Table Of ContentDISCOURSESEMANTICSOFS-MODIFYINGADVERBIALS
KatherineM.Forbes
ADISSERTATION
in
Linguistics
PresentedtotheFacultiesoftheUniversityofPennsylvaniainPartial
FulfillmentoftheRequirementsfortheDegreeofDoctorofPhilosophy
2003
BonnieWebber, SupervisorofDissertation EllenPrince,SupervisorofDissertation
DonaldA.Ringe,GraduateGroupChair AravindJoshi,CommitteeMember
RobinClark,CommitteeMember
Acknowledgements
Iwishto thankBonnie Webber. Withoutherpatience andherseeminglyendlessdepthsof insight,
Imightneverhavecompletedthisthesis. Iamenormouslygratefulforherguidance.
I also owe many thanks to Ellen Prince. She is an intellectual leader at Penn who has helped
many,includingme,findawaythroughthejungleofdiscourseanalysis.
Iamindebtedtoeveryprofessorwhohastaughtme. SpecialthankstoRobinClarkforbeinga
memberofmydissertationcommittee.
IamveryluckytohaveworkedwithAravindJoshi. Heisacontinualsourceofknowledgeinthe
DLTAG meetings. The field of computational linguistics has already benefited from his sentence-
levelwork;IfullyexpectheandBonniewillproducesimilarlyusefulresultswithDLTAG.
Also in DLTAG,Eleni Miltsakaki andRashmi Prasad, and laterCassandre Creswell andJason
Teepleallprovidedstimulationandsolace. TheirgreatcompanyandgreateffortonDLTAGprojects
taught me to appreciate how much can be done when minds work together. I look forward to the
chancetoworkwiththeminthefuture.
IamalsothankfultoMarthaPalmer,PaulKingsbury, andScottCottonforallowingmetowork
withthemonthePropbankprojectandsupplementbothmyincomeandmyworkindiscourse.
Onapersonalnote,theForbes,Finley,andRileyfamiliesdeservethanksforgivingmeloveand
diversionandbalanceandtalkingmethroughmyeducation. Mostofall,thankstoEnricoRiley,for
beingeverythingtome.
ii
ABSTRACT
DISCOURSESEMANTICSOFS-MODIFYINGADVERBIALS
KatherineM.Forbes
Supervisors: BonnieWebberandEllenPrince
Inthisthesis,weaddressthequestionofwhycertainS-modifyingadverbialsareonlyinterpretable
with respect to thediscourse or spatio-temporal context, and notjust their own matrixclause. It is
notpossibletolisttheseadverbials becausethesetofadverbials iscompositionalandthereforein-
finite. Instead,weinvestigatethemechanismsunderlyingtheirinterpretation. Wepresentacorpus-
based analysis of the predicate argument structure and interpretation of over 13,000 S-modifying
adverbials. We use prior research on discourse deixis and clause-level predicates to study the se-
manticsoftheargumentsofS-modifyingadverbialsandthesyntacticconstituentsfromwhichthey
can be derived. We show that many S-modifying adverbials contain semantic arguments that may
notbesyntacticallyovert,butwhoseinterpretationneverthelessrequiresanabstractobjectfromthe
discourse or spatio-temporal context. Prior work has investigated only a smallsubset of these dis-
courseconnectives; attheclause-leveltheirsemanticshasbeenlargelyignoredandatthediscourse
leveltheyareusuallytreatedas“signals”ofpredefinedlistsofabstractdiscourserelations. Ourin-
vestigationshedslightonthespaceofrelationsimpartedbyamuchwidervarietyofadverbials. We
furthershowhowtheirpredicateargumentstructureandinterpretationcanbeformalizedandincor-
poratedintoarichintermediatemodelofdiscoursethataloneamongothermodelsviewsdiscourse
connectivesaspredicateswhosesyntaxandsemanticsmustbespecifiedandrecoverabletointerpret
discourse. Itisnotonlyduetotheirargumentstructureandinterpretationthatadverbialshavebeen
treated as discourse connectives, however. Our corpus contains adverbials whose semantics alone
doesnotcausethemtobeinterpretedwithrespecttoabstractobjectinterpretationsinthediscourse
orspatio-temporalcontext. Weexploreotherexplanationsforwhytheseadverbialsevokediscourse
contextfortheirinterpretation;inparticular, weshowhowtheinteractionofprosodywiththeinter-
pretation of S-modifying adverbials can contribute to discourse coherence, and we also show how
S-modifyingadverbialscanbeusedtoconveyimplicatures.
iii
Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Contents iv
ListofTables x
ListofFigures xiv
1 Introduction 1
1.1 TheProblem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 ContributionsoftheThesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 ThesisOutline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 AnaphoraandDiscourseModels 6
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Descriptive TheoriesofDiscourseCoherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.1 AnEarlyEncompassingDescription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.2 AlternativeDescriptionsofPropositionalRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.3 DiscourseRelationsasConstraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.4 AbducingDiscourseRelationsbyApplyingtheConstraints . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.5 InteractionofDiscourseInferenceandVPEllipsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
iv
2.2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 AThree-TieredModelofDiscourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.1 TheThreeTiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.2 CoherencewithinDiscourseSegments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3.3 ModelingLinguisticStructureandAttentionalStateasaTree . . . . . . . 23
2.3.4 IntroductiontoDiscourseDeicticReference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.5 RetrievingAntecedentsofDiscourseDeixisfromtheTree . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4 ATreeStructurewithaSyntax-SemanticInterface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.1 ConstituentsandTreeConstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.2 TheSyntaxSemanticInterface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.3 RetrievingAntecedentsofAnaphorafromtheTree . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4.4 TheNeedForUpwardPercolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5 ADescriptiveTheoryofDiscourseStructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5.1 AnalyzingTextStructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5.2 TheNeedforMultipleLevelsofDiscourseStructure . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.5.3 “Elaboration”asReference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.5.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.6 ASemanticTheoryofDiscourseCoherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.6.1 AbstractObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.6.2 AFormalLanguageforDiscourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.6.3 RetrievingAntecedentsofAnaphorafromtheDiscourseStructure . . . . . 57
2.6.4 ASystemforInferringDiscourseRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.6.5 ExtendingtheTheorytoCognitiveStates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.6.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
2.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.7.1 ProliferationofDiscourseRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
v
2.7.2 UseofLinguisticCuesasSignals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.7.3 StructuralandAnaphoricCuePhrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.7.4 ComparisonofDLTAGandOtherModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.7.5 RemainingQuestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3 SemanticMechanismsinAdverbials 78
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.2 LinguisticBackgroundandDataCollection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.2.1 FunctionofAdverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.2.2 StructureofPPandADVP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.2.3 DataCollection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.3 AdverbialModificationTypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.3.1 Clause-LevelAnalysesofModificationType . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.3.2 ProblemswithCategoricalApproaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.3.3 ModificationTypesasSemanticFeatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.4 AdverbialSemanticArguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.4.1 (Optional)ArgumentsorAdjuncts? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.4.2 ExternalArgumentAttachmentAmbiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4.3 SemanticRepresentationofExternalArgument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
3.4.4 SemanticArgumentsasAbstractObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.4.5 NumberofAbstractObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
3.4.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
3.5 S-ModifyingPPAdverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.5.1 ProperNouns,Possessives,andPronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
3.5.2 Demonstrative andDefiniteDeterminers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
3.5.3 IndefiniteArticles,GenericandPluralNouns,andOptionalArguments . . 117
vi
3.5.4 PPandADJPModifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3.5.5 OtherArguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
3.5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3.6 S-ModifyingADVPAdverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
3.6.1 SyntacticallyOptionalArguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
3.6.2 Context-DependentADVPAdverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
3.6.3 ComparativeADVP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
3.6.4 SetsandWorlds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
3.6.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
3.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
4 IncorporatingAdverbialSemanticsintoDLTAG 157
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
4.2 Syntax-SemanticInterfaces attheSentenceLevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
4.2.1 TheRoleoftheSyntax-SemanticInterface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
4.2.2 LTAG:LexicalizedTreeAdjoiningGrammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
4.2.3 ASyntax-SemanticInterfaceforLTAGDerivationTrees . . . . . . . . . . 161
4.2.4 ASyntax-SemanticInterfaceforLTAGElementaryTrees . . . . . . . . . 166
4.2.5 ComparisonofApproaches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
4.2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.3 Syntax-SemanticInterfaces attheDiscourseLevel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.3.1 DLTAG:LexicalizedTreeAdjoiningGrammarforDiscourse . . . . . . . . 171
4.3.2 Syntax-SemanticInterfacesforDerivedTrees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
4.3.3 ASyntax-SemanticInterfaceforDLTAGDerivationTrees . . . . . . . . . 190
4.3.4 ComparisonofApproaches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
4.3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
4.4 DLTAGAnnotationProject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
4.4.1 OverviewofProject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
4.4.2 PreliminaryStudy1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
vii
4.4.3 PreliminaryStudy2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
4.4.4 FutureWork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
5 OtherWaysAdverbialsContributetoDiscourseCoherence 229
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
5.2 Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
5.2.1 ThePhenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
5.2.2 Information-StructureandTheoriesofStructuredMeanings . . . . . . . . 232
5.2.3 AlternativeSemantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
5.2.4 BackgroundsorAlternatives? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
5.2.5 Contrastive Themes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
5.2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
5.3 FocusSensitivityofModifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
5.3.1 FocusParticles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
5.3.2 OtherFocusSensitiveSub-ClausalModifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
5.3.3 S-Modifying“FocusParticles” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
5.3.4 FocusSensivityofS-ModifyingAdverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
5.3.5 FocusingS-ModifyingAdverbialstoEvokeContext . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
5.3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
5.4 Implicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
5.4.1 GriceanImplicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
5.4.2 PragmaticandSemanticPresupposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
5.4.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
5.5 UsingS-ModifyingAdverbialstoConveyImplicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
5.5.1 Presupposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
5.5.2 ConversationalImplicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
5.5.3 InteractionofFocusandImplicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
5.5.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
viii
5.6 OtherContributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
5.6.1 DiscourseStructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
5.6.2 Performatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
6 Conclusion 279
6.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
6.2 FutureDirections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Bibliography 285
ix
List of Tables
2.1 MainCategoriesof[HH76]’sRelationsbetweenPropositions . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2 MainCategoriesof[Lon83]’sRelationsbetweenPropositions . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 MainCategoriesof[Mar92]’sRelationsbetweenPropositions . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4 MainCategoriesof[Hob90]’sRelationsbetweenPropositions . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 [Keh95]’sCause-EffectRelations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.6 [Keh95]’sResemblanceRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.7 [GS86]ChangesinDiscourseStructureIndicatedbyLinguisticExpressions . . . . 21
2.8 CenteringTheoryTransitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.9 [Web91]’sClassificationofDiscourseDeicticReference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.10 OrganizationsofRSTRelationDefinitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.11 Evidence: RSTRelationDefinition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.12 Volitional-Cause: RSTRelationDefinition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.13 Elaboration: RSTRelationDefinition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.14 [Ven67]’sImperfectandPerfectNominalizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.15 [Ven67]’sLooseandNarrowContainers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.16 DICE:discourserelationdefinitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.17 DICE:Indefeasibleaxioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.18 DICE:Defeasiblelawsonworldknowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.19 DICE:Defeasiblelawsondiscourseprocesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.20 DICE:Deductionrules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.21 [Kno96]’sFeaturesofDiscourseConnectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
x
Description:DISCOURSE SEMANTICS OF S-MODIFYING ADVERBIALS. Katherine M. Forbes. A DISSERTATION in. Linguistics. Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial. Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2003. Bonnie Webber, Supervisor of