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<Paper uid="C96-1010">
  <Title>Parsing spoken language without syntax</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="49" end_page="50" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5. LINGUISTIC ABILITIES
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> As illustrated by the previous example, the microsemantic parser masters rather complex sentences. The study of its linguistic abilities offers a persuasive view of its structural power.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> 5.1. Linguistic coverage Although our parser is dedicated to French applications, we expect our semantic approach to be easily extended to other languages. We will now study several linguistic phenomena the parser masters easily.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Compound tenses and passive -- According to the microsemantic point of view, the auxiliaries appear as a mark of modality of the verb. As a result, the parser considers ordinarily any auxiliary an ordinary MOD argument of the verb. (d) J'ai mangd \[Pred =' manger' &amp;quot; *I has eaten. \[MOD = \[Pred ='avoir'\] I ate. LAGT = \[Pred =' je'\] (e) Le carrd est effacd &amp;quot; \[Pred ='carr6' \] The square is erased OBJ = \[DET = \[Pred ='le'\]J  Interrogations- Three interrogative forms are met in French : subject inversion (fl), est-ce-que questions (f2) and intonative questions (f3). (fl) ddpla~'ons nous le carrd ? (f2) est-ce-que nous ddplafons le carrd ? (f3) nous dgplacfons le carrd ? Since the parser ignores most word-order considerations, the interrogative utterances are processed like any declarative ones. This approach suits perfectly to spontaneous speech, which rarely involves a subject inversion. Closed questions are consequently characterized either by a prosodic analysis or by the adverbial phrase est-ce-que.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> (g) oft ddplafons nous le carrd ? Open questions (g) are on the contrary introduced explicitly by an interrogative pronoun which stands for the missing argument.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Relative clauses---Every relative clause is considered an argtunent of the lexeme the relative pronoun refers to.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> (h) It encumbers the window which is here The microsemantic structures of the main and the relative clauses are however kept distinct to respect the principle of coherence. The two parse trees are indirectly related by an anaphoric a~lation (REF).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> Subordinate clauses- Provided the dependent clause is not a relative one, the subordinate verb is subcategorized by the main one.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> (i) Draw a circle as soon as the square is erased As a result, subordinate clauses are parsed like any ordinary object.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="50" end_page="50" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
5.2. Spontaneous constructions
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> The suitability of the semantic parser is rcally patent when considering spontaneous speech.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> The parser masters indeed most of the spontaneous ungrammatical constructions without any specific mechanism : Repetitions and self-corrections -- Repetitions and self-corrections seem to violate the principle of unicity. They involve indeed sevcral lexemes which share the same lnicroselnantic case :  (1l) *Select the device ... the right (_tevice. (12) *Close the display ~ ... the window.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2">  These constructions are actually considered a peculiar coordination where the conjunction is missing \[De Smedt 87\]. Then, they are parsed like any coordinationdeg Ellipses and interruptions -- The principle of relative completeness is mainly designed for the ellipses and the interruptions, Our parser is thus able to extract alone the incomplete structure of any interrupted utterance. On the contrary, the criterion of relative completeness is deficient for most of the ellipses like (t), where the upper predicate to move is omitted : (n) * \[Movc l The left door on the right too. Such wide ellipses should nevertheless be recovered at a upper pragmatic level.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Comments --Generally speaking, comments do not share any microsemantic relation with the sentence they are inserted in : (o) * Draw a line ... that's it ... on the right.. For instance, the idiomatic phrase that's it is related to (o) at the pragmatic level and not at the semantic one. As a result, the microsemantic parser can not unify the main clause and the comment. We expect however filrther studies on pragmatic marks to enhance the parsing of these constructions. Despite this weakness, the robustness of the microsemantic parser is already substantial. The following experimental results will thus suggest the suitability of our mnodcl for spontaneous speech parsing.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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