An analysis of compounds in HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) for database queries

Abstract

Compounds can be analyzed in HPSG as head/complement structures, corresponding to verbal compounds, and head/adjunct structures, corresponding to non-verbal compounds. The rules that create these structures are also responsible for paraphrases using prepositional modification. Although compounds are often thought to have a high structural ambiguity, we show that the distinction between head/complement compounding and head/adjunct compounding together with general semantic considerations eliminates ambiguity. Finally, for database interfaces, the notion of a semantic field is useful for solving problems of noncompositionality of compounds.