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 &quot;John took his brushes and began to paint the door&quot;. Similarly, a generation system should be able to contract commencer ~ life le livre into commencer le livre.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> We will briefly address here the problem of matching potential paraphrases with a phrase of form commencer + 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> 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).</Paragraph> <Section position="1" start_page="173" end_page="174" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 4.1 The lexical description of commencer </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> Using HPSG-style feature structures, we propose the two following descriptions of commencer with a nominal complement: 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 functional (--~) 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 lattice (E, _<) on E.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> 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 ( sentence) or son num6ro (performance) commence le spectacle (show) Each pattern exhibits dependencies between the types of its elements.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> Here modify is intended to mean any sort of internal and durable change affecting the object (thus redecorating 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 &quot;to begin to draw a map&quot; not &quot;to read a map&quot;). It should be noted that we do not equate the meaning 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 direct association between a lexical item and a typed function. Instead of changing the argument type, 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 interpretation in infinitival complement sentences. Pattern 4 is an instance of commencer2. As in the preceding case, the meaning of commencer is a complex 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.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="2" start_page="174" end_page="175" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 4.2 The matching procedure </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> 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&quot; 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 respectively for some given pattern. Consider the /-/2 for peindre.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> In this case, since human < animate, the unification succeeds for pattern 2. It would fail in the case of ddplacer (move) which has a RELN slot ddplacer T (control A intentional A &quot;,modify). One cannot reasonably suppose that we have lexicons 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 \[Pustejovsky el al., 1992\]. Unfortunately, it seems difficult to exactly parallel the techniques decribed there, because 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 definition 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 meaning 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 dictionary itself. However, this is only one facet of the information which is necessary to control the matching 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 suppose that the second problem is resolved simply &quot;by failure&quot;, i.e. by failing to find any relevant connection 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 correspondence with a structure as the following: 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 (&quot;put ...in order&quot;) 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> Such difficulties are lucidly acknowledged and commented 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 combinations 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 \[du Chazaud, 1989; Delas and Demon, 1989\]. This simple test would capture normal matchings, such as (commencer 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 deviant pairs as (commencer le charbon (coal), manger (to eat)).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> Yet, it would not filter out abnormal candidates as (commencer le charbon (coal), ranger (to tidy)).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> There is no preference violation, since it is perfectly possible to put some heap of coal in the right place.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> The problems stems from the violation of the semantics for modification mentionned in our previous 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 lieu can be tidied up.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> We propose the following pairing for the sake of illustration (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 &quot;begin to listen to&quot; interpretation, will be excluded if symphonie is classified as an hyponym of oeuvre (work). On the other hand the interpretation &quot;begin to play&quot; 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.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> Such examples point to the desirability of exploiting existing thesauri. However, a good deal of restructuring will be necessary to exploit them in a principled way. This is a general problem which is far beyond the limits of this paper.</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="3" start_page="175" end_page="175" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 4.3 Apr~s </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> Let us briefly consider the interpretation of the nominal complement of aprds (after), ignoring cases where this complement is simply an event (this is the standard 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 argument slot wrt this predicate 6.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> (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 below: null (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 complement is an event, whose predicate is not to be found in the context. The predicates which are excluded 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: modificas Note the analogy with the procedure used in gapping constructions as studied in \[Dalrymple et al., 1991\] tion is not sufficient.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> (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 &quot;cause&quot; 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), terminating an action (drinking a coffee) makes possible to go out, while there is a pure temporal connection in</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> class="xml-element"></Paper>