Alternative phrases : theoretical analysis and practical application
~All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?~ (Monty Python, The Life of Brian) Alternative phrases identify selected elements from a set and subject them to particular scrutiny with respect to the sentence's predicate. For instance, in the above example, sanitation, medicine, etc. are all identified as elements in the set of things the Romans have done for us~ that should not be included in the response to the question. They are alternative responses to the desired ones. Alternative phrases come in a variety of constructions and perform a variety of tasks: excluding elements (apart from), expressing preference for particular elements (especially), and simply identifying representative examples (such as). Not a great deal of work has been done on alternative phrases in general. Hearst (1992) used a pattern-matching analysis of certain alternative phrases to learn hyponyms from unannotated corpora. Also, a few examples from a subset of alternative phrases, called exceptive phrases, have been studied, most recently, by von Fintel (1993) and Hoeksema (1995). But not all
Bierner, Gann
Alternative phrases : theoretical analysis and practical application. ~All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?~ (Monty Python, The Life of Brian) Alternative phrases identify selected elements from a set and subject them to particular scrutiny with respect to the sentence's predicate. For instance, in the above example, sanitation, medicine, etc. are all identified as elements in the set of things the Romans have done for us~ that should not be included in the response to the question. They are alternative responses to the desired ones. Alternative phrases come in a variety of constructions and perform a variety of tasks: excluding elements (apart from), expressing preference for particular elements (especially), and simply identifying representative examples (such as). Not a great deal of work has been done on alternative phrases in general. Hearst (1992) used a pattern-matching analysis of certain alternative phrases to learn hyponyms from unannotated corpora. Also, a few examples from a subset of alternative phrases, called exceptive phrases, have been studied, most recently, by von Fintel (1993) and Hoeksema (1995). But not all
alternative phrase theoretical analysis practical_application all right apart sanitation medicine education wine public order irrigation road fresh water system public_health romans ever life alternative phrase identify select element set subject particular scrutiny respect sentence predicate instance example sanitation medicine etc identified element set thing romans include response question alternative response desire alternative phrase come variety construction perform variety task exclude element apart express preference particular element especially simply identify representative example great_deal work alternative phrase general use pattern matching analysis certain alternative phrase learn corpus also examples subset alternative phrase call phrase study recently