Linguistic Modeling for Multilingual Machine Translation

72 CHAPTER 7. DETERMINATION
b. Er wandert gerne nach Bonn.
he walks liking to Bonn
`He likes walking to Bonn.'
`He likes the walk to Bonn.'
7.4.2 Reference Type
In the same way as all features representing meaning,theref feature is transferred
regardless of the part of speech of the target expressions. Verb phrases
do not refer unique but refer generically or referentially. Verb phrases which
are neither related to the speech act nor to a second event are likely to refer
generically (cf. [Dahl75]), especially if they have non-referential arguments
(112).
(112) Dogs bark.
If a verb refers to a second event (including the speech act), it refers referentially
(e.g. suggested in (113)). The knownness to the hearer, however, is seldomly
marked. As a consequence, the subordinate verb in (113) may refer to a known
or unknown event.
(113) a. He suggested to occupy the city.
b. He suggested the/an occupation of the city.
Examples for the markings of the knownness of events expressed by verbs are
the French puisque- parce quedierence for the complementizer since: sentences
introduced by puisque refer to a known event (cf. (114a)) and sentences
introduced by parce que refer to an unknown event (cf. (114b)). In German
the marker ja may be used to mark the familiarity of the event (cf. (114c)).
Word order may equally be used to distinguish known from unknown events,
although the dierence between (114d) and (114e) is not as clear, the rst is
more likely to refer to a known event than the latter.
(114) a. French:
Puisqu'il avait deja mange, il n'avait pas faim.
since he had already eaten, he had not hunger
b. Parce
because
c. German:
Er
he
hatte
had
qu'il
he
keinen
no
avait
had
deja mange, il n'avait pas faim.
already eaten, he had not hunger
Hunger,
hunger,
da er ja schon gegessen hatte.
since he well already eaten had