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I want to put a book on the table

by Saaropean

The picture shows an attribute-value matrix, to be more exact an f-structure of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) with the following elements:

  • SUBJ – the subject of the sentence, labelled <1> to show that the subject of the verbal complement is the same as the subject of the whole sentence. In other words: The person who will or will not put (the book on the table) is the same person as the one who wants this to happen. It’s not like "I want you to put a book on the table".
    • PER – first person
    • NUM – singular, not plural (filling the "number" field)
    • CASE – subjective case (objective would be "me")
    • PRED – the meaning of the subject: "I"
  • VCOMP – the verbal complement in the sentence ("to put a book on the table")
    • SUBJ – the hidden subject of the complement. It’s #1, the same as the subject of the whole sentence (see remark above).
    • OBJ – the object of the complement (what to put on the table)
      • SPEC – the object has an indefinite specifier, i.e. the indefinite article "a"
      • PER – the book is in third person
      • NUM – it’s one book (singular), not several
      • GEND – a book has neuter gender. Together with the information "PER 3" and "NUM SG", the computer would know that the pronoun "it" can be used to refer to the book later.
      • PRED – the meaning of that object is "book"
    • ON – the on-complement of the VCOMP (where to put the book)
      • PCASE – we’re dealing with the case of the preposition "on", not "under", "near" or something else
      • OBJ – the object of "on the table", i.e. everything behind the preposition
        • SPEC – the object has a definite specifier, we’re talking about the table
        • PER – the table is 3rd person
        • NUM – it’s one table (singular), not several
        • GEND – a table has neuter gender. Together with the information "PER 3" and "NUM SG", the computer would know that the pronoun "it" can be used to refer to the table later.
        • PRED – the meaning of that object is "table"
    • INF – the plus sign indicates that the verbal complement uses an infinitive with "to"
    • PRED – the meaning of the sentence: SUBJ puts the OBJ thing on the ON thing
  • PRED – the meaning ("predicate") of the sentence: SUBJ wants VCOMP

Originally published in Babel Babble

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