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lib/doc/languages/gf-general-1.txt
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@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ addition, a little bit like the French gender, they have a **classifier** (间 /
This document provides a tour of the digital grammars in the RGL. It is intended to serve at least three kinds of readers.
In the decreasing order of the number of potential readers,
- those who are intested to learn the grammar of a particular language,
- those who want to learn the grammar of some language in a precise way,
- those who want to use the RGL for a programming task,
- those who want to write an RGL grammar for a new language.
@@ -100,6 +100,38 @@ of French nouns: //maison// ("house") //is// feminine, inherently, and there is
indication of an inflectional gender.)
++Syntactic implications++
The features given in the table are rough indications for what one can expect in different languages. Thus,
for instance, some languages have no gender at all, and hence their nouns and adjectives won't have
genders either. But the table is a rather good generalization from the 28 language of the RGL: we can
safely say that, if a language //does// have gender, then nouns have an inherent gender and adjectives have
a variable gender. This is not a coincidence but has to do with **syntax**, that is, the combination of words
into complex expressions. Thus, for instance, nouns are combined with adjectives that modify them, so that
#BECE
//blue// + //house// = //blue house//
#ENCE
Now, adjectives have to be combinable with all nouns, independently of the gender of the noun: there are no
separate classes of masculine and feminine adjectives (again, with some apparent exceptions, such as //pregnant//,
but even these adjectives have at least grammatically correct metaphoric uses with nouns of other genders).
This means that we must be able to pick the gender of the adjective in agreement with the gender of the noun
that it modifies, which means that the gender of adjectives must be inflectional. Thus in French the adjective
for "blue" is //bleu//, with the feminine form //bleue//, and works as follows:
#BECE
//bleu// + //maison// = //maison bleue// ("blue house", feminine)
//bleu// + //livre// = //livre bleu// ("blue book", masculine)
#ENCE
French also provides examples of adjectives with different **positions**: //bleu// is put after the noun
it modifies, whereas //vieux// ("old") is put before the noun: //vieux livre// ("old book").
We will return to syntax later. At this point, it is sufficient to say that the morphological features of
words are not there just for nothing, but they play an important role in how words are combined in syntax.
In particular, they determine to a great extent how **agreement** works, that is, how the features of
words depend on each other in combinations.
++Semantics of the categories++
//Notice: this section, and all "semantics" columns can be safely skipped, because//
@@ -149,38 +181,6 @@ The following table summarizes the most important semantic types that will be us
++Syntactic implications++
The features given in the table are rough indications for what one can expect in different languages. Thus,
for instance, some languages have no gender at all, and hence their nouns and adjectives won't have
genders either. But the table is a rather good generalization from the 28 language of the RGL: we can
safely say that, if a language //does// have gender, then nouns have an inherent gender and adjectives have
a variable gender. This is not a coincidence but has to do with **syntax**, that is, the combination of words
into complex expressions. Thus, for instance, nouns are combined with adjectives that modify them, so that
#BECE
//blue// + //house// = //blue house//
#ENCE
Now, adjectives have to be combinable with all nouns, independently of the gender of the noun: there are no
separate classes of masculine and feminine adjectives (again, with some apparent exceptions, such as //pregnant//,
but even these adjectives have at least grammatically correct metaphoric uses with nouns of other genders).
This means that we must be able to pick the gender of the adjective in agreement with the gender of the noun
that it modifies, which means that the gender of adjectives must be inflectional. Thus in French the adjective
for "blue" is //bleu//, with the feminine form //bleue//, and works as follows:
#BECE
//bleu// + //maison// = //maison bleue// ("blue house", feminine)
//bleu// + //livre// = //livre bleu// ("blue book", masculine)
#ENCE
French also provides examples of adjectives with different **positions**: //bleu// is put after the noun
it modifies, whereas //vieux// ("old") is put before the noun: //vieux livre// ("old book").
We will return to syntax later. At this point, it is sufficient to say that the morphological features of
words are not there just for nothing, but they play an important role in how words are combined in syntax.
In particular, they determine to a great extent how **agreement** works, that is, how the features of
words depend on each other in combinations.
++Subcategorization++
In addition to the features needed for inflection and agreement, the lexicon must give information about //what//
@@ -213,9 +213,9 @@ dative, ablative, and so on).
===Table: subcategories of nouns and adjectives===
|| GF name | text name | example | inherent complement features | semantics ||
| ``N2`` | two-place noun | //brother// (//of someone// | case or preposition | ``e -> n``
| ``N3`` | three-place noun | //distance// (//from some place to some place// | case or preposition | ``e -> e -> n``
| ``A2`` | two-place adjective | //similar// (//to something// | case or preposition | ``e -> e -> t``
| ``N2`` | two-place noun | //brother// (//of someone//) | case or preposition | ``e -> n``
| ``N3`` | three-place noun | //distance// (//from some place to some place//) | case or preposition | ``e -> e -> n``
| ``A2`` | two-place adjective | //similar// (//to something//) | case or preposition | ``e -> e -> t``
Verbs show a particularly rich variation in subcategorization. The most familiar distinction is the one between