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—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions— 98 Interestingly, equations relating the LFs allow for necessary syntactic transformations. Thus, Rus. On vzjal zverja na mušku lit. (He took the-beast on bead) = (He took aim at the beast) is reduced to | ————I II ————————— ↓ ON←I−Labreal 12(MUŠKA)−II→ZVER´ MUŠKA, which is replaced, using the dictionary, by the English lexemes as follows: | ————I II ———————— ↓ HE←I−—Real 1(BEAD)—−II→BEAD BEAST This DSynt-Structure is readily realized as He drew a bead on the beast. In this way, LFs take upon themselves even the syntactic adjustments needed to carry out the transfer between languages—in cases where the LFs are implicated. If, however, the Machine Translation system under consideration proceeds via a SemR, then the task (in regard to restricted lexical cooccurrence) is to establish the relevant LF starting from the initial SemR and then to compute its value for the given L, based on a monolingual dictionary of the ECD type. Of course the same procedure is needed for text generation, whatever its underlying representation. 8.2 LFs and Communicative Structure The use of LFs for an appropriate expression of the Communicative Structure of the sentence through its lexico-syntactic structure is dealt with in Wanner & Bateman 1990. A detailed presentation of how this could be done requires a description of both the Paraphrasing System (Mel’čuk 1992) and Communicative Structure, which is impossible here. Therefore, the reader has to be satisfied with an example (adapted from Wanner & Bateman 1990). Suppose the text- generation system has to verbalize the meaning of the sentence (21): (21) a. The adjective ‘electronic’ indicates to the reader that the dictionaries are dedicated to computers. If in the SemS of (21) the meaning of the phrase the adjective ‘electronic’ is specified as the Theme of the sentence to be synthesized, then sentence (21)a can be produced. But if the Theme is the meaning of the phrase the reader, a different syntactic structure is needed, which will even- tually lead to (21)b: b. The reader gets an indication that the dictionaries are dedicated to computers from the adjective ‘electronic’.
—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions— 99 To replace indicate with get an indication, one needs the paraphrasing equivalence of the following type: V ≡ S 0(V) + Oper 2(S 0(V)) The application of this equivalence can be illustrated by the following paraphrases: X analyzes Y ≡ Y undergoes an analysis by X, X resists Y ≡ Y runs into a resistance by X, X orders Y to Z ≡ Y receives from X an order to Z, etc. Most importantly, to successfully use such equivalences, one of course needs a dictionary which specifies, for each L, the values of all LFs applied to it—that is an Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary. For specific rules controlling the use of LFs to express the Communicative Structure of the sentence, see Iordanskaja et al@@@. The linguistic paraphrasing rules described in terms of Lexical Functions are presented in Chapter 14; the structure of an Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary is the subject of Chapter 15. 8.3 LFs and Text Cohesion LFs prove equally useful in selecting the referring expressions in anaphorical links in such a way as to avoid tedious repetitions and guarantee, at the same time, the maximum cohesion of the resulting text (see Lee & Evens 19??, Tutin 1992, and Alonso et al. 1992: 160-165). Thus, speaking of an ambush, you can refer back to it by calling its participants attackers: (22) An Indonesian patrol was caught in an ambush. The attackers fired three rockets at the soldiers and sprayed them with automatic fire. Here, attacker = S 1(ambush), and soldier = S 1(patrol). This lexical knowledge is used to con- struct the sentence sequence (22) in an obvious way. Another example: (23) Sales increased slightly in Quebec and Ontario. Modest gains were also reported in British Columbia. Instead of simply repeating the same phrase and saying Sales also increased slightly in British Columbia, the Speaker chooses to use S 2 (increase) = gainN [(the amount by which X increased)] inm the second sentence, and this allows him to produce a more varied and elegant text.
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Chapter 18 Lexical Functions: Descr
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—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions—
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Means noun ((δ) = (means [for L]))
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Here are some examples of LFs. —C
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2.3 Definition of Standard Lexical
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Examples —Chapter 18. Lexical Fun
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