Unscrambling English word order

We propose a treatment of `extraposition' which allows items to be assimilated directly even when they appear far from their canonical positions. This treatment supports analyses of a number of phenomena which are otherwise hard to describe. The approach requires a generalisation of standard chart parsing techniques. 1 Extraposition in English It is widely accepted that sentences such as 1 I saw the girl who your brother said he fancied. 2 The soup was OK, but the main course I thought was awful. involve items `who', `the main course' being found far away from their normal positions as the complement of `fancied' and the subject of `was awful'. It seems likely that the modi ers `in the park' and `with all my heart' in 3 In the park I met Arthur. 4 I believed with all my heart that she loved me. are also `out of position', since you would normally expect VP-modifying PPs of this kind to appear immediately to the right of the modi ed VP so that th...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: COLING
• Authors: Allan Ramsay, Helen Seville
• Keywords: Canonical Position, COLING 2000, COLING 2008, Main Course, Treatment Supports Analyses