Useful site full of worked English-language examples

Much of the literature on categorial grammar focuses on things that are difficult to handle in other frameworks and isn’t necessarily helpful if you want to find something simple. However, there are lots and lots of worked examples on the Groningen Meaning Bank Explorer. More about how it works here.

Three sorts of PP

Le means “with”, roughly, but if you want to say “with X”, there are three different ways of doing it.

  1. le Alasdair: “with Alasdair”. This is the form used before a noun phrase that doesn’t begin with a definite article.
  2. leis an nurs: “with the nurse”.?Le becomes?leis before a noun phrase beginning with a definite article.
  3. leam: “with me”. This is a PP all of its very own, and there’s one for each personal pronoun, including, confusingly,?leis?for “with him”.

So this means that for a full grammar we need to mark the NP with whether it begins with certain determiners.?Leis, and friends?gus, ris and anns?don’t in fact go with all determiners in Gaelic. They go with?gach “each”, as in?Leis gach d?agh dh?rachd?”with every good wish” and mo “my”?but not, say, numbers.

Let’s, then, provisionally type the forms of?le as follows:

  • le: PPle/NPAN?
  • leis: PPle/NPAN+
  • leam: PPle,1s

Reminder: we need the features like le to keep track of what sort of preposition it is for agreement with words like toil (to like), and 1s to keep track of who it is liking what.

More on this, with, I hope, a shorter temporal gap before the next post than this time round.