Meaning Text Theory: Recent Developments Leonid L. Iomdin Computational Linguistics Laboratory, Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Russian

Meaning Text Theory: Recent Developments

Leonid L. IomdinComputational Linguistics Laboratory, Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences

Munich, June 24, 2008 MTT: recent developments 2

Abstract

The talk will cover important contributions to MTT by the Moscow Semantic School:

a new theory of lexical functions by Jury Apresjan, which shows in particular that even syntactically-driven lexical functions of the Oper-Func family have lexical meanings of their own and are therefore semantically motivated;

an extended theory of semantic valences by Igor Boguslavsky, which offers a broad generalization of the notion of valence and is used to explain complex semantic interactions of lexical units in natural language utterances;

3) a theory of microsyntax by Leonid Iomdin, which provides a theoretical basis for a uniform description and treatment of syntactic idioms as well as a variety of minor type syntactic phenomena.


Plan

1. MTT in brief2. Lexical Functions: the modern view3. Theory of Valence: new approaches4. Microsyntax: in Pursue of the

Integrated Description of Language


1. MTT in brief


Classical Version of MTT

Object of modeling: the phenomenon of language command

The overall view of language in MTT is extremely simple. The language is a means with the help of which its speakers perform two operations:

1) They communicate their ideas to other people, i.e. they code certain senses with texts that express them (text production, generation, synthesis);

2) They understand ideas of other people, i.e. they perform the reverse operation of extracting senses from the text perceived (text understanding, or analysis).



MTT can be viewed as a logical device simulating these two operations in their simplest manifestations, associated exclusively with the knowledge of the language (the dictionary and the grammar).

Even though wholly unrestricted communication without the knowledge of the external world, the dialogue partner, communication situation etc, consideration of these factors go far beyond linguistic models in the proper sense.



Of these two operations, the active operation of text production is viewed as more important: the phenomenon of language acquisition manifests here in full.



This phenomenon consists of three human abilities: 1) The ability of choosing appropriate language

units that express the required meaning. It is ensured by the speaker’s knowledge of word senses.

2) The ability to correctly combine linguistic units that have the required meaning.

3) The ability to paraphrase one’s utterances retaining its content.



One of the main theses of classical MTT is as follows: world languages dispose of several dozens of very abstract meaninfs like ‘high degree’, ‘beginning’, ‘causation’, ‘liquidation’ etc., called Lexical Functions.

The choice of a concrete word W to express this meaning is fully determined by the lexical properties of its argument X, with which W combines. We say кромешная тьма ‘black darkness’ and мертвая тишина ‘dead silence’, but not

*мертвая тьма and *кромешная тишина.



Hence, the choice of W for value of this LF of X is semantically unmotivated, i.e. idiomatic.


2. Lexical Functions: the Modern View


Lexical Functions: Correction of the General Idea

In the MTT, lexical functions of the OPER-LABOR-FUNC are considered to be semantically empty and phraseologically bound, so that the choice of a verb as a value of a given LF appears to be semantically unmotivated.

There are certain reservations, however. Mel’čuk and Zholkovsky say that OPER’s, FUNC’s and LABOR’s are verbs that turn semantically empty in the context of the keyword.



Apresjan assumes that any verb of the OPER-LABOR-FUNC family has its own lexical meaning (i.e. it can never be semantically empty), which is why its choice for the role of a given LF for an argument is semantically motivated, though not always free. The extent of semantic motivation is different from different LFs.



In somewhat more precise terms, the choice of a specific word L1 as value of a function F1 whose argument is noun X is partially motivated by the general meaning of F1, the lexical meaning of L1 and the fact that X belongs to a specific class or subclass of the fundamental semantic classification of predicates.



It is growing with transition from OPERs to LABORs and FUNCs, and within any of the classes it grows from smaller index numbers to bigger index numbers. For instance, OPER1 as a whole is semantically less meaningful and less motivated than OPER2: an obvious reason being than the number of words representing OPER1 is many times larger than that of OPER2.



Apresjan further showed that all words that act as values of certain lexical functions for specific argument words are semantically meaningful and accordingly have their own lexical meanings. The effect of emptiness emerges due to the fact that the meaning of the LF like OPER1 and OPER2 is fully included into the meaning of the keyword.



For example, if one considers words with the meaning of a speech act, the value of OPER1 for these words is likely to be давать ‘give’ (in the metaphorical sense of transferring an immaterial object): давать зарок, инструкцию, интервью, клятву, команду, консультацию, обещание, объяснение, ответ, приказ, присягу, разрешение, разъяснение, распоряжение, рекомендацию, совет, согласие, указание ‘give a vow, instruction, interview, oath, command, promise, explanation, answer, order, permission, elucidation, advice, consent, directions’ etc. Why?



As is known, no speech act is possible without the Speaker (A1), Information Content (A2) and the Addressee (А3). The semantic role of the Addressee eventually amounts to the role of the Recipient: an Addressee is the recipient of a communication. But the Recipient is the third actant (А3) of the verb давать in the sense of physical transmission, as in Он дал мне книгу ‘he gave me a book’. Accordingly, the choice of давать for OPER1 of speech acts is not accidental: the recipient of a physical action transforms legitimately into an Addressee of an information action when we move from the physical sense of the verb давать to the lexical functional sense.



OPER2 from action names like контроль ‘control’, that presuppose the domination of the second participant of the situation (patient) by the first one (Agent), is more often than note represented by the verb подвергаться: подвергаться агрессии, аресту, атаке, бойкоту, бомбардировке, влиянию, гонениям, давлению, допросу, изгнанию, критике, мучениям, наказанию, налету, обстрелу, оскорблению, осмеянию, остракизму, побоям, порке, преследованиям, пытке, травле, цензуре, штрафу. ‘be subject to aggression, arrest, attack, boycott, shelling, persecution, pressure, interrogation, banishment, criticism, torture, punishment, raid, insult, beating, whipping, biting, censure, fine’. Why?



The verb подвергаться has a passive meaning and presupposed a participant of the situation who is affected by another participant who has power or authority.



Accordingly, if you fix the arguments of an LF (e.g. OPER1, and one of its expressions (e.g. давать), than we can see that these arguments are words of a sufficiently uniform semantic class. This is accounted for by a general law of semantic agreement, which demands that the meanings of combining words had a common component of meaning. Then if we take a noun, it must semantically agree with the expressions of all LFs possible for it.



In this way, the update theory of LFs acquires the main property of any theory – the predicting power. Knowing semantic classes and a universal set of LFs, we can form correct lexicographic expectations (in the form of probabilistic forecasts) even about partially non-free combinability of words. This upgrades the work of a lexicographer to a new level – from individual description of the material to a systemic one.


3. Theory of Valence: new approaches


Theory of Valence: new approaches

Arguments (=actants) of predicates have two important properties regarding the correspondence between the syntactic and semantic structure.

The first property concerns syntactic positions the arguments occupy with respect to the predicate.

The second property is related to the correspondence between their positions in the syntactic and semantic structures.



In the prototypical case, arguments are directly subordinated to their predicates and occupy positions of the subject and direct or indirect object. Valence slots filled in this way are called active.



In non-prototypical cases, arguments can syntactically subordinate their predicate (passive valence slots) and even have no immediate syntactic link with it (distant, or discontinuous valence slots).

These types of valence slots are mostly characteristic of adjectives, adverbs and nouns.



A number of linguistic concepts are related, directly or indirectly, to the notion of actant. However, usually only prototypical – active – valency instantiation is taken into account. If one includes into consideration passive and discontinuous valency slot filling, the area of actant-related phenomena expands greatly. Some of these phenomena will be discussed below to show that the notions of diathesis and conversion require broader generalization.



We will approach this subject from the position of Moscow Semantic School (MSS). It intersects, to a certain extent, with the theory of Formal Semantics (FS).



The main similarity between MSS and FS lies in the recognition of the fact that the argument structure of the sentence plays the role of the “semantic glue” which combines the meanings of words together.

FS took in this revolutionary idea in the beginning of the 70s from R. Montague (Partee 1966).



Starting with the 8th issue of “Machine translation and applied linguistics” (1964), which initiated the Meaning – Text approach in the Soviet Union, and subsequent publications on the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary, it was explicitly claimed that the semantic definition of many words contains valence slots for the arguments. In the semantic definition, these slots are represented by variables.

To construct the semantic structure of the sentence, one has to identify the actants with the help of the Government Pattern ( Subcategorization Frame) and substitute them for the variables.



The differences between the MSS and FS approaches consist, mostly, in the aim, object and tools of semantic analysis.

For MSS, the meaning definition of each linguistic unit is of primary importance and should be carried out in maximum detail (Apresjan 1999).

This definition is formulated in a natural language: it may be simplified and standardized, but must be sufficient for capturing subtle semantic distinctions. Rules of meaning amalgamation are devised to closely interact with semantic definition of words.



FS does not make it its aim to semantically define all meaningful units of language. This task is relegated to the lexicon, while FS is more interested in the mechanisms of meaning amalgamation than in the meanings as such.

For meaning representation, it uses a logical metalanguage which is less suitable for describing the spectrum of linguistically relevant meanings.

On the other hand, this metalanguage is much more convenient for describing logical properties of natural languages than the semantic language of MSS.



However, one cannot describe the way lexical meanings are put together without disposing of the detailed semantic definition of each word.

We proceed from the assumption that if word A semantically affects word B then B should contain a meaning component for A to act upon.



To give one example, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines accent as ‘the way someone pronounces the words of a language, showing which country or which part of a country they come from’.



So, southern accent is interpreted as the way somebody pronounces the words of a language, showing that the speaker is from the South.

However, this definition does not explain the combinability of this word with intensifiers: strong <heavy, pronounced, slight> accent. It does not contain any quantifiable component that is affected by these adjectives. What do these adjectives intensify? When we say that somebody speaks English with a heavy <slight> Essex accent we mean that his pronunciation of English words (a) is typical for people from Essex and (b) is very <slightly> different from the standard.



This is a good reason for revising the definition of accent and including the component ‘different’ in this definition:

X has a A accent (in B) = ‘the way X pronounces the words of language B is different from the way speakers of B usually pronounce them and typical for speakers of language, group or locality A’.



For MSS, the starting point is the semantic analysis of the situation denoted by the given word. Analytical semantic definition of this word is constructed according to certain requirements. In this respect, all types of words – verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. – are on equal footing and obey the same principles of description.



For a word to have a certain valence it is necessary, though insufficient, that a situation denoted by this word should contain a corresponding participant in the intuitively obvious way.

From this point of view, not nearly all generalized quantifiers are eligible for having a valence filled by a verbal phrase. Noun phrases twenty students and many of the students may both form a sentence when combined with a one-place verb phrase (e.g. were late for the exam) and therefore are generalized quantifiers. However, only in the second case (many of) are we prepared to postulate a semantic valence filled by a verbal phrase.



Let us assume that we have a good dictionary which contains definitions of all meaningful linguistic units. What else should we know in order to combine the meanings of these units so that to obtain the semantic structure of the sentence?

The main mechanism of meaning amalgamation is instantiation of valence slots. A set of valence slots of a word is determined by its semantic definition. An obligatory participant of the situation denoted by the word opens a valence slot if this participant is expressed together with this word in a regular way (Mel’čuk 2004a,b).



It is often believed that valences are primarily needed for the description of government properties of words. It is this task that motivates the creation of numerous valence dictionaries. We put a different emphasis: valences are mainly needed for uniting meanings of words to form the semantic structure of the sentence.



Valence slot filling can be considered as semantic glue which connects meanings of words. We assume that if there is a syntagmatic semantic link between two words, then in most cases one of them fills a valence slot of the other, or, more precisely, the meaning of one of these words contains a predicate whose argument makes part of the meaning of the second one, as we saw in the accent example.



There are three types of valence slots: active, passive, and discontinuous ones (Boguslavsky 2003).

An active valency slot of predicate L is filled with sentence elements which are syntactically subordinated to L.

A passive valency slot is filled with elements that syntactically subordinate L.

The elements that fill a discontinous valence slot do not have any direct syntactic link with L.



Active valency slots are well fit for solving the problem of slot filling. First of all, this fact manifests itself in that each valence slot has its own set of surface realizations. If a word has several valency slots, their means of realization, as a rule, clearly contrast. Different semantic actants are marked by different means – cases, prepositions, conjunctions.

However, this is not an absolute rule. Sometimes, different valency slots of the same predicate can be filled in the same way. The best known example are the genitive subjects and objects of nouns: amor patris, invitation of the president. Cf. also prepositionless first and second complements of the type Give Mary a book; Answer the question vs. answer nothing.



A rarer example is provided by Russian words достаточно ‘sufficient’ and необходимо ‘necessary’ that can fill both valence slots by means of the same conjunction чтобы ‘in order to’.



A rarer example is provided by Russian words достаточно ‘sufficient’ and необходимо ‘necessary’ that can fill both valence slots by means of the same conjunction чтобы ‘in order to’.



(2a) Чтобы Q, достаточно, чтобы P ‘for Q it is sufficient if P’

(2b) Чтобы всё взлетело на воздух, достаточно, чтобы кто-нибудь поднес спичку (lit. ‘that everything blows up sufficient that anyone strikes a match’)

‘it is sufficient to strike a match and everything will blow up’



In this case, though, the identity of the conjunction is made up for with the word order distinction:

(2c) * Чтобы кто-нибудь поднёс спичку, достаточно, чтобы всё взлетело на воздух

lit. ‘that anyone strikes a match sufficient that everything blows up’

Curiously enough, in case of достаточно (but not необходимо ‘necessary’) valencе slot P can be filled with the coordinating conjunction – a phenomenon known in English, too: cf. the translation of example (2b):

(2d) Достаточно, чтобы кто-нибудь поднес спичку, и все взлетит на воздух ‘it is sufficient to strike a match and everything will blow up’



For each class of predicates there exists a prototypical syntactic position of their actants and a number of non-prototypical positions. The prototypical position is the one occupied by the actant of a monovalent predicate. If a verb has only one valence slot, an actant that fills it will most probably be a subject (John sleeps). For nouns, the prototypical position is that of a genitive complement (as in начало концерта ‘the beginning of the concert’).

For predicates with passive valence slots, the prototypical position of the actant is that of the subordinating word: a noun, in case of adjectives (interesting book), and a verb, in case of adverbs (run fast).



If a predicate has more than one valency slot, other actants occupy other, less prototypical positions. Which are they?

Leaving aside directly subordinated actants accounted for by the government pattern, there are three positions which a non-first actant may occupy: that of a subordinating verb, a dependent of the subordinating verb, and a dependent of the subordinating noun.



Subordinating VerbAn important class of words which have a valency slot filled

by a subordinating verb are quantifiers (all, every, each, some, many of, most, majority, minority, etc.). These words have at least two valence slots. One of them is filled by a noun phrase directly connected to the quantifier, and the other by a subordinating verbal phrase. For example, the words most and majority denote a certain part of a whole R that consists of elements having property P and is larger than the part of R that does not share this property.



Subordinating Verb(4) Most people [R] <the majority of the people [R]> haven’t

taken [P] any steps to prepare for a natural disaster.This sentence means that the group of people who haven’t

taken any steps to prepare for natural disasters is larger that the group of people who have. Those who doubt that most has valency P may note that the phrase most people (as opposed to phrases like five people) does not mean anything unless a property is specified which is shared by all members of this group (one cannot imagine a film or novel entitled most people).



Dependent of the Subordinating VerbThis type of valence slot is typical of adverbials. For example,

by habit has two valence slots inherited from the underlying predicate ‘habit’: X – “the person who has a habit” and P – “what X does by habit”. Valence P is filled by a subordinating verb, and X by its subject. Therefore, if we introduce this adverbial in sentences which denote the same situation but use verbs with different subjects, synonymy disappears. In (5a) it is John who has a habit, and in (5b) it is Mary:

(5a) By habit, John [X] borrowed [P] some money from Mary.(5b) By habit, Mary [X] lent [P] John some money.



Dependent of the Subordinating NounThe possessive adjective my in (6) is syntactically linked to the

noun, but semantically is an actant of favorite: X’s favorite Y is the Y which X likes more than other Y-s:

(6) my [X] favorite color [Y]. Although filling this valence with a possessive adjective or a

noun in the possessive case (John’s favorite color) is more frequent, it can also be filled by a prepositional phrase:

(7) a favorite spot [Y] for picnickers [X]



Different Actants – One Syntactic Position, One Actant – Different Positions

Now we have prepared everything to show that one syntactic position can correspond to more than one valence of the word and one valence can correspond to multiple syntactic positions.



Majority / Minority: Active and Passive Filling of the Same Valence

One of the valences of majority denotes a whole R of which a part is extracted, and another valence corresponds to property P, which distinguishes the extracted part from the rest of R.

Prototypically, R is expressed by an of-phrase, and P – by the subordinating verb. Cf. (9a) where the whole class of the opponents of war is divided into two parts by the property of voting against the prime-minister.

(9a) A majority of the opponents of war [R] is voting [P] against the prime-minister.



Majority / Minority: Active and Passive Filling of the Same Valence

In (9b) the interpretation of the of-phrase is totally different. The opponents of war do not form a set a larger part of which has a certain property (voting against the prime-minister), as it is in (9a).

Here, being a war opponent is itself a property that divides the society into a larger and a smaller part. That is, the of-phrase fills valence slot P. The same is true for the interpretation of minority of supporters.

(9b) The war in Chechnya is splitting the society into the majority of its opponents [P] and the minority of supporters [P]

Example (10) demonstrates another case of filling valency slot P of majority/minority by a subordinated phrase. Here, P is filled by a modifying adjective.

(10) The rural minority <majority> of the population is not happy with the new law.



Строгий ‘strict’: Prototypical and Non-prototypical Filling of the Same Valency

In Russian, there is a class of adjectives which have a valence slot for a beneficiary: строгий ‘strict’, благожелательный ‘benevolent’, снисходительный ‘indulgent’, добрый ‘kind’ etc.

(11) Ивановы очень строги к своим детям ‘the Ivanovs are strict with their children’

When this slot is not filled, the sentence bears no information as to who the beneficiary is:

(12a) Иванов очень строг ‘Ivanov is very strict’.(12b) строгая дама ‘a strict lady’These phrases should be understood in the universal sense: the

strictness applies to everybody.



Строгий ‘strict’: Prototypical and Non-prototypical Filling of the Same Valency

However, in the context of relational nouns, which denote a person who is in a certain relationship to other people, the interpretation of this valency slot changes:

(13a) строгая мама ‘a strict mother’(13b) любящие ученики ‘affectionate pupils’ (13с) требовательный начальник ‘an exacting boss’The beneficiary of adjectives is determined quite definitely: it is a

person (or persons) with whom a person denoted by the modified noun is in the corresponding relation. A strict mother is strict with her children, affectionate pupils love their teacher, an exacting boss demands something from his subordinates.



Here we are dealing with a curious type of the syntax-semantics correspondence.

In Syntactic Structure, the beneficiary valence slot of the adjective is not filled, just as the valence slot of the noun. However, in SemS these slots are not empty but co-indexed, i.e. filled by the same variable:



STRICT MOTHER

X X

whose?with whom?

who?



These examples show that a valency slot of some adjectives can be realized in more than one way: prototypically, by a subordinate prepositional phrase, as in (11), and non-prototypically – by a variable, co-indexed with a variable corresponding to a valence slot of its other SemA, as in (13a-c).


3. Microsyntax: in Pursue of the Integrated Description of

Language


We will deal here with a special type of Russian sentences with embedded (semi-)phraseological expressions like Он занимается чёрт знает чем ‘He does the Devil knows what’. It is very difficult to build adequate syntactic representations for such sentences. An unexpected solution is proposed for this problem, admitting that sentences of this type have two syntactic starts. Apart from this, such constructions have other interesting syntactic and semantic features.

Microsyntax


(1) Он занимается чёрт знает чем ‘He does the Devil knows what’

(2) Мне было – так лестно / Лезть за тобою – Бог / Знает куда! ‘I felt so flattered to climb after you God knows where’ (Marina Tsvetayeva)

Microsyntax


It is extremely difficult to build adequate surface syntactic representations for such sentences. Namely, it is unclear what the syntactic role of the verb знает ‘knows’ in (1) and (2) can be.

Microsyntax


It cannot be the topmost head of the surface syntactic tree as in

(1) Чёрт знает, чем он занимается ‘The devil knows what he does’

where знает is the top of the tree(1) is neither syntactically nor

semantically equivalent to (1)

Microsyntax


There is no reasonable syntactic governor for знает in (1) and (2).

If we subordinate it to the main verb of the sentence we shall face the problem of what the syntactic relation between the verbs is. This problem has no plausible answer.

Microsyntax


We might view the syntactic governor of знает in the pronouns куда or где’. Phraseological expressions like чёрт знает may be suspected of having transformed into merged lexical units equivalent to indefinite particles like–нибудь or –либо.

Microsyntax


Such a solution does not hold, since the embedded constructions of this type are not confined to phraseological expressions cited and may include rather free clauses formed with different verbs.

Microsyntax


Когда я был подростком, сильное впечатление на меня произвела вычитанная не помню уже в какой книге история панамской авантюры.

‘When I was a youth I was deeply impressed by the story of the Panama adventure that I read in I don’t remember which book’ (Novoye Vremya)

Microsyntax


"Вдогонку" мне в "Вестнике ЛГУ" была напечатана статья И. Лапицкого, в которой я обвинялся во всех смертных грехах: я и монархист, и эсер, и троцкист, и еще не упомню кто.

‘Following this, Leningrad University Bulletin published a paper of I. Lapitsky, where I was accused of all mortal sins: I am a monarchist, a socialist-revolutionary, a Trotskyist and I can’t remember who else’ (Dmitry

Likhachev)

Microsyntax


В Америке, не припомню в каком городе, два торговца зашли в трактир и сели обедать.

‘In America, I can’t remember in which town, two salesmen came into a restaurant and sat down to dinner (Sodeistvie Newspaper, 1868)

Microsyntax


Even the second parts of these constructions are not necessarily interrogative pronominal words. They may be represented by conjunction или ‘or’

or the particle ли ‘whether’

Microsyntax


Его судят за преступление, которое он неизвестно совершил или нет

lit. ‘He is being tried for a crime which it is not clear if he committed or not’

Microsyntax


Кроме того, есть еще такие сдерживающие факторы, как наличие Северной Кореи с непонятно имеющимся ли у нее ядерным оружием

‘Besides, there are such deterrent factors as the presence of North Korea with nuclear weapons that it might or might not have’ lit. ‘… the presence of North Korea with it-is-unclear-whether-available-to-it nuclear weapons’ (an analytical review on the Polit.Ru website).

Microsyntax


Whilst there is no evident syntactic governor for the second verbs of the sentences considered, the pronominal words have as many as two plausible candidates for governor.

Microsyntax


(1) Он занимается чёрт знает чем

‘He does the Devil knows what’

Microsyntax


Оn the one hand, one may suggest that чем instantiates the 1st completive valence of заниматься, being the only word of sentence (1) that stands in the instrumental case – exactly the one that is required by заниматься.

Microsyntax


On the other hand, the same pronominal word may be viewed as instantiating the 1st completive valency of the verb знать, the way it does in isolated (elliptic) sentences like Я знаю чем ‘I know what’.

Microsyntax


So, the syntactic structure of (1) has two oddities at a time: one word in need of a governor (знает) has no good candidate while another word (чем) has two.

Microsyntax


The duality of syntactic dominance for чем in (1) is far from trivial and requires further reasoning. In simple single-clause sentences pronominal words like чем cannot depend on verbs that, unlike знать, do not take propositional complements:

*Я занимаюсь чем ‘I do what’

Microsyntax


Such pronouns may either form a special question like Чем вы занимаетесь? ‘What do you do?’ – in which case the pronoun is interrogative too – or a highly colloquial general question like Вы занимаетесь↑ чем? ‘Do you do anything?’ where чем in an indefinite pronoun and really means ‘anything’

Microsyntax


Assuming that (1) is not a single-clause sentence, we define what clauses it may consist of. The most natural assumption is that (1) consists of two clauses, one constituted by verb занимается and the other constituted by verb знает.

Microsyntax


Where are the boundaries of the two clauses? The left-hand boundaries of both clauses are evident: for the first clause it is the beginning of the whole sentence and for the second clause it is the word чёрт which is the subject of the verb знает.

Microsyntax


Hypothesis: the right-hand boundaries of both clauses are the same and coincide with the end of the sentence, so that the pronominal word чем belongs to both clauses.

Microsyntax


(1) Он занимается чёрт знает чем

‘He does the Devil knows what’

(3) Я знаю, чем он занимается ‘I know what he does’

Microsyntax


The lack of such subordination distinguishes the second clause of (1) from the subordinate clause of (3). The head of the second clause of (1) remains without a governor at all. This is the most crucial characteristic of this type of sentences.

Microsyntax


Sentences (3) and (1) are unfolding differently:

(3) is smoothly produced by the speaker,

(1) has a sort of leap amidst generation: before the first clause is finished, the second clause starts to evolve, and, after some time, the two proceed together until the end of the whole sentence.

Microsyntax


The second clause in (1) behaves like a tributary to a river, which contributes to its course.

Microsyntax


Evolution of sentence (1) resembles the correlation between the main and the parenthetical clauses if the latter is situated in the middle of the sentence, as in

В этот момент какой-то молодой человек (это и был Иван) поднялся с места: ‘At this moment a young man (this was Ivan) rose from his place’

Microsyntax


The drastic difference between this sentence and (1) is that parenthetical clauses are finished sooner than the main clauses while in (1) the “tributary” clause ends together with the first clause.

Microsyntax


If this stand is taken, we will have to admit that sentences of this type have two syntactic starts.

Microsyntax


They violate the fundamental requirement of the surface syntactic component of the Meaning Text theory that the syntactic structure of any sentence should be a tree.

Microsyntax


One more syntactic particularity is that expressions like чёрт знает что may include a personal pronoun whose syntactic status is unclear

Microsyntax


Ему давно уже пора дом покупать, снимает чёрт его знает что! lit. ‘It’s high time he buys a house, he rents the Devil knows him what’

Microsyntax


Деньги уходят чёрт их знает куда

lit. ‘Money goes the devil knows it where’ (Vladimir Lenin, in a letter to his mother, 1895).

Microsyntax


The constructions discussed are subject to rather tight lexical restrictions.

Microsyntax


Within the phraseological subset, the constructions are formed with the verbs знать and, occasionally, ведать ‘know’, almost always in the present tense, whose subjects can be either

1) nouns чёрт, дьявол ‘devil’, леший ‘wood goblin’, бес and бис ‘demon’, шут ‘jester’ and пёс ‘dog’ (the last two are probably euphemisms for чёрт), practically always in the singular.

Microsyntax


2) derogatory nouns like фиг or хрен that are in fact euphemisms for an obscene word, as in В стране скоро фиг знает что начнется ‘Soon, goodness knows what will start in this country’, or this obscene word itself

3) nouns Бог ‘God’, Господь ‘Lord’, Аллах ‘Allah’, Всевышний ‘Almighty’, as in Mне не нравится, что на юбилей города приглашают Бог знает кого ‘I don't like it that they invite God knows whom to attend the city anniversary’.

Microsyntax


Первая корректура ушла из издательства Будда знает сколько времени назад

lit. ‘The first proof-sheet left the publisher Buddha knows how long ago’ (from a posting about the publication of a manuscript on East Asia).

Microsyntax


The semantics of the Чёрт знает что type of construction is very interesting and deserves special attention and careful study.

Microsyntax


The meanings of collocations that represent the construction are remarkably close to each other. All of them have a strong evaluative component that expresses the speaker’s negative attitude toward the participant or circumstance of the situation conveyed by the collocations.

Microsyntax


There is a noticeable difference of meaning between the variety of collocations based on бог and the remaining collocations.

In the former, the speaker’s negative attitude becomes milder and is substituted by regret and, possibly, compassion. To my mind, the speaker’s negative attitude belongs to the assertive part of the meaning rather than the presupposition. In particular, this may account for the ungrammaticality of sentences like *Он предал чёрт знает кого ‘He betrayed the devil knows whom’: in all probability, the semantics of the verb предать ‘be disloyal to’ requires that its object deserve loyalty and the collocation чёрт знает кто introduces an unknown and/or bad person who does not deserve loyalty.

Microsyntax


The construction considered here has clear negative polarity. Almost all of its lexical realizations have an overt or incorporated negation – but even the variants without the negation (чёрт знает что, бог знает куда etc.) introduce unknown entities.

He went God knows where really means the same as Nobody knows where.

Microsyntax


3. At least some of the collocations that represent the construction lack compositionality. An example is the expression containing сколько ‘how much’: sentences like

Он получил чёрт знает сколько денег

‘He got the devil knows how much money’

refer to situations that involve an indefinitely large amount of money but never to situations that involve an indefinitely small amount of money.

Microsyntax


The constructions considered here are unique and have no close cognates in the language.

In particular, the constructions like Иди куда хочешь <куда тебе угодно> ‘Go wherever you please’, Oн танцует с кем попало ‘He would dance with the first person he comes across’, Ребенок ест что ни попадя ‘The child eats whatever comes to hand’ that share with our constructions the presence of interrogative pronouns and the meaning of indefiniteness are nonetheless drastically different from them.

Microsyntax


Most importantly, they do not have an additional syntactic start.

Microsyntax


References

Апресян Ю.Д. Лексическая семантика. М. «Наука», (1974).Апресян Ю.Д. Отечественная теоретическая семантика в конце ХХ столетия. Изв. АН, сер. лит. и яз., № 4.

(1999)Апресян, Ю.Д., Иомдин Л.Л. Конструкции типа НЕГДЕ СПАТЬ в русском языке: синтаксис и семантика.

(Constructions of the NEGDE SPAT' type in Russian: Syntax and semantics.) Semiotika i informatika, No. 29. Moscow, 1990, pp. 3-89.

Богуславский И.М. Сфера действия лексических единиц. М.: Школа “Языки русской культуры” (1996), 460 p.Boguslavsky I. On the Passive and Discontinuous Valency Slots, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on

Meaning-Text Theory. Paris, Ecole Normale Supérieure, June 16–18; (2003). p 129-138. Богуславский И.М. Валентности кванторных слов. Квантификативный аспект языка, Москва, (2005), сс.139-

165.Haspelmath, Martin. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1997.Lakoff, George. Syntactic Amalgams. // Papers from the 10th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic society, 1974, pp.

321-344.Mel’čuk I. Actants in semantics and syntax I: actants in semantics, Linguistics, 42(1): 1-66 (2004a).Mel’čuk I. Actants in semantics and syntax II: actants in syntax, Linguistics 42(2): 247-291 (2004b).Mel’čuk I. Aspects of the Theory of Morphology. Berlin—New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (2006)Paducheva E. Diathesis: some extended applications of the term. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference

on Meaning-Text Theory. Paris, École Normale Supérieure, June 16–18, (2003). Partee B.H. The Development of Formal Semantics in Linguistic Theory. Sh. Lapin (ed.) The Handbook of

Contemporary Semantic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. (1996)Partee B.H. Diathesis Alternations and NP Semantics. East West Encounter: Second International Conference on

Meaning – Text Theory. Языки славянской культуры. Москва, (2005).Testelets Y., E. Bylinina. Sluicing-Based Indefinites in Russian. // Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 13: The

South Carolina Meeting. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. 2005, 355-364.

Documents

Meaning Text Theory: Recent Developments Leonid L. Iomdin Computational Linguistics Laboratory, Institute for Information Transmission Problems, Russian