Fixed Similes: Measuring Aspects of the Relation between MWE - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Fixed Similes: Measuring Aspects of the Relation between MWE Idiomatic Semantics and Syntactic Flexibility PANAGIOTIS KOURIS STELLA MARKANTONATOU YANIS MAISTROS SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL AND SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL AND INSTITUTE FOR LANGUAGE COMPUTER ENGINEERING, COMPUTER ENGINEERING, AND SPEECH PROCESSING, NATIONAL TECHNICAL NATIONAL TECHNICAL ATHENA RIC, GREECE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, ATHENS, GREECE ATHENS, GREECE 1

We acknowledge support of this work by the project “Computatjonal Sciences and Technologies for Data, Content and Interactjon” (MIS 5002437) which is implemented under the Actjon “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovatjon Infrastructure”, funded by the Operatjonal Programme ``Competjtjveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovatjon" (NSRF 2014-2020) and co-fjnanced by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund). 2

SYNTACTIC FLEXIBILITY vs IDIOMATICITY Fixed similes (FS): adjectjve+connector+(artjcle)+noun , e.g. sweet like honey . Modern Greek. We fjnd that idiomatjc semantjcs is related with a subset of FS syntactjc alternatjves. Idiomatjcity: similarity degree between FS semantjcs and the semantjcs of their free adjectjve. We identjfy and measure two types of similarity, one of which allows us to make predictjons about the syntactjc fmexibility of FS. Measurements were made on a web-retrieved corpus of 4900 FS usage examples. 3

PARTS OF A FIXED SIMILE (FS) Εγώ κόκκινη σαν (την) παπαρούνα I red as (the) poppy ADJECTIVE σαν (DETERMIINER) NOUN TENOR PROPERTY VEHICLE Terminology adopted from Hanks (2005). 4

FIXED SIMILES Simile is a fjgure of speech. Unlike metaphor, it draws atuentjon to the likeness between the tenor and the vehicle that are implied to share certain propertjes (Veale & Hao, 2007). Similes draw on conventjonal beliefs about likeness and efgectjvely convey the speaker’s superlatjve evaluatjon of the tenor (Israel, Harding & Tobin, 2004). Many conventjonal similes tend to be fjxed and have idiom status (Hanks, 2005). Greek: κόκκινος σαν αστακός ( kokinos san astakos ) ‘ red as lobster ’ applies mainly to PERSONs or BODY(parts). 96,4% of its occurrences in our data denote blushing or sunburned people. FS share a good part of simile usage in English (Niculae & Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, 2014}. 5

Modern Greek FS structures SIMILATIVE STATEMENTS adjectjve + σαν + (determiner) +noun (the “normatjve” form) γλυκός σαν (το) μέλι sweet like (the) honey’ COMPARATIVE πιο adjectjve + (και)+από+ (determiner) +noun πιο γλυκός (και) από (το) μέλι more sweet (and) than (the) honey EQUATIVE τόσο+ adjectjve +όσο+ determiner +noun τόσο γλυκός όσο το μέλι as sweet as the honey adjectjve +punctuatjon mark+ σαν + (determiner) +noun Ήταν ο ύπνος γλυκός. Σαν το μέλι της κηρήθρας. ‘Sleep was sweet. Like the honey of the honeycomb.’ (Chila-Markopoulou, 1986; Israel , Harding & Tobin, 2004; Mpouli, 2015) 6

SCOMP (copula) Της Παλιαχώρας ο χορός ήταν γλυκός σαν μέλι. ‘Paliachora’s dance was sweet like honey.’ SCON (verb adjunct controlled by the sentence subject) Ελαφρύς σαν πούπουλο, πήδηξε στο μαξιλάρι. ‘As light as the feather, he jumped on the pillow.’ AJSIM (adjectjval modifjer) Ένας γλυκός σαν μέλι ύπνος τον τύλιξε. Lit. A sweet like honey sleep wrapped him. SS (verbless period): Ύπνος γλυκός σαν μέλι. ‘A sleep as sweet as honey.’ SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS OF AN ADJECTIVE (1) 7

DIR (subject) λευκό σαν το χιόνι, μαύρο..μπορούν να παίξουν παιχνίδι στο σπίτι σας Lit. as white as the snow, black…can play a game in your place INDIR (prepositjonal complement) χρώματα που κυμαίνονται από χρυσοκίτρινο ως λευκό σαν χιόνι! Lit. colours ranging from golden-yellow to white like snow! INTENSIFYING ADVERB «Δεν ήμασταν ιδιαίτερα μακριά, αλλά ήταν πάρα πολύ γρήγοροι - σαν αστραπή», δήλωσε. Lit. “(We) were not partjcularly far, but (they) were very much fast-like lightjng”, he declared. SYNTACTIC FUNCTIONS OF AN ADJECTIVE (2) 8

DATA (1)-FS identifjcation Hellenic Natjonal Corpus (HNC), htup://hnc.ilsp.gr/, and a corpus of 100 million words collected with crawlers Patuern adjectjve+σαν+(det)+noun: 152 similes that appeared more than once were retained 260 natjve speakers of Modern Greek specifjed which similes they would use in their everyday exchange with a tailor made FB applicatjon. 85 similes were used by a critjcal number of speakers of which 20 FS are used for this presentatjon. The 20 FS represent the classes defjned in two difgerent simile classifjcatjons by the semantjcs of the vehicle and of the property, one of Modern Greek FS (Mpolla- Mavridou, 1996) and one of English similes (Hanks, 2005). 9

DATA (2)-web retrieved data- morpholgy and determiner «άσπρος» «σαν πανί» white.SG.MASC.NOM cloth.SG.NEUT.NOM/ACC «άσπρου» «σαν πανί» white. SG.MASC.GEN/SG.NEUT.GEN cloth.SG.NEUT.NOM/ACC «άσπρες» «σαν πανί» white..PL.FEM.NOM/ PL.FEM..ACC cloth.SG.NEUT.NOM/ACC «άσπρες» «σαν πανιά» white.PL.FEM.NOM/ PL.FEM..ACC cloth.PL.NEUT.NOM/ACC To make sure that the required structures would be retrieved (+ morphological variatjon): Inverted word order «σαν το πανί άσπρος» “like the cloth white” Equatjve «τόσο άσπρος» «σαν το πανί» “as white” “like the cloth” Comparatjve «πιο άσπρος» «από το πανί» “more white” “than the cloth” «σαν το πανί» “like the cloth” Modern Greek has 3 genders, 3 cases and 2 numbers and relatjve free word order. 10

DATA (3)-web retrieved lexical variation Replacement of the adjectjve or the noun with possible alternatjves (synonyms, diminutjves, etc, search with the “σαν + VEHICLE” part). άσπρος σαν το πανί Lit. white as the cloth κάτασπρος ‘very white’, λευκός ‘white’, πάλλευκος*‘very white’, κατάλευκος ‘very white’, ωχρός ‘pale’, κάτωχρος ‘very pale’, κίτρινος ‘yellow’, κατακίτρινος ‘very yellow’ *πάλλευκος (in use ancient form of “very white”) did not return any FS hits οπλισμένος/αρματωμένος σαν αστακός Lit. armed like a lobster πιστός σαν σκυλί/σκύλος faithful like dog.SG.NEUT/dog.SG.MASC κόκκινος/ερυθρός σαν παπαρούνα/παπαρουνίτσα red/red.ANCIENT like poppy/poppy.DIMINUTIVE Google searches were applied on the lexical variants as before. Less than 10 FS gave lexical variants 11

4900 usage examples were selected from about 20 tjmes more material in terms of uniqueness and originality 12

DATA (4)-web retrieved syntactic variation FS as adjectjves and not as sententjal structures of the type Tenor is FS (e.g., This music is as sweet as honey.): ◦ FS support a wide range of syntactjc functjons apart from that of the complement of the copula (Slides 6 & 7) ◦ Retrieved complements of various copulas (not only of BE): 18.8%-77% ◦ Retrieved complements of various copulas + verbless structures: 18.8%-81.5% the syntactjc variatjon of the FS structures (sweet as honey, more sweet than honey, as sweet as honey) was checked. 13

Labels for morpho-syntactjc variatjon 14

Semantic annotation No suffjcient Modern Greek WordNets are available, so Greek tenors were translated into English. In case of pronouns/pro- drop, tenors were induced from the context. Inter-annotator agreement: 2400 instances (49% of the data), representjng 4 FS (FS20, FS19, FS18, FS1), were annotated by 5 Annotatjng tenors with WordNet supersenses (Schneider et al., 2013). linguists. Krippendorfg’s alpha = 0.95. 15

Fixedness is related with semantic idiomaticity Shannon entropy to measure syntactjc/semantjc diversity. morphosyntactjc entropy: FS instances as vectors (presence or absence of a feature) semantjc entropy: number of occurrences of each WordNet supersense constr, comp, toso, ixp-punc, ixp-creatjve, ixp-n, empp, mwo increased P correlatjon iwo, ixp-w, mod, var, det, Pearson correlatjon coeffjcient: 0.84 with p-value=3,2 .10^-6 empm decreased P correlatjon Result reminiscent of the Kay & Sag (2012) observatjon: not all syntactjc contexts interfere with MWE semantjcs. 16