Footnotes

The names of these particular Semantic Relations should not be taken too seriously. In fact, of course, it does not much matter what the relations are called, so long as they are the same in the source and target grammars.

...dictionary.

`Paper' here is intended to convey `intended for human readers', as opposed to `electronic' meaning `intended for use by computers'. Of course, it is possible for a paper dictionary to be stored on a computer like any other document, and our use of `paper' here is not supposed to exclude this. If one were being precise, one should distinguish `paper' dictionaries, `machine readable' dictionaries (conventional dictionaries which are stored on, and can therefore be accessed automatically by computer), and `machine usable dictionaries'.

...#bilingualentry#3293>).

The form of the monolingual entry is based on that used in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD); the bilingual entry is similar to what one finds in Collins-Robert English-French dictionary.

...usage.

One can also get some idea of the cost of dictionary construction from this. Even if one were able to write four entries an hour, and keep this up for 8 hours a day every working day, it would still take over three years to construct even a small size dictionary. Of course, the time it takes to write a dictionary entry is very variable, depending on how much of the work has already been done by other lexicographers.

...processes.

In fact, it is arguable that the vocabulary of a language like English, with relatively productive morphological processes, is infinite, in the sense that there is no longest word of the language. Even the supposedly longest word antidisestablishmentarianism can be made longer by adding a prefix such as crypto-, or a suffix such as -ist. The result may not be pretty, but it is arguably a possible word of English. The point is even clearer when one considers compound words (see Section

...animate.

The restriction applying on the OBJECT of the verb actually concerns the thing which is buttoned whether that appears as the OBJECT of a active sentence or the SUBJECT of a passive sentence.

...form:

In this rule we write +finite for finite=+. We also ignore some issues about datatypes, in particular, the fact that on the right-hand-side V stands for a string of characters, while on the lefthand (lexical) side it stands for the value of an attribute, which is probably an atom, rather than a string.

...themselves,

More precisely, the rule is that the third person singular form is the base form plus s, except (i) when the base form ends in s, ch, sh, o, x, z, in which case +es is added (for example, poach- poaches, push- pushes), and (ii) when the base form ends in y, when ies is added to the base minus y.

...items.

Notice, however, that we still cannot expect morphological analysis and lexical lookup to come up with a single right answer straight away. Apart from anything else, a form like affects could be a noun rather than a verb. For another thing, just looking at the word form in isolation will not tell us which of several readings of a word is involved.

...happy)

Note that the category of the stem word is important, since there is another prefix un which combines with verbs to give verbs which mean `perform the reverse action to X' --- to unbutton is to reverse the effect of buttoning.

...students):

Where words have been fused together to form a compound , as is prototypically the case in German , an additional problem presents itself in the analysis of the compound , namely to decide exactly which words the compound consists of. The German word Wachtraum, for example, could have been formed by joining Wach and Traum giving a composite meaning of day-dream. On the other hand, it could have been formed by joining Wacht to Raum, in which case the compound would mean guard-room.

...act

Creative in the sense of `genuine invention which is not governed by rules', rather than the sense of `creating new things by following rules' --- computers have no problem with creating new things by following rules, of course.

...AGENT

This discussion of the Japanese passive is a slight simplification. The construction does sometimes occur without the adversive sense, but this is usually regarded as a `europeanism', showing the influence of European languages.

...anaphor.

This is a simplification, of course. For one thing, it could be used to refer to something outside the discourse, to some entity which is not mentioned, but pointed at, for example. For another thing, there are some other potential antencedents, such as the back in (411#411 a), and it could be that Speaker A is returning to the digression in sentence (412#412 f). Though the discourse structure can helps to resolve pronoun-antecedent relations, discovering the discourse structure poses serious problems.

...superior.

Politeness dictates that giving by the hearer to the speaker is normally giving `downwards' ( kureru), so this is the verb used to describe requests, and giving by the speaker to the hearer is normally giving `upwards' ( ageru), so this is the verb used to describe offers, etc.

...correct

As noted above, knowledge about selectional restrictions is unusual in being defeasible in just this way: the restriction that the AGENT of eat is ANIMATE is only a preference, or default, and can be overridden. This leads some to think that it is not strictly speaking linguistic knowledge at all. In general, the distinction between linguistic and real world knowledge is not always very clear.

...ASCII