DEPLING

Understanding constraints on non-projectivity using novel measures Himanshu Yadav1 1 Jawaharlal 2 Indian

Ashwini Vaidya2

Samar Husain2

Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Institute of Technology Delhi, India

International Conference on Dependency Linguistics Pisa, Italy. September 18-20, 2017

1

Motivation ROOT

ROOT

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

kal yesterday

kitaab book

kho gayii lose go.Perf

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

Acceptable

do din pahle two day ago

scootar=se scooter=INS

school school

jaate hue go be.NF

kitaab book

kho gayii lose go.Perf

Odd

ROOT ROOT

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

nahin not

kitaab book

khoyii lose.Perf

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

raam=ko raam=DAT

kitaab book

Odd

Ungrammatical

2

kho jaane ka lose go.NF

dukh hai sad be.Present

Proposed measures Intervener Length • Number of words between the dependent (Xd ) and the head (Xd ) of the non-projective arc such that they are not dominated by (Xh ).

Xd

Xi

Xh

Xj

Intervener length = size of the intervening constituent (Xi ).

1. Intervener type 2. Intervener length 3. Depth difference 3

Proposed measures cont.

ROOT ROOT

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

kal yesterday

kitaab book

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

kho gayii lose go.Perf

Acceptable (Edge degree=1, Intervener length=1, Intervener type=NP, Depth difference=1)

do din pahle two day ago

scootar=se scooter=INS

school school

jaate hue go be.NF

kitaab book

kho gayii lose go.Perf

Odd (Edge degree=1, Intervener length=8, Intervener type=VGNF, Depth difference=1)

ROOT

ROOT

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

nahin not

kitaab book

khoyii lose.Perf

Ungrammatical (Edge degree=1, Intervener length=1, Intervener type=NEGP, Depth difference=1)

mohan=kii mohan=GEN

raam=ko raam=DAT

kitaab book

kho jaane ka lose go.NF

dukh hai sad be.Present

Odd (Edge Degree=1, Intervener length=2, Intervener type=NP, Depth difference=2) 4

Results

5

Summary

• Although certain linguistic phenomenon can become non-projective, the range of allowed non-projective configurations is limited.

• This limitation is influenced by interaction between processing constraints and syntactic complexity.

• We have shown using three novel measures that non-projective configurations tend to be simple than complex.

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