Preliminary Survey of European Portuguese Frozen Sentences

1
Preliminary Survey of European Portuguese Frozen
Sentences
1st Iberian Workshop on Contrastive Grammar Univ.
Algarve, Faro, Portugal November 28-29th, 2005

• Jorge Baptista 1,2 , Anabela Correia 1 , Graça
  Fernandes 1
• 1 Univ. Algarve, Portugal2 L2F, INESC-ID Lisboa,
  Portugal

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Structure Presentation

• Collecting Frozen Sentences
• Defining Frozen Sentences
• Classification
• Format of Dictionary
• Syntactic Properties
• Classification Problems
• Concluding Remarks

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Collecting Frozen Sentences

• Many frozen sentences, especially those that are
  most usual or most obviously idiomatic, have
  already been collected both in general and in
  specialized dictionaries of idioms.
• In these dictionaries, frozen sentences are
  usually undistinguished from other types of
  multiword expressions, such as compound nouns,
  adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions proverbs,
  etc.
• In order to build this Lexicon-Grammar of frozen
  sentences of European Portuguese, several sources
  were used, including (general and specialized)
  dictionaries, and these were completed with
  information retrieved from newspapers, magazines,
  the web, etc. and our knowledge as native
  speakers of Portuguese.

1 Basically, Mello (1986), Santos (1990),
Simões (1993), Moreira (1996), and Neves (2000).
The electronic dictionary of frozen sentences of
Brazilian Portuguese (Vale, 2001) was also
consulted, but many of those sentences either do
not exist if European Portuguese or else they
present substantial syntactical and lexical
differences, so that a detailed comparative study
is in order. Many sentences were checked against
corpora of different nature, using the Linguateca
resources (www.linguateca .pt), and web browsers.
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Defining Frozen Sentences

• no easy definition
• heterogeneous expressions
• Frozen sentences are elementary sentences where
  the main verb and at least one of its argument
  noun-phrases are distributionally constraint, and
  usually the global meaning of the expression
  cannot be calculated from the individual meaning
  of its component elements when they are used
  independently
• (M. Gross 1982, 1989, 1996 G. Gross 1996
  Baptista et al 2003 Ranchhod 2003).

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• For that reason, the whole expression must be
  taken as a complex, multiword lexical unit
• (1) O João fechou-se em copas
• (litJohn closed himself in hearts John
  isolated himself)
• the verb-object combination (fechar-copas) is
  frozen. One cannot replace copas (hearts) by
  other noun of the same lexical paradigm
• O João fechou-se em (espadas paus ouros)
• (lit John closed himself in spades clubs
  diamonds)

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Classification of Frozen Sentences

• The formal framework of M. Gross (1982, 1989,
  1996) was adopted to classify frozen sentences.
• The classification is based on sentence
  structure, number and type of noun phrases (NP)
  attached to the main verb, their frozen (C) or
  free nature (N), as well as the syntactic
  properties of the construction.
• Table 1 (next) shows some formal classes, their
  internal structure, an illustrative example, and
  the approximate number of sentences collected so
  far.

See Leclère 2002, for an updated overview of the
current status of French Lexicon-Grammar
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Table 1. Classification of frozen sentences
(extract)
Frozen sentences with sentential subjects (C0Q,
C5) or objects (C6), or with frozen subject noun
phrases (C0) were not considered in this paper. N
and C stand for free or frozen noun phrases,
respectivelly N0 is the subject, N1 , N2 and N3
the first, second and third complement V is the
verb and Prep a preposition.
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Classification of Frozen Sentences

• Compared with figures reported for other
  languages
• French (20,000 M.Gross 1996),
• Spanish (3,500 Mogorrón-Huerta 2002),
• Modern Greek (4,500 Fotopoulou 1993)
• Brazilian Portuguese (3,500 Vale 2001),
• it is clear that our own lists are still far from
  complete and they should, in fact, be completed,
  probably using other corpus-based methods for
  lexical acquisition (McKeown Rodev 2000,
  Mutsimoto 2003).

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Format of Dictionary

• The Lexicon-Grammar may be viewed as an
  electronic dictionary of frozen sentences.
• The electronic dictionary is composed of several
  matrices, one per formal class.
• In these matrices, each line is a frozen sentence
  and the columns contain the lexical elements of
  the sentence and their syntactic (distributional
  and transformational) proper-ties.
• The set of matrices constitutes the
  lexicon-grammar of frozen sentences.

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Table 2. Class CPN (extract)
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Syntactic Properties

• distributional constraints on free NP (e.g.
  Nhum)
• intrinsically reflexive constructions (Vse)
  reflex Pro cannot be zeroed nor replaced by free
  NP (not referent to the subject)
• (2) O Pedro atirou-se aos pés da Maria
• (lit Peter threw himself to the feet of Mary,
  Peter humbled himself before Mary)
• O Pedro atirou (E o João) aos pés da Maria
• (lit Peter threw E/John to the feet of Mary)

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Syntactic Properties (continued)

• obligatory negation (NegObrig)
• (3) O Pedro não chega aos calcanhares da Maria
• (lit Peter does not get to the heels of Mary)
• Peter is not a match for Mary
• ?O Pedro chega aos calcanhares da Maria
• (lit Peter gets to the heels of Mary)

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Syntactic Properties (continued)

• dative NP restructuring (Leclère 1995)
• (4a) O Pedro foi às trombas do João ao João
• (lit Peter went to_the snouts of/to John,
  Peter beat John)
• (4b) O Pedro foi-lhe ( ao João) às trombas.
• but in some sentences with the a similar
  syntactic structure, the reduction to a dative
  Pro is not possible
• (5) O Pedro foi na cantiga do João/ ao João/
  -lhe
• (lit Peter went in_the song of John)
• Peter was persuaded by Johns ill-intended
  words

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Syntactic Properties (continued)

• reduction of free NP to an oblique pronoun
  andreduction of de N to a possessive pronoun
• (5) O Pedro foi na cantiga do João Pro_Obl O
  Pedro foi na cantiga dele Pro_Pos O Pedro foi
  na sua cantiga
• but in some cases, the reduction to a possessive
  is blocked
• (4) O Pedro foi às trombas do João Pro_Obl ?
  O Pedro foi às trombas dele Pro_Pos ? O
  Pedro foi às suas trombas.

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Syntactic Properties (continued)

• Other relations Conversion-like
  transformation(G.Gross 1989 Baptista 1997)
• (6) O Pedro foi às trombas ao João (CP1)
• (lit Peter went to the snouts to John, Peter
  beat John)
• (7) O João apanhou nas trombas do Pedro (CPP)
• (lit John got on the snouts from Peter, John
  was beaten by Peter)
• - permutation of free NP around frozen elements
  
• - replacement of V ir (active) by apanhar
  (passive)
• - change of Prep1

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• - similar variants of V as in Vsup Npred entering
  the Conversion transformation (G. Gross 1989
  described for E_PT by Baptista 1997, among
  others)
• (8) O João levou/comeu nas trombas do Pedro
• (lit John took/ate on the snouts from John,
  John was beaten by Peter)

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Free vs frozen sentences (Modes of freezing)

• In many frozen sentences, V presents the same
  syntactic structure as in free sentences
• N0 desaparecer de Nloc (to disappear from)
• (9) O João desapareceu do mapa
• (lit John disappeared from the map, John went
  away/escaped)
• Many sentences, however, show structures with
  frozen complements unrelated to the basic
  structure(s) of their free constructions
• (10) Esta aldeia não vem no mapa(litThis
  village does not come on the map, it is not
  very important)
• NB verb vir/to come does not accept a em Nloc
  complement

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• Sentences with frozen prepositional complements
  (CP1,CPN, CPP), in particular, show frozen
  complements of very diverse syntactic and
  semantic nature
• Often, these have an adverbial-like status
• locative
• (11) O João veio a terreiro ltdizer Que_Fgt
• (lit. John came to yard ltto say that_Sgt
• John went public ltto say that_Sgt)
• causative
• (12) O João pagou pela língua
• (lit. John paid for the tongue, John was
  punished for saying something)

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Classification problems

• complex sentences
• frozen modifiers
• (13) O João voltou à vaca fria (CP1)(lit. John
  returned to the cold cow, return to a difficult
  subject/problem)
• ? O João voltou à vaca que (era/estava)
  fria/? A vaca (era/estava) fria
• LG formalism (tables) integrate these frozen
  modifiers, but other types of complexity can
  hardly be represented in this fashion

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Classification problems (continued)

• frozen subordinate clauses
• - relative clauses
• O João comeu o pão que o Diabo amassou
• ?/? O João comeu um pãoo Diabo amassou esse pão

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Classification problems (continued)

• frozen adverbs
• (14) O João nasceu com o rabo virado para a lua
  (CP1)(lit John was born with the bottom turned
  to the moonJohn was always very fortunate in
  everything in his life)
• ?/? o João nasceu o rabo do João estava virado
  para a lua
• constraint co-reference (João rabo)

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Classification problems (continued)

• constraint co-reference
• (15) A fama subiu à cabeça do Pedro
• (lit. The fame went up to the head of Peter)
• A fama do João subiu à cabeça do Pedro
• (lit. The fame of John went up to the head of
  Peter)

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• pseudo-transitive predicative constructions
• (16) O João/A Maria não se deu por achado/a (CP1)
• (lit. John/Mary did not give him-/herself by
  found_ms/fs, he/she didnt stop him/herself
  from doing something)
• /O João/A Maria (eraestava) achado/a
• (John/Mary was found_ms/fs)
• (17) O João deu o trabalho/a tarefa por
  terminado/a
• (John considered the work_ms/task_fs as
  finished_ms/fs)
• O João considerou o trabalho/a tarefa terminado/a
• (John considered the work_ms/task_fs as
  finished_ms/fs)
• O trabalho/A tarefa estava terminado/a
• (The work_ms/task_fs was finished_ms/fs)

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• Coordinated PPs and/or NPs
• (18) O João agradou a gregos e a troianos (CPP)
• (lit. John pleased to Greeks and
  Trojans, John pleased everybody)
• º O João agradou a gregos
• º O João agradou a troianos
• In this case, Prep2 can be zeroed
• O João agradou a gregos e troianos
• but this is not always the case
• (19) O João e a Maria brincaram aos papás e às
  mamãs (CPP)
• (lit. John and Mary wanted to play daddy and
  mummy, wanted to have sex)
• ?O João e a Maria brincaram aos papás e mamãs

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Concluding remarks and perspectives

• same methodology and formal criteria as in M.
  Gross (1982,1989) and other LG teams
• data comparable to that of other languages
• improve lexical coverage
• attentive to these shoehorn solutions,
  especially complex frozen sentences
• improve classification towards more homogenous
  classes
• experiments on corpora both for lexical
  acquisition and semi-automatically add
  information regarding variants

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Acknowledgement Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
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• Thank you !