Auxiliaries And Clitics In French UCG Grammar

French auxilliaries and clitics have been analysed in the flame of U.C.G. (Unification Categorial Grammar). Concatenation of a functor sign and an adjacent argument sign is the basic operation of the model ; unification allows (a) to verify ff constraints on concatenation are respected ; (b) to produce a flow of information between the functor sign and the argument sign. The rules of the grammar and the design structure of the sign allows to express : (a) the concatenation between French auxilliaries (are and avoir) and the participle verb form within a single pattern, (b) transitions between clitics in a systematic way. Two complex questions of French syntax are thus covered in a fairly simple way. The UCG Model U(nification). C(ategorial) G(rammar) is a new grammatical model proposed by an Edinburgh team headed by Ewan Klein in [CALDER 86] and [ZEEVAT 86]. UCG is a feature grarnmar incorporating some basic insights from GPSG [GAZDAR 85] and HPSG [POLLARD 84]. Functional application applies in UCG as in categorial grammars; it allows for concatenation of a functor with an adjacent argument. Unification is a basic operation which allows (a) to verify if constraints on concatenation are respected; (b) to produce a flow of information between functor and argument. This information together with some defined aspects of the information carried by the functor, will be finally inscribed in the resulting concatenated sign. The Sign A UCG sign has the following format : (1) sign --> category:semantics:order:phonology category --> headAfeamres:catllst features --> [feat,clo,agree,class] catllst > nil caflist > catlist/active active > sign semantics > index semantics > index:predicate:arglist arglist > agrl . . . . . argn The work reported here was carried out as part of ESPRIT Project 393 (ACORD), 'The construction and Interrogation of Knowledge Bases using Natural Language Text and Graphics" order > pre [ post phonology-> In graph notation, a UCG sign can be represented (in a slightly simplified form, relevant to this paper) as in figure I. In this figure the leaves of vertical branches columns (i) through (viii) denote the values of the corresponding labels in its upper portion. We have : (i) to (vi) Simple categories : sent~_:nil, noun~:nil. (ii) Features on (i) (see below) (iii) values for the CL(itics) label a re : prod (dialogue pronouns, for me , re, noua, vous); protob (third person object pronouns : le, la, /es); prota (third person dative pronouns : lui, leur) ; se, en and y, (for se, en and y pronouns respectively); n is a barrier symbol (see below). (iv and v) values for morphological aspects of the sign: (v) categorizes signs in lex(ical) and pron(ominal) ones, (iv) in maac(ulin) and fem(inin), in sing(ular) and pl(ural), and introduces values for the 3 persons. (vi) the subcaflist : the label C will denote the typical variable for it. (vii) the index sort system (which is not exhibited here) allows selection on semantic features while a special field (pr res) contains information (agreement, class and COR) for the pronoun resolution component. COR(eference) is intended to prepare the semantic representation for pronoun resolution. The corresponding values are : obl(igatory), for bound anaphora as in se ; ind(ependent), for NP nominals of indicative sentences and dep(endent) for NP nominals of subjunctive ones (the algorithm for pronoun resolution will not be presented here, but the semantic representation specified by the proposed grammar is intended to carry all the required relevant information). (viii) post and pre are the values for order ; they are essential for handling word order and for the application of the grammar roles. In the unification process and in the generation of the subsequent flow of information, the labels Class, Ge, N b and Pe denote variables for the corresponding values, Clo the variable for clitic placement value and O, the variable for order values. The two following are the French UCG signs for a/me and Mar/e :