HSEIWP 99.10

Notes on Parsing Difficulties and Decisions

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative Working Papers, no. 99.1
(alpha version, April 1999)

Vincent DeCaen
University of Toronto

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Contents

1.   Introduction
2.   Demonstratives as Clitics
3.   Prepositional Phrases within the Noun Phrase

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1.   Introduction

1.1  This working paper sets out particular difficulties
encountered in the parsing of the Biblical text, and justifies in
part the parsing decisions made. 

1.2  This first draft deals with two problems encountered in the
tagging of Jonah, the proof of concept. Subsequent drafts will be
expanded to include problems in other books as they are
encountered.

2.   Demonstratives as Clitics

2.1  In two cases, demonstrative adjectives appear to have been
used as clitics to strengthen interrogative constructions. There
certainly is no cause to parse them as autonomous adjective
phrases (AP); and the demonstratives are therefore encoded as
enclitics.

2.2  The cases to be considered are supplied in full according to
the ASCII transliteration scheme.

(1)  W:)"Y-MIZ.EH (AM )FT.FH       (jn1:8)
(2)  MAH-Z.O)T (F&IYTF             (jn1:10)

2.3  The encoding schema employed for these cases is supplied in
(3).

(3)       X
        /   \
     X         A

2.4  It is worth considering how a construction such as (1) could
be derived. The clitic behaviour is reminiscent of the Hebrew
particle -NF) "please", etc.; and -NF) is in turn reminiscent of
Latin enclitics such as -que, etc. It might be suggested,
therefore, that the demonstratives, while adjectives in form, are
generated in a functional position such as complementizer (C).
Their surface position would then be dictated by Hebrew clitic
morphology, as presumably is the case with -NF).

3.   Prepositional Phrases within the Noun Phrase

3.1  In Jonah it appears that prepositional modifiers of the noun
phrase (NP) are subordinated by the complementizer ):A$ER rather
than directly modifying the noun. From both a functional and a
parsing perspective, this behaviour is exceedingly helpful: it
disambiguates multiple parses within the noun and verb phrases
(NP, VP).

3.2  An example of this strategy of subordinating the
prepositional phrase (PP) is found in jn1:5 and is given as (4).

(4)  )ET-HAK."LIYM ):A$ER B.F):FNIY.FH

3.3  The exception to this strategy is found in the poem of jn2
(not surprisingly?). The exception of the PP LIY in jn2:3 is
supplied with context as (5).

(5)  QFRF)TIY MIC.FRFH LIY )EL-YHWH

3.4  There appears to be no justification at all for treating LIY
as participating in the VP as a whole. The sense instead is that
of modifying the noun, much as $EL.IY would be used in Modern
Hebrew. Moreover, the accents also suggest parsing LIY within the
NP and not with the VP.

3.5  The competing parses are given in (6) and (7). The parse is
(7) has been preferred in parsing Jonah.

(6)       VP                            VP
        / |  \    \                   / |  \
     V    NP   PP   PP             V    NP   PP
                                       /  \
                                     N     PP