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wrong binary-relation

Open amebel opened this issue 11 years ago • 4 comments

For the sentence "He is afraid of doing too much." the relex output is

Dependency relations: _predadj(he, afraid) _obj(do, much) _subj(do, of) _advmod(much, too)

_subj(do, of) is wrong.

amebel avatar Feb 14 '14 08:02 amebel

what should it be?

linas avatar Feb 15 '14 22:02 linas

I think it should be _subj(do, he) , right?

amebel avatar Feb 16 '14 06:02 amebel

I think it should be _subj(do, he) , right?

Well, that can't be right: because then the meaning becomes "he is doing too much, he is afraid".

Compare to: "He is afraid of goats."

 _predadj(he, afraid)
of(afraid, goat)

I conclude the correct answer is:

of(afraid, doing)

linas avatar Feb 16 '14 16:02 linas

By the way, this is an example of a curious linguistic phenomenon, the "null subject" in English. The dependent clause "doing too much" doesn't have a subject. In English, the dominant clause always has a subject, and so relex gets confused, and assigns one. However, in English, dependent clauses can have null subjects: the implied subject is indeed "he", which is why you wrote " _subj(do, he)" -- in a certain way, you were correct.

The problem with your answer is that, if used to generate a new sentence, it would generate "he is doing too much, he is afraid". The of(afraid,doing) is critical to get it right.

Now that I think about it, the correct answer is to generate both _subj(do, he) and of(afraid, goat).

For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-subject_language

linas avatar Feb 16 '14 16:02 linas