# Representation and Parsing of Multiword Expressions

Yannick Parmentier, Jakub Waszczuk

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Yannick Parmentier, Jakub Waszczuk (Dir.). Representation and Parsing of Multiword Expressions. Language Science Press, 3, 2019, Phraseology and Multiword Expressions, 978-3-96110-146-7. hal-01537920

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Representation
and parsing of
multiword
expressions

Current trends

Edited by

Yannick Parmentier

Jakub Waszczuk

Phraseology and Multiword Expressions 3

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

language
science
press
Phraseology and Multiword Expressions

**Series editors**

Agata Savary (University of Tours, Blois, France), Manfred Sailer (Goethe University Frankfurt a. M., Germany), Yannick Parmentier (University of Lorraine, France), Victoria Rosén (University of Bergen, Norway), Mike Rosner (University of Malta, Malta).

In this series:

1. Manfred Sailer & Stella Markantonatou (eds.). Multiword expressions: Insights from a multilingual perspective.

2. Stella Markantonatou, Carlos Ramisch, Agata Savary & Veronika Vincze: Multiword expressions at length and in depth: Extended papers from the MWE 2017 workshop.

3. Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk: Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends.

ISSN: 2625-3127
Representation
and parsing of
multiword
expressions

Current trends

Edited by

Yannick Parmentier

Jakub Waszczuk

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

language
science
press
Parmentier, Yannick & Jakub Waszczuk (ed.). 2019. *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends* (Phraseology and Multiword Expressions 3). Berlin: Language Science Press.

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http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/202

© 2019, the authors

Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0):

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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ISBN: 978-3-96110-145-0 (Digital)

978-3-96110-146-7 (Hardcover)

ISSN: 2625-3127

DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579017

Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/202

Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=202

Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort

Typesetting: Felix Kopecky, Jakub Waszczuk, Yannick Parmentier

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# Contents

## Preface

Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk

iii

1 **Lexical encoding formats for multi-word expressions: The challenge of “irregular” regularities**

Timm Lichte, Simon Petitjean, Agata Savary & Jakub Waszczuk

1

2 **Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity and flexibility**

Livnat Herzig Sheinfux, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik & Shuly Wintner

35

3 **Multiword expressions in an LFG grammar for Norwegian**

Helge Dyvik, Gyri Smørdal Losnegaard & Victoria Rosén

69

4 **Issues in parsing MWEs in an LFG/XLE framework**

Stella Markantonatou, Niki Samaridi & Panagiotis Minos

109

5 **Multiword expressions in multilingual applications within the Grammatical Framework**

Krasimir Angelov

127

6 **Statistical MWE-aware parsing**

Mathieu Constant, Gülşen Eryiğit, Carlos Ramisch, Mike Rosner & Gerold Schneider

147

7 **Investigating the effect of automatic MWE recognition on CCG parsing**

Miryam de Lhoneux, Omri Abend & Mark Steedman

183

8 **Multilingual parsing and MWE detection**

Vasiliki Foufi, Luka Nerima & Eric Wehrli

217
9 Extracting and aligning multiword expressions from parallel corpora
Nasredine Semmar, Christophe Servan, Meriama Laib, Dhouha Bouamor
& Morgane Marchand 239

10 Cross-lingual linking of multi-word entities and language-dependent
learning of multi-word entity patterns
Guillaume Jacquet, Maud Ehrmann, Jakub Piskorski, Hristo Tanev &
Ralf Steinberger 269

Index 299
# Preface

Yannick Parmentier

University of Orléans
University of Lorraine

Jakub Waszczuk

University of Tours
University of Düsseldorf

In this introductory chapter, we first present the topic and context of this volume. We then summarize its contributions, which have been collected through an open call for submissions and a peer-reviewing process.

# 1 Introduction

While Multiword Expressions (MWEs), i.e. sequences of words with some unpredictable properties such as *to count somebody in* or *to take a haircut*, have been attracting attention for a long time because of these idiosyncratic properties which go beyond word boundaries, they remain a challenge for both linguistic theories and natural language (NL) applications.

Indeed, most of these theories and applications admit an (explicit or implicit) division of language phenomena into clear-cut levels: (i) tokens (indivisible text units, roughly words), (ii) morphology (properties of words e.g. number, gender, etc.), (iii) syntax (structural links between words, e.g. number/gender agreement), (iv) semantics (meaning of words and sentences). However, human languages frequently show a high degree of ambiguity and fuzziness with respect to this layer-oriented model. In particular, MWEs are placed on the frontier between these levels due to their idiosyncratic properties on the one hand, and their morphological, syntactic and semantic variations on the other hand. For instance, their meaning is often non-compositional as in *to take a haircut* (i.e. *to suffer a*

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>
serious financial loss), although they admit some syntactic variation similarly to many other expressions (take/takes/have taken/has taken/took a serious/70% hair-cut). Strictly layer-oriented language models fail to reflect this specificity, and thus yield erroneous text processing results (e.g. word-to-word translations of idioms). Although the quantitative importance of MWEs is well known (they cover up to 30% of all words in human language utterances, and are much more numerous in lexicons than single words), the achievements in their formal representation and automatic processing are still largely unsatisfactory.

In this context, an international and multilingual consortium of researchers recently took part in the European PARSEME COST Action<fnref n="1" /> (2013–2017), which aimed at better understanding the nature of MWEs in order to improve their support in natural language applications. Two main challenges were considered: **LINGUISTIC PRECISION** (how to account for the highly heterogeneous nature of MWEs in linguistic resources and treatments?) and **COMPUTATIONAL EFFICIENCY** (how to deal with MWEs’ idiosyncratic properties within reliable applications?).

To contribute to meeting these two challenges, PARSEME was based on four Working Groups (WGs):

* WG1 focused on the Grammar/Lexicon interface and the design of inter-operable MWE lexicons,

* WG2 aimed at developing parsing techniques for MWEs,

* WG3 studied hybrid (e.g. symbolic and/or statistical) NL applications dealing with MWEs (e.g. MWE detection, machine translation, etc.),

* WG4 was concerned with the annotation of MWEs within treebanks.

This book has been created within WG2. It consists of contributions related to the definition, representation and parsing of MWEs. These contributions were collected via an open call for chapters. Each Chapter proposal was reviewed by 2 members of the editorial board. Out of this reviewing, 10 proposals were selected. They reflect current trends in the representation and processing of MWEs. They cover various *categories* of MWEs such as verbal, adverbial and nominal MWEs, various *linguistic frameworks* (e.g. tree-based and unification-based grammars), various *languages* including English, French, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian), and various *applications* (namely MWE detection, parsing, automatic translation) using both symbolic and statistical approaches.

<footnote n="1">¹http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ict/IC1207</footnote>
## 2 Outline of the book

The book is organized as follows.

### Part 1: MWE representations

The first part of the volume (Chapters 1 to 5) is dedicated to the study of MWE properties and representations.

In Chapter 1, Lichte et al. (2019 [this volume]) discuss the representation of MWEs within lexicalised formalisms. In particular, they show how the eXtensible MetaGrammar (XMG2) formalism offers a natural encoding of MWEs, which allows us to account for the fact that irregularities exhibited by MWEs are a matter of scale rather than binary properties.

In Chapter 2, Sheinfux et al. (2019 [this volume]) study a specific type of MWEs (namely verbal MWEs), focusing mostly on Hebrew, and show that unlike what previous work suggests, flexibility of verbal MWEs is not a discrete concept but rather a continuous property. They propose a new classification of MWEs which is based on semantic notions.

In Chapter 3, Dyvik et al. (2019 [this volume]) present the analysis of MWEs in an LFG grammar for Norwegian, NorGram, which is used in the construction of NorGramBank, a treebank of parsed sentences. The chapter describes how classes of MWEs are analysed by means of LFG templates, which capture the lexical and syntactic properties of MWEs in a succinct way.

In Chapter 4, Markantonatou et al. (2019 [this volume]) present a grammar of Modern Greek in the LFG formalism. Their grammar has been implemented with the Xerox Linguistic Engine (XLE), a grammar editor which also includes a parsing engine. In their Chapter, the authors pay a particular attention to the use of a pre-processor to detect and annotate MWEs prior to parsing.

In Chapter 5, Angelov (2019 [this volume]) presents the Grammatical Framework, a description language for developing NLP multilingual resources, and its application to some classes of MWEs. In particular, the author shows how to define MWE-aware multilingual grammars, which can be used for instance for in-domain machine translation.

### Part 2: MWE parsing

The second part of the volume (Chapters 6 to 8) focuses on MWE parsing, that is, on the automatic construction of deep representations of the syntax of MWEs. Two main approaches to parsing coexist: the data-driven approach aims at extracting syntactic information from corpora using Machine Learning techniques
and is discussed in Chapter 6. The knowledge-based approach relies on the en-
coding of linguistic properties of MWEs within lexical entries, which are used
by a parsing algorithm to compute the expected syntactic structure. The impact
of MWE detection on such parsing algorithms is discussed in Chapters 7 (for a
categorial parser) and 8 (for an attachment-rule-based parser).

In Chapter 6, Constant et al. (2019 [this volume]) give a detailed overview of various ways to extend statistical parsing with MWE identification, either during parsing or as a pre- or post-processing step. These extensions are compared and their evaluation discussed.

In Chapter 7, de Lhoneux et al. (2019 [this volume]) extend a CCG parsing
architecture for English with a module for detecting MWEs and pre-process
them. The effect of this pre-processing is evaluated in terms of parsing accuracy
when (i) the parser is trained on pre-processed data (so-called training effect)
and (ii) the parser uses information from pre-processed data (so-called parsing
effect).

In Chapter 8, Foufi et al. (2019 [this volume]) investigate the extension of a
knowledge-based parser with collocation identification. They apply this exten-
sion to the description of MWEs for various languages (including English and
Greek), and show how it improves parsing efficiency in terms of percentages of
complete analyses.

**Part 3: Multilingual NL applications for MWEs**

Finally, in the third part of the volume (Chapters 9 and 10), multilingual MWE
acquisition techniques are presented.

In Chapter 9, Semmar et al. (2019 [this volume]) present three techniques for
word alignment between parallel corpora and their application to MWEs. The
bilingual MWE lexicons built using these techniques are then evaluated accord-
ing to their effect on phrase-based statistical machine translation. The authors
empirically show that MWE-aware lexicons improve translation quality.

Finally, in Chapter 10, Jacquet et al. (2019 [this volume]) present an architecture which allows for the identification of multiword entities (organizations, medical terms, etc.) within large collections of texts, together with the linking of monolingual variants of a given multiword entity, and of groups of variants across multiple languages. Their architecture is evaluated against data from *Wikipedia*.
3 Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the COST framework of the European Union for their support
for the PARSEME Action.

We would like to warmly thank Agata Savary and Adam Przepiórkowski, re-
spectively chair and vice-chair of PARSEME, for their commitment to this action.
They made it a dynamic environment, where researchers can have fruitful dis-
cussions and exchange ideas, leading to long-term collaborations.

We are grateful to Manfred Sailer, who, as a member of the editorial board of the *Phraseology and Multiword Expressions* series, accompanied us throughout the publication process.

We would like to thank the reviewers of this volume:

• Doug Arnold, University of Essex, UK

• Gosse Bouma, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

• Svetla Koeva, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

• Cvetana Krstev, University of Belgrade, Serbia

• Ana R. Luís, University of Coimbra, Portugal

• Stella Markantonatou, Institute for Language and Speech Processing/Ath-
ena RIC, Greece

• Petya Osenova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

• Carla Parra Escartín, Dublin City University, ADAPT Centre, Ireland

• Victoria Rosén, University of Bergen, Norway

• Michael Rosner, University of Malta, Malta

• Manfred Sailer, University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany

• Agata Savary, University of Tours, Blois, France

• Veronika Vincze, University of Szeged, Hungary

• Shuly Wintner, University of Haifa, Israel
We are grateful for their valuable evaluations, comments and feedback, and to the proofreaders for their thorough work. Without their help, this book would not exist.

Special thanks go to Language Science Press (especially Sebastian Nordhoff and Stefan Müller for their continuous help and their engagement in the promotion of high-quality peer-reviewed open-access publication).

Yannick Parmentier and Jakub Waszczuk, Feb. 2019

## References

Angelov, Krasimir. 2019. Multiword expressions in multilingual applications within the Grammatical Framework. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 127–146. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579041

Constant, Mathieu, Gülşen Eryiğit, Carlos Ramisch, Mike Rosner & Gerold Schneider. 2019. Statistical MWE-aware parsing. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 147–182. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579043

de Lhoneux, Miryam, Omri Abend & Mark Steedman. 2019. Investigating the effect of automatic MWE recognition on CCG parsing. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 183–215. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579045

Dyvik, Helge, Gyri Smørdal Losnegaard & Victoria Rosén. 2019. Multiword expressions in an LFG grammar for Norwegian. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 69–108. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579037

Foufi, Vasiliki, Luka Nerima & Eric Wehrli. 2019. Multilingual parsing and MWE detection. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 217–237. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579047

Jacquet, Guillaume, Maud Ehrmann, Jakub Piskorski, Hristo Tanev & Ralf Steinberger. 2019. Cross-lingual linking of multi-word entities and language-dependent learning of multi-word entity patterns. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 269–297. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579049
Lichte, Timm, Simon Petitjean, Agata Savary & Jakub Waszczuk. 2019. Lexical encoding formats for multi-word expressions: The challenge of “irregular” regularities. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 1–33. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579033

Markantonatou, Stella, Niki Samaridi & Panagiotis Minos. 2019. Issues in parsing MWEs in an LFG/XLE framework. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 109–126. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579039

Semmar, Nasredine, Christophe Servan, Meriama Laib, Dhouha Bouamor & Morgane Marchand. 2019. Extracting and aligning multiword expressions from parallel corpora. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 239–268. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3264764

Sheinfux, Livnat Herzig, Tali Arad Greshler, Nurit Melnik & Shuly Wintner. 2019. Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity and flexibility. In Yannick Parmentier & Jakub Waszczuk (eds.), *Representation and parsing of multiword expressions: Current trends*, 35–68. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.2579035
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>
Chapter 1

Lexical encoding formats for
multi-word expressions: The challenge
of “irregular” regularities

Timm Lichte

University of Düsseldorf

Simon Petitjean

University of Düsseldorf

Agata Savary

University of Tours

Jakub Waszczuk

Université of Tours

University of Orléans

This chapter contributes a general overview and discussion of lexical encoding
formats for multi-word expressions (MWEs) that can be used in NLP systems, in
particular with large-scale grammars. The presentation is kept general in the sense
that we will try to elicit basic aspects of lexical encoding and then elaborate on
the specific sorts of challenges encountered when dealing with MWEs, especially
the “irregular” regularities mentioned in the title. These insights will eventually be
used to classify and evaluate different approaches to encoding. Even though this
kind of evaluation cannot be conclusive given the diversity of languages and tastes,
we will nevertheless argue in favor of fully flexible encoding formats exemplified
with PATR-II and XMG, as opposed to the fixed encoding formats of DuELME and
Walenty.

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /></figure>
# 1 Introduction

In this chapter, we seek to answer a seemingly simple question: what is it that makes an encoding format suitable for encoding multi-word expressions (MWEs) as part of an electronic resource? One quick answer could be: the encoding must be both machine- and human-readable, it must be factorized, and, last but not least, it must be able to cope with the specific irregularities of these objects. But what does this exactly mean? In fact, we claim that the casual use of “irregularity” actually threatens to cover a great deal of regularity, even though it is often a regularity that might look uncommon. In this chapter, we therefore aim to provide a more precise understanding of the underlying notions and concepts, and to apply this to a selection of formats which have a potential of encoding large classes of MWEs, including notably verbal ones, namely DuELME, Walenty, PATR-II and XMG. Thus, we are not aiming at the presentation of a comprehensive list of encoding formats ever proposed for MWEs, but rather want to elicit general aspects and typical examples thereof.

The chapter is structured as follows. We will first sort out general notions and principles of lexical encoding, starting with the notion of regularity in Section 2 and the notion of encoding in Section 3, and then turn to general virtues of lexical encoding formats in Section 4. Following this, in Section 5, we will go into more specific aspects, or rather challenges, that are to be dealt with when encoding MWEs. With this in view, we will then analyze existing formats by dividing them into two groups: fixed encoding formats will be treated in Section 6, and fully flexible ones in Section 7. In Section 8, we will finally compare the encoding formats and summarize the chapter.

# 2 On the notion of regularity

Regularity in the sense we are concerned with refers to the way properties are shared between the members of a set of objects. For now, we take a property to be just some atomic name and assume that every object is assigned exactly one subset of a given set of properties. We then say that a property *p* is **REGULAR** with respect to a set of objects *E*, iff *p* is shared by at least two members in *E*. Otherwise *p* is **IRREGULAR** (or **IDIOSYNCRATIC**). If *p* is regular but is shared only by a proper subset of *E*, we call *p* **NON-TRIVIALLY REGULAR**. By contrast, in the **TRIVIALLY REGULAR** case, *p* is regular and shared by all the objects in *E*. Here, *p* can be removed without harm because it does not distinguish any two objects in *E*. Sets of properties can be treated accordingly, hence a property set *P* is regular, if it is a subset of property sets of at least two objects in *E*. We then extend the notion of
regularity to objects by calling an object regular, if it only has regular properties and property sets, and otherwise irregular. Finally, this simplistic formalization allows for a straightforward characterization of the DEGREE OF REGULARITY, for example, in terms of likelihood (how likely is the property set of an object given a property distribution in the underlying object set) and diversity (how many property sets are found in an object set).

This notion of (ir)regularity implies that it is impossible to determine once and for all whether the properties of certain objects are regular or irregular, simply because the set of conceivable properties and objects is unbounded. In other words, the whole business of telling apart regularity from irregularity hinges on the selection of properties along with a specific set of objects.

Applying this to linguistics, the traditional view on the division of labor between syntax and lexicon is only valid for a specific set of linguistic objects, namely words, phrases and sentences, and a specific set of “syntactic” properties. Only on these premises is it valid to say that syntax is the realm of regularity whereas the lexicon is the collecting point for irregular aspects. To give an example, one could consider phrase structure rules as properties of words, phrases and sentences, depending on whether the phrase structure rules can be used to derive them. According to this set of properties, the words would be derived only by idiosyncratic rules that cannot be used to derive any other word. Hence, the set of words (= the lexicon) would not be fully regular, other than the sets of phrases and sentences (= the syntax). However, when taking other properties into account such as semantic, morphological and phonological ones, this division becomes blurred quite easily.

Similarly, if an MWE (or some property of it) is called “irregular”, this can have at least one of three possible reasons: (i) the set of objects is sufficiently restricted (e.g., by contrasting the MWE with non-MWEs only), or (ii) the set of properties is sufficiently extended (e.g., by taking into account very specific properties of the MWE), or (iii) the property set of the MWE is relatively unlikely and “irregular” is assigned a likelihood related meaning. In all three cases, there is actually a high risk of overlooking or neglecting some regularities, even more since we are dealing with objects that have not been in the center of interest in most of the mainstream grammar theories. This gives a hint of how we want “irregular regularities” from the title to be understood: as regularities that concern unusual properties. The assumption throughout this chapter will be that the irregularity of MWEs can be attributed to very few properties concerning the syntax-semantics interface, while there is a great deal of non-trivially regular properties that are shared across MWEs and permeate all levels of linguistic descriptions.
## 3 The most basic encoding format

Given what has been said in the last section, it should be fairly easy to see that the most basic encoding format of the properties of an MWE is via **PROPERTY NAME SETS**. Two examples for *kick the bucket* and *spill beans* are shown in (1):

(1) a. kick-the-bucket :=
{NP₀ V NP₁, NP₁.Det.the, NP₁.N bucket, V.kick, meaning=die}

b. spill-beans :=
{NP₀ V NP₁, NP₁.N beans, V.spill, passive, meaning=divulge}

Even if the property names seem to have some compositional structure (NP₁. Det.the means that the determiner of the object NP is *the*), they are chosen here for purely mnemonic reasons – one could have equally written something al- phabetically innocent like *p*₂₃. So, in order to proceed, what is needed is an IN- TERPRETATION FUNCTION from property names to objects of whatever target for- malism is chosen. Essentially, this is the characteristic of any encoding format, even the more sophisticated ones. Of course, there is some variance as to how close the encoding format is related to the target formalism. Daelemans & van der Linden (1992) refer to this aspect as notational adequacy. But be aware that, in our view, the adequacy of a lexical encoding format is multi-aspectual (see Figure 1 on page 6) and ultimately *user-oriented*. We will elaborate more on this in Section 4.

Speaking of the adequacy of property name sets, there are, in fact, some at- tractive properties of this very simple way of encoding: (i) it is very flexible in terms of adding and removing property names and adapting the interpretation function to some target formalism; (ii) it makes empirically largely neutral de- scriptions available; (iii) it is conceptually lean and inviting for formal novices because the main data structures are just ordinary sets. On the other hand, it is obvious that nobody would seriously make use of property name sets when encoding a large electronic lexicon – at least not without a tool that helps to ensure correctness by accounting for, and therefore encoding underlying gener- alizations, that is, patterns of co-occurrence among properties. Furthermore, one would need tools to specify and carry out the interpretation function. In our view, this does not only hold for pure property name sets; the actual encoding format is *always* surrounded by tools mediating towards the human user, the target for- malism or the electronic resource – to what degree depends on the encoding format in question (see Section 4).

A closely related but more transparent encoding format is based on tables in which the rows correspond to lexical entries, or any other sort of object, and
<table><caption>Table 1: Table encoding of the property name sets in (1)</caption><thead><tr><th>ID</th><th>NP<sub>0</sub> V NP<sub>1</sub></th><th>NP<sub>1</sub>.det</th><th>NP<sub>1</sub>.N</th><th>V</th><th>passive</th><th>meaning</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>kick-the-bucket</td><td>+</td><td>the</td><td>bucket</td><td>kick</td><td>-</td><td>die</td></tr><tr><td>spill-beans</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>bean</td><td>spill</td><td>+</td><td>divulge</td></tr></tbody></table>

the columns to properties. Binary cell values then indicate whether a property holds for an object or not. This format has gained some popularity, for example, through the extensive work of Maurice Gross (and colleagues) within his lexicon-grammar framework (Gross 1994). While lexicon-grammar matrices are binary, at least for the most part, a larger range of cell values helps to yield a more succinct matrix. This is shown in Table 1 which translates the property sets from (1). Needless to say, for any such non-binary matrix, there is an equivalent binary one with a larger number of columns or properties.

The table format makes the presentation of property name sets more readable, but apart from this, it comes with very similar methodological implications: it is suitable for collecting observations, but it cannot express recurring patterns within these observations, that is, a theory. For this, and thus also for ensuring correctness and completeness, additional tools are needed.

# 4 General virtues of lexical encoding formats

The preceding section showed that certain encoding formats stand out in terms of simplicity and accessibility, but also manifest critical drawbacks as to usability and expressivity. This section tries to sort out more systematically the diverse and sometimes contradicting virtues an encoding format can have. The cause of diversity is not hard to pinpoint: it is the interface status of encoding formats, as illustrated in Figure 1, with similarly diverse conjugates, namely a human user, a lexical object and a lexical resource.

## 4.1 Encoding virtues with respect to a lexical object

We already learned in Sections 2 and 3 that the simplest conception of a lexical object and an encoding format is a set of properties or property names. Let $P_i$ be the property set of a lexical object. An encoding of $P_i$ is a property name set $P_i^e$ together with an encoding function which maps $P_i$ onto $P_i^e$. Hence, the encoding examples given in (1) on page 4 are actually accompanied by an imagined lexical
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Interface aspects of lexical encoding</figcaption></figure>

object and an encoding function. It is furthermore important to keep in mind that, for now, we ignore inferential means of encoding formats that help to express generalizations, that is, we assume that encodings are fully resolved.

Based on this understanding of encoding, the encoding virtues are easy to see and capture, namely, the encoding of a property set $P_i$ should be complete and concise. An encoding (function) is **COMPLETE** *iff* every property of $P_i$ is mapped onto a property name of $P_i^e$. Thus the encoding function is injective. On the other hand, an encoding is **CONCISE** *iff* for every encoding property $P_i^e$ there is a source property $p_i$ such that $p_i^e$ is the encoding of $p_i$. Here, the encoding is surjective. In other words, no property name is added unmotivatedly. Of course, an encoding should be both complete and concise, and consequently the encoding function should be bijective. This implies that distinctions made in $P_i$ are minimally preserved in the encoding of $P_i$.

To give an example, Table 1 is a complete encoding of the property sets in (1). Yet it is not perfectly concise: the property set of *kick-the-bucket* does not have a passive feature, while there is a passive cell in the table encoding. Similarly, the NP₁ det cell in the encoding of *spill-beans* does not have a corresponding property in the source set. Still, the encoding in Table 1 appears to be only slightly less concise than the original property sets in (1), and moreover the table encoding is (in most cases) more accessible for the human eye. This teaches us two things: (i) the validity of some encoding virtues can be a matter of degree, and (ii) they may conflict with other encoding virtues.

But before turning to possibly conflicting encoding virtues having to do with other aspects of encoding, let us finally have a look at the encoding of *sets* of lexical objects. Here, it is clearly desirable for an encoding to be **CONSISTENT**, simply meaning that the relation between the properties appearing in all the lexical objects under consideration and the target properties of the encoding is functional as well. This clearly holds for the encoding in Table 1 where identical properties are encoded as identical cell values within the same row.
## 4.2 Encoding virtues with respect to a human user

When it comes to the human user, a lexical encoding should be transparent, flexible and sufficiently powerful to capture generalizations.

By **TRANSPARENT** we mean that the human user should be able to map the encoding back to the source set of lexical properties. Needless to say, the degree of transparency very much depends on the taste and reading habits of the user in question. It could well be, although it is rather unlikely, that some users will feel more comfortable with plain property sets also when dealing with larger lexicons. Depending on the degree of training, it is even imaginable that users become fluent in rather opaque encoding languages that make use of property names such as $p_{23}$. This is, of course, not what we consider desirable: lexical encodings should not come with notational idiosyncrasies that keep novices away or are prone to lead to encoding errors (e.g., by misremembering $p_{23}$). Thus, since we are dealing with computational lexicons, we conceive an encoding language as transparent *iff* it is (i) mnemonic as to the property names and their denoted properties and (ii) precise by means of a rigorous denotational semantics to avoid vagueness and thus inconsistencies.

Since transparency is so important to the human user, but at the same time human users and also lexical objects can differ to a great deal, another crucial virtue of encoding formats is **FLEXIBILITY**. Lexical encoding usually is an incremental process where unforeseen properties can be encountered or the denotation of a property may change over time. A flexible encoding format allows the user to freely choose property names and to include new properties on the fly.<fnref n="1" />

Closely related to flexibility is the **POWER TO GENERALIZE**. With an increasing number of lexical objects that are encoded in a lexicon, usually also the desire to factorize the property sets increases in order to avoid redundancy. In other words, one would like to group properties and assign them collectively. Again, the human encoder should be free to choose the content and name of property subsets, or, more technically speaking, the parts of encodings should be reusable at any level of representation and detail. What may sound like a nice add-on is in fact a necessary prerequisite to express any non-trivial lexical generalization, such as that a passive construction does not include an accusative object.

Finally, we can consider an encoding format to be **IMPLEMENTATION-FRIENDLY** *iff* there exist tools that assist a human user with encoding large sets of lexical objects, or with verifying these encodings. This virtue already touches upon one aspect that will be also dealt with in the next section, which is the existence of software tools that help to convert lexical encodings into a lexical resource.

<footnote n="1">¹Of course, flexibility also helps to keep the encoding complete in the sense of Section 4.1.</footnote>
4.3 Encoding virtues with respect to a lexical resource

A lexical resource is an electronic representation of lexical encodings that can
be (more or less) directly used in NLP applications. Accordingly, the virtue of
ELECTRONIC VERSATILITY assigned to lexical encoding formats describes the rel-
ative ease with which a corresponding lexical encoding can be converted into a
lexical resource. This easiness can allude to at least two different aspects; either
the properties of existing conversion tools or the engineering task to produce
them. Ultimately, what really matters when mapping a lexical encoding to an
electronic resource is the mere existence of software tools to achieve this. Obvi-
ously, this is not a property of the encoding format itself, but a property of its
interface with the specific format of an intended lexical resource. Thus, in this
view, an encoding format would be electronically versatile whenever there exist
many (and among them the desired) conversion tools. From the perspective of
the programmer, however, electronic versatility has a different implication: it is
rather related to the efforts it takes to implement such a conversion tool from
scratch.

Even worse, it’s certainly hard to say something conclusive about electronic
versatility in global terms, as there is no true one-to-one relation. NLP applica-
tions can vary distinctively in their interface specifications, and therefore there
is rather a one-to-many relation between a particular lexical encoding and the
lexical resources that one might wish to derive from it. In the simplest case, the
lexical encoding can act as the lexical resource proper. Yet, presumably in the
majority of cases, the lexical encoding will be preprocessed and converted into
something less user-friendly. This is most obvious in graphically enhanced en-
coding methods where the lexical resource is derived from the underlying, non-
graphical representation. But, of course, this also holds for interchange formats
such as LMF (Francopoulo et al. 2006), which are meant to provide a mediating
standard and rely on cumbersome XML or the like.

Another relevant property of the interface between the lexical encoding and
the lexical resource seems to be whether the generalizations expressed in the
lexical encoding are preserved during conversion, or whether only fully resolved
entries are included. From the point of view of the encoder, the availability of
generalizations seems to be preferred, but this is a virtue of the lexical resource
proper, and also depends on the targeted NLP application.

Summing up, electronic versatility is an important but also complex virtue that
covers orthogonal, or even conflicting, aspects of the interface between lexical
encodings and lexical resources. Moreover, given the heterogeneity of the latter
ones, a general verdict is often difficult to obtain.
## 5 Challenges posed by MWEs

From a general point of view, MWEs are in no way different from any other lexical object: they can be encoded using property name sets as in (1) or using the table format from Table 1. But what is then so challenging about MWEs? On the one hand, it is the peculiarity of the affected properties, for example, the property $NP_1.Det.the$ in the property set of *kick the bucket*. This is challenging with respect to the flexibility of an encoding format. On the other hand, the interactions between these and other properties pose a challenge to the power of an encoding format to generalize. In this section, we will go through some of these challenging properties and interactions, confining ourselves mainly to syntax and morphology.

Let us first examine a multilingual set of MWE examples<fnref n="2" /> together with their peculiarities, which the MWE-related literature often calls irregularities or idiosyncrasies. In what follows, each property is either **DEFECTIVE** or **RESTRICTIVE**. In the former case, it excludes a literal interpretation of a given object. In the latter, it reduces the number of possible surface realizations of a given object with respect to the corresponding literal interpretation.

1. defective agreement, e.g. in (FR) *grands-mères* 'grandmothers' the adjective does not agree with the noun in gender, unlike most regular adjectival modifiers;

2. restrictive agreement, e.g. (EN) *to cross one's fingers* imposes agreement in person, number and gender between the possessive pronoun and the subject: *#I cross his fingers*

3. restrictive paradigm, e.g. (PL) *zjadlbym konia z kopytami* (lit. *I would eat a horse with its hooves*) 'I am very hungry' can only occur in conditional mood: *#zjem konia z kopytami* 'I will eat a horse with its hooves';

4. defective subcategorization, i.e. imposing a subcategorization frame which the MWE headword does not admit outside MWEs, e.g. (PL) *dobrze mu z oczy patrzy* (lit. *well him looks from eyes*) 'he looks like a good person' prohibits a subject: *\*uczciwość dobrze mu z oczy patrzy* (lit. *honesty well him looks from eyes*), while *patrzy* 'looks' as a standalone verb always requires one;

<footnote n="2">²Each example is preceded by its language code in parentheses. The hash (#) character signals the loss of the idiomatic reading due to a missing property, while the asterisk (*) means ungrammaticality.</footnote>
5. restrictive diathesis, e.g. (EN) *to kick the bucket* does not allow passivization: #*the bucket was kicked*, while (FR) *les carottes sont cuites* (lit. *the carrots are cooked*) 'the situation is hopeless' only allows passive voice: #*on cuit les carottes* (lit. *one cooks the carrots*) ';

6. restrictive choice of determiners and modifiers, e.g. (FR) *avoir raison* (lit. *to have reason*) 'to be right' allows neither a determiner nor a modifier of the nominal component: #*avoir (une) raison évidente* 'to have an obvious reason';

7. restrictive dependencies between determiners and modifiers: (FR) *avoir en-vie* (lit. *to have desire*) 'to feel like' admits no determiner for the predicative noun *envie* 'desire', if it takes no argument or modifier, or if it takes an infinitival argument governed by the preposition *de* 'of': *j'ai envie de le faire* (lit. *I have desire of to do it*) 'I feel like doing it'; but if the noun is modified by an adjective, the determiner is compulsory: *j'ai une envie folle de le faire* (lit. *I have a crazy desire of to do it*) 'I feel a lot like doing it';

8. restrictive modification, e.g. (FR) *mener une vie (de riche)* 'to live a life (of a rich)' imposes an adjectival or a prepositional modifier on the nominal: #*il mène une vie* 'he leads a life';

9. restrictive linearization, e.g. (EN) *drink and drive* requires the strict order of its coordinated verbs, violating this constraint leads to the loss of the idiomatic reading: #*drive and drink*;

10. restrictive lexical selection, i.e. imposing particular lexical realizations of certain syntactic arguments, e.g. (EN) *to pull someone's leg* requires the head verb *pull* with a direct object headed by *leg*: #*to pull one's arm/mem-ber*.

Note that while the above properties are perceived as unexpected or unpredictable, they are most often shared with other MWEs, therefore, in our understanding (cf. Section 2), they are regular. To make this more precise, recall that regularity of a property is not absolute but relative to a given set of objects *E*. In linguistic modeling, we tend to group objects into sets based on their similarities rather than their discrepancies. For instance, in valence-oriented modeling (such as Walenty or PART-II described in Sections 6.2 and 7.1, respectively, or IDION and the MWE lexicon of NorGram discussed in Markantonatou et al. (2019 [this volume]) and Dyvik et al. (2019 [this volume]) respectively), verbal constructions are grouped according to the lemma of their head verb, whereas in more
constructionist approaches (like DUELME and XMG, introduced in Sections 6.1 and 7.2), they are grouped by the syntactic structure of their subcategorization frames. Such properties used to group objects become trivially regular properties of these groups (since they are shared by all objects of a group). Most other properties have a varying degree of regularity and are only rarely truly idiosyncratic.

As an example, let us consider a set of English verbal expressions, each of which is headed by a verb, taking a subject and a direct object, and admitting modifiers, e.g. (EN) *John pulled the heavy door*. In this set, the property of allowing any head verb with the proper subcategorization frame is much more regular than restricting it to the verb *kick*. Furthermore, the property of allowing passivization is more regular than prohibiting passive voice, like in *John kicked the bucket* 'John died'. Also, allowing a possessive determiner of the object, as in *John pushed the/my door* is more regular than imposing it, as in *John broke his/her/our fall* 'John made his/her/our fall less forceful', which itself is more regular than imposing a possessive which agrees with the subject, as in *John crossed his fingers*. This last property is, however, still regular. In order for it to be idiosyncratic, *John crossed his fingers* 'John wished luck' and *John held his tongue* 'John refrained from expressing his view' could not co-occur in the same object set, which would hinder the usability of such a set for linguistic modeling. Without resorting to such artificial choice of object sets, Property 10 is one of the rare truly idiosyncratic properties, since it is usually specific to one MWE only, except in case of truly ambiguous MWEs like *to go on* 'to continue, to happen'.

Note finally that one MWE usually exhibits different properties of varying degrees of regularity. For instance, while the components of (FR) *grands-mères* 'grandmothers' do not agree in gender, they do agree in number. While (PL) *zjadłbym konia z kopytami* (lit. I would eat a horse with its hooves) 'I am very hungry' requires conditional mood, it has a highly regular inflection for person and number. While the object in (EN) *to pull someone's leg* is partly lexicalized, the subject is not. While (EN) *to kick the bucket* cannot be passivized, it does admit a restricted number of internal modifiers as in *to kick the proverbial bucket*, etc.

As a conclusion, the challenging nature of MWE is manyfold: (i) regularity of properties of MWEs is scale-wise, (ii) properties of different degrees of regularity co-occur in each MWE, (iii) truly idiosyncratic properties are rare (under the usual similarity-oriented grouping strategies), (iv) shared properties can be unforeseen (cf. Property 7), so listing them all in advance is hard. A general-purpose encoding format should possibly face all these challenges simultaneously. Note also the similarity of observations (i) and (ii) with the notion of a *flexibility continuum* in idioms, discussed in Sheinfux et al. (2019 [this volume]).
# 6 Fixed MWE encoding formats

While lexical approaches dedicated to a large variety of MWEs have a relatively long linguistic tradition, notably with Gross (1986) and Mel'čuk et al. (1988), NLP-oriented work on lexical encoding of MWEs has mainly dealt with continuous instances (Savary 2008). More recently, proposals have been put forward which also take verbal MWEs into account whose components are discontinuously linearized. Here, we study two instances of such approaches tailored to specific languages: DuELME (Grégoire 2010) for Dutch and Walenty (Przepiórkowski et al. 2014) for Polish. They stand out as: (i) having been designed with a (relative) theory-neutrality in mind, (ii) having resulted in MWE lexicons of several thousands of entries, (iii) having been coupled with real-size grammars, so as to test their usability for parsing. At the same time, DueLME and Walenty can be characterized as fixed encoding formats in the sense that their encoding language (basically the set of property names and their interpretation) cannot be freely chosen or extended.

## 6.1 DuELME

DuELME (Dutch Electronic Lexicon of Multiword Expressions, Grégoire 2010) is an electronic lexicon comprising roughly 5,000 Dutch multiword expressions.<fnref n="3" /> It distinguishes two sorts of descriptions, pattern descriptions and MWE descriptions, which are composed of non-intersecting sets of predefined fields. Patterns, also called *parameterized equivalence classes*, represent mainly the syntactic structures of MWEs and the part-of-speech tags of their leaves. MWE descriptions express MWE-specific lexical and morpho-syntactic constraints.

Figure 2 shows a sample pattern (Lines 1–5), called *ec1*, and a MWE entry (Lines 7–11) assigned to it: (NL) *zijn kansen waarnemen* (lit. *one's chances perceive*) 'to seize the opportunity'.

The pattern describes expressions headed by a verb, taking a direct object consisting of a fixed determiner and a modifiable noun. The POS-entitled Line 3 lists the parts of speech of MWE components. The PATTERN-entitled Line 4 shows the syntactic structure, roughly, as a dependency tree where syntactic categories (VP, NP, D, N1⁴, V) and dependency labels (*obj1*, *det*, *hd*) are marked explicitly, and some of the leaves are indexed (1, 2, 3) so as to be matched with components of a

<footnote n="3">³http://duelme.clarin.inl.nl/</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴The N1 category denotes an NP of which some elements are lexically fixed, but which is still subject to standard grammar rules such as agreement</footnote>
1 Lexical encoding formats for multi-word expressions

1 % Pattern description

2 PATTERN_NAME ec1

3 POS d n v

4 PATTERN [.VP [.obj1:NP [.det:D (1) ] [.hd:N1 (2) ]] [.hd:V (3) ]]

5 DESCRIPTION Expressions headed by a verb, taking a direct object
consisting of a fixed determiner and a modifiable noun.

6

7 % MWE description

8 EXPRESSION zijn kansen waarnemen

9 CL zijn kans[pl] waar_nemen[part]

10 PATTERN_NAME ec1

11 EXAMPLE hij heeft zijn kansen waargenomen

<caption>Figure 2: DuELME pattern description ec1 (from Grégoire 2007b) and MWE description of (NL) *zijn kansen waarnemen* (lit. *one's chances perceive*) 'to seize the opportunity' (from Grégoire 2010)</caption>

particular MWE. Thus, the components *zijn* ‘one’s’, *kansen* ‘chances’ and *waarnemen* ‘perceive’ of the MWE in Lines 8–9 are implicitly co-indexed with the *det:D*, *hd:N1* and *hd:V* nodes in the ec1 pattern. Moreover, the component list (CL) in Line 9 lists the MWE-specific values of the “parameters” for the pattern, i.e. the lemmas of all components, as well as some morphosyntactic constraints, here: *kans* ‘chance’ must be in plural (*pl*), and *waarnemen* ‘perceive’ is a separable particle verb (*part*).

This approach is constructionist in the sense that MWEs are grouped into sets
based on their structure (rather than their headword). While the syntax of pat-
terns seems theory-specific, they might be seen rather as identifiers of equiva-
lence classes, allowing to group MWEs of the same structure, whatever the syn-
tactic formalism used to express this structure.<fnref n="5" /> DuELME’s view of the regular-
ity is binary, which is reflected by its two-level description paradigm. Namely,
it is assumed that each type of a syntactic structure has some “generally reg-
ular” properties covered by general grammar rules. These properties are not de-
scribed in the lexicon but symbolized by patterns. Conversely, the MWE-specific
properties are described in MWE entries. For instance, while the number of *kans*
‘chance’ is restricted to plural in Line 9, its other grammatical features are not
specified since they are supposedly governed by grammar rules. This principle
avoids some grammar vs. lexicon redundancy. Note, however, that the choice of
properties to be included in patterns is rather arbitrary and in most cases leads

<footnote n="5">⁵Jan Odijk, personal communication 21 September 2015.Odijk, Jan@Odijk, Jan</footnote>
to partly redundant descriptions. For instance, the part property in Line 9 is
shared with other MWEs containing separable particle verbs, and has to be spec-
ified for each of them. This redundancy at the level of MWE descriptions could
be avoided, if the ec1 pattern were restricted to d-n-v constructions containing
separable particle verbs only. This would, however, require a new pattern with
the same structure but a different verb type selection, in order to cover e.g. (NL)
zijn debuut maken (lit. to make one's debut), which would lead to redundancy at
the level of patterns. Since there is no notion of reference, or reuse, among the 141
pattern descriptions that DuELME comprises (Grégoire 2007b), such redundancy
could not be avoided.

As a conclusion, the distinction between patterns and MWE descriptions in-
troduces a limited degree of factorization. While some syntactic constraints, e.g.
dependencies, are mentioned more or less explicitly in patterns, some other syn-
tactic properties are implicit (supposed to be covered by the grammar and known
to the NLP system). Some specific constraints, e.g. restrictive agreement, diathe-
sis, determination, modification and linearization, discussed in Points 2 and 5–9
in Section 5, seem not possible to express. The interpretation of the encoding
is led partly by the syntax of patterns and entries, and partly by textual docu-
mentation (Grégoire 2007a), where it is sometimes hard to distinguish formal
properties and inference rules from methodological strategies and recommenda-
tions, i.e. the transparency level of the format is relatively low. Lastly, the format
is not flexible, i.e. extending the set of describable properties can only be done
ad hoc rather than within an established framework with a clear denotational
semantic.

It is worth noting that DuELME benefits from a standard LMF format (Odijk
2013), which makes it more electronically versatile, even if it does not seem im-
plementation friendly in the sense that tools supporting lexicographic encoding
in this format do not seem publicly available.

6.2 Walenty

A quite different encoding style is found in Walenty, a Polish large-scale valence
dictionary that includes an elaborate phraseological component (Przepiórkowski
et al. 2014; 2016). It contains over 100,000 syntactic frames, 14,000 of which are
verbal frames with lexicalized arguments, i.e. verbal MWEs. An entry in Walenty
contains a headword (here a verb), followed by a list of argument descriptions
(separated by +).

Figure 3 shows a (slightly simplified) sample MWE entry of (PL) *dobrze [KO-MUŚ] z oczu patrzy* (lit. *well someone.DAT from eyes looks*) 'someone looks like a
1 patrzeć: np.dat)+advp(misc)+lex(prepnp(z,gen),pl,'oko',natr)

<caption>Figure 3: Description of *dobrze* [KOMUŚ] *z oczu patrzy* (lit. *well someone.DAT from eyes looks*) 'someone looks like a good person' in Walenty</caption>

good person', which exhibits several interesting constraints. Firstly, the syntactic subject is prohibited here, which is expressed simply by omitting the subj argument in the valence frame. Secondly, the indirect object in dative is compulsory (np.dat)). These two properties are unusual, since *patrzeć* 'look', as a stand-alone verb, does take a subject and it only admits an indirect object with prepositional complements headed by na 'on' and w 'in'. Thirdly, the adverb *dobrze* 'well' can have some variations, e.g. *źle* [KOMUŚ] *z oczu patrzy* (lit. *evilly someone.DAT from eyes looks*) 'someone looks like an evil person', therefore it is encoded by a more generic, non lexicalized, advp(misc) requirement of a “true” adverbial clause.<fnref n="6" /> Finally, within the lexicalized prepositional group (lex(prepnp(...)), which does not admit modification (natr), the preposition z 'from' governing the genitive case ((z,gen)) requires its nominal complement to be a plural form of the lemma *oko* 'eye' (pl, 'oko').

This approach is valence-based, i.e. MWEs are seen as particular syntactic frames of their head verbs, in which some arguments happen to be (at least partly) lexicalized. Regularity is implicit: “generally regular” properties are supposed to be covered by grammar rules and only MWE-specific properties are expressed in lexicon entries. E.g., while the plural number of *oko* 'eye' is specified, its case is not, since it is supposed to regularly agree with its governing preposition (which requires genitive case). This principle is similar to the one admitted in DuELME (cf. Section 6.1), here however, no equivalence classes are used, so the syntactic structure, understood as the list of arguments (possibly structured themselves) required by the head verb, is encoded in each entry (similarly to the IDON lexicon discussed in Markantonatou et al. (2019 [this volume]), which leads to redundancy in the lexicon. For instance, entries for all MWEs taking a non-lexicalized subject, direct object and indirect object, and a partly lexicalized prepositional complement, contain the same sequence: subj{np(str)} + obj{np(str)} + {np inst)} + {lex(prepnp(...))}<fnref n="7" />. Some redundancy can, however, be avoided due to macros which encode some repetitive substructures. For

<footnote n="6">⁶A “true” adverbial clause cannot be realized by a prepositional nominal group.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷The str feature stands for a structural case. For the subject, it is usually nominative, but it turns to genitive when the expression is nominalized. For the direct object, it is accusative but it turns to genitive when it occurs under the scope of negation.</footnote>
instance, the `possp` macro encodes all possible realization of a possessive phrase, including nominal phrases with genitive and possessive determiners like *mój*, *czyjś*, *własny*, ... 'my, one's, one's own, ...'.

Some additional syntactic properties can be expressed on the level of the whole MWE, e.g. the fact that the head verb is perfective or imperfective, that the MWE must always contain negation, or that it can or cannot be passivized. Some other types of constraints, e.g. restrictive agreement, paradigm, determination, or linearization (cf. Points 2–3, 6–7 and 9 in Section 5), exceed Walenty’s expressive power. Therefore, one cannot express the fact that, in (PL) *dobrze* [KOMUŚ] z oczu *patrzy* (lit. *well someone.DAT from eyes looks*) 'someone looks like a good person', the head verb *patrzeć* 'look' is always in the 3rd person singular (any tense or mood), although it has a complete inflection paradigm as a stand-alone verb.<fnref n="8" /> Also, there is no means to specify that the adverb *dobrze* 'well' should usually precede the prepositional complement and the verb.<fnref n="9" /> Note, however, that a conservative extension of the formalism to include some of these constraints was proposed by Przepiórkowski et al. (2016).

The interpretation of the encoding is led partly by the syntax of entries and explicit macro extensions, and partly by the accompanying textual documentation. Some inferences remain unclear, e.g., some macros contain non-documented shortcuts, and some codes have no clear denotational semantics. The format is rather inflexible, that is, extending the set of describable properties can only be done ad hoc. Walenty does benefit from a standard interchange XML metaformat, namely TEI<fnref n="10" />, but does not provide its precise instantiation in terms of a DTD, RelaxNG or XML schema. Finally, it has a rather elaborate lexicographical support, with several user roles, where the existing entries can be browsed together with their corpus examples, and new entries can be added, corrected, compared, assigned to users, etc. (Nitoń et al. 2016). Recent developments couple Walenty with a Polish wordnet so as to enrich valency data with semantic frames.

# 7 Fully flexible encoding formats

What we mean by fully flexible is that properties, property names and inference rules (or macros) can be freely chosen – one consequence being that there are

<footnote n="8">⁸Impersonal (i.e. allowing no subject) finite verbs typically occur in the 3rd person singular in Polish, so the expression of this fact is probably left to the grammar. If so, then this fact seems implicit.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹A different word order would be considered as marked.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰Text Encoding Initiative: http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/</footnote>
usually many ways to implement an object within such an encoding format. In this section, we will show two exemplars of fully flexible encoding formats: the venerable PATR-II and the more recent XMG. The motivation for choosing these two encoding formats is twofold. On the one hand, both engage different notational means with a different denotational semantics; on the other hand, two extremes of modeling argument structure can be covered that were the focus of some debate recently, namely the lexical versus the phrasal approach (Müller & Wechsler 2014). In doing so, we will again, as in the preceding section, restrict ourselves to the tentative encoding of (NL) *zijn kansen waarnemen* ‘to seize the opportunity’ and (PL) *dobrze [KOMUŚ] z oczu patrzy* ‘someone looks like a good person’. The presentation will, we think, strengthen the view that MWEs should be better encoded with fully flexible encoding formats in order to obtain and maintain the virtues mentioned in Section 4.

## 7.1 PATR-II

A true classic, PATR-II (Shieber 1984; 1986) dates back to the early 80s and has greatly influenced the development of later encoding formats, for example LKB (Copestake 2002: 6), thanks to its notational transparency and conceptual rigor.<fnref n="11" /> The basic idea is simple: to enhance CFG rules with descriptions of untyped feature structures, which are then unified during rule applications. Hence, the models of PATR-II descriptions are just directed acyclic graphs with labeled nodes and edges. But the means of description are more elaborate and do also include templates, lexical rules and sometimes – depending on the PATR-II implementation – default inheritance.<fnref n="12" /> The encoding examples that we will give do not, however, make use of the full non-monotonic power of PATR-II, as lexical rules and default inheritance will be left out. On the other hand, we will follow the head-driven perspective of PATR-II in that MWEs will be encoded in their head only, that is, MWEs headed by a verb will essentially emerge from the encoding of their verbal component.<fnref n="13" />

<footnote n="11">¹¹A superficially similar encoding framework is DATR (Evans & Gazdar 1996). See Kilbury et al. (1991) for a comparison with PATR-II that also highlights the considerable differences between the two.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²Default inheritance is available, for example, in PC-PATR (McConnel 1997), which is a parser for PATR-II grammars developed at the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³The only previous work on encoding MWEs with PATR-II that we are aware of is found in Habert & Jaquemin (1995). There, the focus is on French nominal compunds like *verre à vin* ('wineglass').</footnote>
All this is exemplified for (NL) *zijn kansen waarnemen* in Figure 4. Templates are headed by *Define-as* constructs. The body of a template may either contain template names (or disjunctions thereof as in Line 33), from which the template inherits, or feature structure descriptions. Word entries such as the one of *waarnemen* at the bottom are similiar to templates but define the terminals of CFG rules. Keep in mind that *waarnemen* acts as the verbal head of the MWE, hence the templates in this example all describe the feature structure of *waarnemen* only. Also note that the features are chosen to keep the example as simple as possible – typically one would find subcategorization lists in PATR-II implementations.

In Figure 4, the first five templates (*Verb*, *Subject*, *Object*, *Intransitive*, and *Transitive*) just act as an example of how general properties, like being a transitive verb, *could* be factorized into even more general properties. Finally, the sixth template, *SubjectPossObjectAgreement*, is more immediately relevant to the MWE (NL) *zijn kansen waarnemen* since it captures the agreement of the subject with the possessive pronoun at the object. This is achieved by using the shared variable $1. Crucially, this template could be reused in many other MWEs such as (EN) *to do one's best*. Again, this is not to say that this sort of agreement should be treated in this way, but that it is *possible* to do so, choosing here just one of the many available options. In other words, the template *SubjectPossObjectAgreement* is an instance of one of such MWE-specific regularity that PATR-II is flexible enough to encode directly. Finally, in Figure 4, the template *ZijnKansenWaarnemen* inherits from the templates *Transitive* and *SubjectPossObjectAgreement*, and it adds further information on the shape and modifiability of the object and on the idiomatic semantics of the whole MWE.

Comparing the PATR-II encoding with the DuELME encoding from Figure 2, it becomes evident that PATR-II is more flexible at defining properties or factorizing what are called “patterns” in DuELME. The reason for this divergence of flexibility also lies in the fact that PATR-II descriptions come with a clear denotational semantics, which does not seem to be fixed for DuELME encodings. In fact, one could see this as an advantage of DuELME, taking it as a sign of desired neutrality. But then one must also accept intransparency and inflexibility, at least to some degree.

A tentative PATR-II encoding of (PL) *dobrze* [*KOMUŚ*] z oczu *patrzy* is presented in Figure 5. As explained in Section 5, the challenge with this MWE is a mixture of particular constraints regarding the subcategorization frame of the verb (*patrzy* ‘looks’ is used as an impersonal transitive) and the sentence initial linearization of the adverb. The encoding example in Figure 5 takes care of this by stipulating special features that would trigger the right CFG rules at the right
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4: PATR-II description (with PC-PATR notation) of (NL) *zijn kansen waarnemen* 'to seize the opportunity'</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5: PATR-II description (with PC-PATR notation) of (PL) *dobrze* [*KOMUŚ*] z oczu *patrzy* 'someone looks like a good person'</figcaption></figure>
time. Remember that the constraints on the occurrence of certain arguments can be encoded by using subcategorization lists in the usual way. This is left out in the example. Now, compared to the Walenty encoding in Figure 3, the corresponding PART-II template DobrzeZ0czuPatrzy is much more verbose, not only because it contains more information. But this should not be taken as a general disadvantage, as it can help to promote transparency.

Summing up, the examples provided here demonstrate that PATR-II does many important things right: it makes available a transparent, flexible enough encoding language; it has a well-defined denotational semantics; it includes means to arbitrarily factorize properties and to express generalizations even beyond strict monotonicity. In our view, this makes PATR-II better suited to encode MWEs than DuELME and Walenty *in the long run*, since it can integrate unforeseeable properties, regularities or encoding styles much easier.

Yet at the same time, encoding with PATR-II is subject to some severe restrictions:

* PATR-II does not seem to allow for templates to be embedded. Hence, templates can only be applied to the root of a feature structure description.

* Feature structures are untyped in PATR-II which makes them harder to be checked for consistency or to encode representations that rely on types.

* PATR-II allows one to describe full word forms as terminals of CFG rules, but it is not possible to analyze them further, that is, describe the underlying morphemes and how they combine. Consequently, it is at least tedious to describe morphological paradigms. This is something that, for example, DATR (Evans & Gazdar 1996) is better suited for.

* In PATR-II, word order constraints are accounted for by filtering CFG rules via features. Thus, it is not possible to state these constraints in just one place, but one has to think of which features prohibit or trigger the application of which CFG rules in which situation of a derivation.

Furthermore, as we said before, PATR-II chooses a lexical approach to argument structure in the sense of Müller & Wechsler (2014) where the argument structure emerges from lexical units and crucially determines the syntax. The other extreme, namely the phrasal approach to argument structure, rather puts emphasis on the syntactic side, assuming phrasal representations of argument structure that exist independently of lexical anchors. This latter approach better fits into the encoding format of XMG, which will be presented next.
## 7.2 eXtensible MetaGrammar

The framework of eXtensible MetaGrammar (XMG, Crabbé et al. 2013 and XMG2, Petitjean et al. 2016) most obviously differs from the ones of PATR-II, DuELME and Walenty in that it can be used to generate a wide range of linguistic resources. The variety of these resources is made possible by XMG's modularity and extensibility, allowing to create new dedicated compilers using adapted description languages. XMG is a multi paradigm language, as it manipulates programs (metagrammars) which make intensive use of logic (such as Prolog programs) and constraints. XMG also borrows some aspects from object-oriented programming, whose advantages in the context of linguistic knowledge description are discussed in Daelemans & De Smedt (1994). The most obvious example of such an aspect is that XMG descriptions are organized into CLASSES, which have encapsulated name spaces. Inheritance relations may hold between classes, and the scope of the identifiers is explicitly controlled, thanks to export statements. The crucial elements of a class are DIMENSIONS. Each of them is equipped with a description language, which is specifically adapted to the kind of structures needed in the dimension (trees, predicates, ...). Dimensions are compiled independently, thereby enabling the grammar writer to treat the levels of linguistic information separately. In the following, we will be using the dimension <syn> for the syntax and the more recent <frame> dimension for frame-semantic descriptions, skipping over other available dimensions. Note that <syn> contains tree descriptions where nodes may carry untyped feature structures, while <frame> comprises typed feature structure descriptions (Lichte & Petitjean 2015).

Figure 6 shows a part of a tentative XMG encoding of (NL) *zijn kansen waarne-men*. The first thing to notice when comparing the XMG description to the Du-ELME counterpart in Figure 2 is that there is no principled distinction between “patterns” and “MWE descriptions” (similarly to the PATR-II encoding in Figure 4). Rather, they are equally represented as classes, yet of varying specificity. Crucially, the classes stand in inheritance relations, here marked with the *import* statement. For example, the most basic class shown in Figure 6, *intransitive*, imports two other classes, *subject*[] and *verb*[] (cf. Line 2). On the other hand, *intransitive*[] is further handed down to *transitive*[], just adding *object*[]. Finally, *transitive*[] is imported into *subjectPossObjectAgreement[]* to add the compulsory agreement between the subject and the possessive pronoun of the object, and, in turn, this class is further imported into *zijnKansenWaarnemen*[], which is the class of the MWE proper. Hence, *subjectPossObjectAgreement[]* contains the more regular properties of the MWE, and *zijnKansenWaarnemen[]* the less regular ones. The corresponding inheritance hier-
<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6: XMG encoding of zijn kansen waarnemen ('to seize the opportunity')</figcaption></figure>

archy of the used classes is shown in Figure 7, in which the MWE shows up as leaf, i.e. as the most specific class. Note that this inheritance hierarchy mirrors the one of the PATR-II encoding in Figure 4.

In general, classes that correspond to irregular or weakly regular properties of lexical entries appear as leaves, whereas more regular aspects are assigned to dominating classes. Hence, “patterns” can be arbitrarily factorized, which is in sharp contrast to the DuELME encoding format. Another difference is the general availability of variables in XMG, which are commonly prefixed with a question mark. This is exploited in `subjectPossObjectAgreement[]` when expressing
<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7: Inheritance hierarchy of XMG classes according to the code in Figure 6</figcaption></figure>

agreement between the subject and the possessive determiner using the variables ?NUM, ?PERS, and ?GEND (cf. Lines 14 and 16). Variables are also used for sharing information between dimensions, for example between <syn> and <frame>, which holds the idiomatic meaning of the MWE, in class zijn_kansen_waarnemen[]: the unification variable ?I here is the frame referent of the subject, and consequently appears both in the syntactic node ?Subj and as the value of the feature actor in the semantic frame. Finally, features and variables can be freely added to XMG, for example, features to indicate constraints on modification (modifiable) or passivization.

Remember that the descriptions in <syn> are tree descriptions, which are able to express the usual, potentially underspecified node relations regarding dominance and precedence. For example, >>+ (cf. Lines 3, 7 and 8 in Figure 6) expresses the transitive, non-reflexive precedence relation between two nodes of a tree. As the tree descriptions can be underspecified in this way, the denotation can be a set of trees. XMG comes with a solver for these descriptions, and a viewer, both of which are available online.<fnref n="14" /> Hence, the solutions can be inspected independently of a specific application belonging to some specific framework.

The preliminary XMG encoding of (PL) dobrze [KOMUS] z oczu patrzy is presented in Figure 8.<fnref n="15" />

<footnote n="14">¹⁴http://xmg.phil.hhu.de/</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵We owe the frame semantic representation in Figure 8 to Rainer Osswald.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_14.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8: XMG encoding of dobrze [KOMUŚ] z oczu patrzy (‘someone looks like a good person’)</figcaption></figure>

Again, the class that corresponds to the MWE, `dobrze_z_oczu_patrzy[]`, inherits from more abstract (and “regular”) classes, which can be also seen from the inheritance hierarchy in Figure 9.

Here, the `impers_intransitive[]` class encodes the fact that the subject is absent (as only the verb phrase and its subordinate verb are listed), and that the (impersonal) verb must occur in the third person singular. Finally, the `dobrze_z_oczu_patrzy[]` class reuses the previous class and adds the compulsory adverb. Moreover, certain nodes, identified by shared variables, are further specified for lemmas (in double quotes) and all weakly regular morphological constraints are
<figure><img src="image_15.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9: Inheritance hierarchy of XMG classes according to the code in Figure 8</figcaption></figure>

listed. Notably, the noun governed by the preposition *z* 'from' is restricted to the lemma *oko* 'eye' and to plural, and its modification is prohibited. Note that the genitive case of *oko* is not specified in this class, as it is already part of the agreement rules which were inherited from the *pp_object[]* class. Linearization constraints on the adverb appear in Lines 19–20. The example also includes dominance constraints in Lines 17–18 that use -> to describe an immediate dominance relation. Finally, we use unification variable once again to express the fact that the semantic referent of the syntactic subject (?I) is the theme of the semantic frame of the MWE. This frame can be read as follows: a perceiver ?P, left unspecified, has an impression about ?I, and this impression is that ?I has the property of being a good person. Thus, all the necessary constraints imposed on this MWE can be covered at various abstraction levels, while factorizing information in such a way that the *dobrze_z_oczu_patrzy[]* class only contains the constraints which are specific to the MWE or at least weakly regular.

By way of conclusion, let us compare the presented encoding examples for PATR-II and XMG in more detail. Despite their large commonalities when contrasting them with fixed encoding formats such as DuELME and Walenty, PATR-II and XMG can differ considerably in some of their properties.

* In the given examples, XMG is constructionist in the sense that it models phrasal units, whereas PATR-II assumes a head-driven (or “lexicalist”, Müller & Wechsler 2014) approach to representing argument structure. However, this is not to say that XMG cannot be also used in a head-driven way.

* XMG supports type inferences, hence the unification of typed feature structures. In PATR-II, feature structures are strictly untyped.

* XMG comes with different description languages as well as different types of models, namely trees, typed feature structures, expressions of predicate logic and even strings. PATR-II is restricted to the description of feature structures and CFG rules.
* XMG allows for directed inheritance in the sense that inherited descriptions can be added to any part of the description, not just the root part as with PATR-II.

* XMG is more verbose than PATR-II because it is designed to implement a truly object-oriented programming style with encapsulated namespaces etc. When considering just toy examples, it is admittedly just a matter of taste whether this is something worthwhile. In large-scale grammars and lexicons, however, the advantage can be more substantial by helping to ensure consistency due to the extra checking done by the solver.

In sum, XMG seems to be generally more powerful than PATR-II, but also more cumbersome in the way of encoding.

## 8 Summary

Table 2 shows a comparison of the encoding formalisms presented in Sections 6 and 7 with respect to the encoding virtues described in Sections 4.2 and 4.3. We omit the encoding virtues with respect to a lexical object (cf. Section 4.1). They are mostly related to a particular lexical encoding and not to the underlying formalism.

<table><caption>Table 2: Ranking of encoding formats in different categories – lexical encoding virtues – with special focus on MWEs. The range of values is from 1 to 4, where 1 means that we judge the corresponding format as relatively the best in the given category.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">human user oriented</th><th>lexical resource oriented</th></tr><tr><th>TRANSPARENCY</th><th>FLEXIBILITY</th><th>POWER TO GENERALIZE</th><th>IMPLEMENTATION FRIENDLINESS</th><th>ELECTRONIC VERSATILITY</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>DuELME</td><td>4</td><td>4</td><td>3</td><td>2</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Walenty</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>PATR-II</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>4</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>XMG</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>3</td></tr></tbody></table>

Descriptions in PATR-II and XMG come with clear denotational semantics, which makes these two formalisms stand out as highly transparent in comparison with their less flexible counterparts. Transparency of the Walenty's encoding format is relatively high. Due to its conciseness, it is possible to read, analyze
and write new entries relatively quickly. However, this requires some experience, since interpretation of certain syntactic constructions (e.g., positions in lexically restricted phrase descriptions) is implicit. More importantly, interpretation of the meaning of symbols used in Walenty descriptions is often implicit as well. Certain patterns – for instance, a prepositional noun phrase (PREPNP) – are defined as atomic constructions, and the recommended way to model new phenomena – for instance, agreement between the subject and the possessive determiner of the direct object – is to add new symbols to the alphabet of the formalism.<fnref n="16" /> This can be seen as a flexible solution, but it may also lead to proliferation of atomic symbols with encoding-specific semantics, not defined within the formalism itself. This in turn may harm transparency of the individual Walenty-based encodings and decrease its overall electronic versatility. Finally, there seems to be no clear denotational semantics defined for DuELME descriptions (except, maybe, in its LMF standard export format). Their interpretation is based partially on formal properties and inference rules, partially on methodological recommendations, and the borderline between the two is hard to determine, which severely harms the clarity of the format.

Not very surprisingly, XMG and PATR-II are also more flexible than Walenty or DuELME. In comparison to XMG, PATR-II exhibits certain restrictions (see Section 7.1 for details) which limit, among others, its power to express word order constraints.<fnref n="17" /> Walenty is flexible enough to account for most of the MWE-related properties. Yet, the need to introduce new symbols to express previously unforeseen phenomena (already mentioned w.r.t. the virtue of transparency) may stem from the insufficient flexibility of the formalism. As for DuELME, we see its relatively low transparency as the main cause of its relatively low flexibility – it is hard to define complex constructions when clear foundations are not established.

The restrictions enforced by PATR-II diminish also its power to express certain factorizations – notably, by not allowing templates to apply to feature structure nodes other than roots. Due to the untyped nature of feature structures, representation of certain properties based on types – and, therefore, the related generalizations – may be hindered as well. The power to generalize of DuELME is limited by the distinction between patterns and MWE descriptions. Moreover, DuELME provides no way to express any kind of sharing between the individual patterns. As to Walenty, a hierarchy of macros (in the sense that a macro can

<footnote n="16">¹⁶In fully flexible formalisms such new syntactic phenomena can be factored through the use of dedicated classes whose semantics remains explicit.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷Note, however, that while word order constraints are supposed to be expressed in PATR-II through filtering CFG rules via features, these constraints could be also expressed directly as feature structure values.</footnote>
refer to other macros) can be used to account for repeating patterns. However, it is not clear to what extent macros constitute a part of the formalism itself and it seems that the mechanism of macros is too simple to account for more complex patterns (for example, the abovementioned subject/possessive agreement restriction).

Both DuELME and Walenty seem to be more electronically versatile than XMG. DuELME supports the standard LMF format, while one of the formats supported by Walenty is TEI – based on XML, less concise than the default Walenty's format but more explicit and application-friendly. While XMG encodings can be compiled and stored in an XML format which directly represents all the resolved property names, it does not necessarily contain all the underlying generalizations (i.e., those encoded in the class inheritance hierarchy). One could imagine parsing and interpreting XMG descriptions themselves, and not the resulting compiled encodings, as a first step of converting XMG descriptions to a particular lexical resource. However, this solution would require certain knowledge about the formal principles and mechanisms underlying XMG. Thus the additional flexibility and power to generalize of XMG come with additional cost in terms of the preprocessing work that needs to be done to obtain a particular resource from XMG descriptions. As to PATR-II, there seem to be very few actively maintained software tools for it. While a parser of this formalism can still be downloaded, its further development has been discontinued as of 2006.<fnref n="18" /> We therefore estimate the electronic versatility of PATR-II as being rather low due to the current unavailability of dedicated software tools.

Implementation friendliness of DuELME and Walenty has been already confirmed in practice. DuELME has been used to encode a lexicon of 5,000 Dutch MWEs, while Walenty underlies The Polish Valence Dictionary which, in particular, contains around 8,000 MWE entries. Moreover, a dedicated tool Slowal (http://zil.ipipan.waw.pl/Slowal) has been designed for creating, editing and browsing Walenty dictionaries. Thus, Walenty comes with an implementation friendly environment, editing tools and, on top of that, provides conversion between several dictionary formats adapted for different needs. In XMG, MWEs are defined as terminal classes and are encoded directly in the source code. At the moment, there is no dedicated tool which would assist a human user with encoding large sets of MWEs. At the same time, encoding MWEs directly in the source code can be seen as a flexible solution which allows the user to adopt his or her own organization of MWE-related classes. High factorization capabilities of XMG should also facilitate handling large sets of lexical objects, heterogeneous yet often showing

<footnote n="18">¹⁸http://software.sil.org/pc-patr/</footnote>
common patterns. On top of that, the process of compiling XMG descriptions provides a verification mechanism which allows to check the correctness of the individual XMG-based lexical entries. For PART-II, again, we found no readily available software tool that is designed to support the implementation process.

As a general conclusion, lexical encoding of MWEs is a highly challenging task, as also stressed in Dyvik et al.; Markantonatou et al. (2019; 2019 [this volume]), due to the complexity and versatility of the regular and idiosyncratic phenomena exhibited by the linguistic objects. The four encoding formats examined here show complementary strengths and weaknesses. We believe that transparency, flexibility and the power to generalize<fnref n="19" /> are the fundamental virtues to promote in lexical encoding of MWEs, and in this respect XMG seems to stand out as a particularly appropriate framework. These qualities have to be confirmed, however, in large-scale lexicographic efforts, which call for enhancing its implementation friendliness via developing a lexicographic framework to automate the encoding and validation process. Note finally that relatively few considerations have been made here on semantic properties of MWEs. Maybe the most outstanding feature of many MWEs is their semantic non-compositionality, and addressing it in a lexical encoding framework remains one of the most challenging perspectives.

## Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the IC1207 PARSEME COST action, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the CRC 991 “The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science”, and by a doctoral grant from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

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<figure><img src="image_16.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /></figure>

## Chapter 2

# Verbal multiword expressions: Idiomaticity and flexibility

Livnat Herzig Sheinfux

University of Haifa

Tali Arad Greshler

University of Haifa

Nurit Melnik

The Open University of Israel

Shuly Wintner

University of Haifa

Verbal multiword expressions are generally characterized by their formal rigidity, yet they exhibit remarkable diversity in their flexibility. Our primary research question is whether the behavior of idioms is an idiosyncratic property of each idiom or a consequence of more general constraints. We challenge Nunberg et al.'s (1994) proposal, attributing decomposability as the determining factor regarding idioms' flexibility/rigidity, first due to the fuzziness of the notion of decomposability, and second, in light of empirical investigations in English and in other languages that revealed flexibility within idioms previously classified as non-decomposable. We propose an alternative classification that builds on the notions of TRANSPARENCY and FIGURATION. We hypothesize that the more transparent and figurative an idiom is, the more likely it is to be “transformationally productive”. We put this hypothesis to the test by conducting an empirical corpus-based study of a set of idioms of varying degrees of transparency and figuration, using a large corpus of Modern Hebrew.

<figure><img src="image_18.png" /></figure>
# 1 Introduction

Multiword expressions (MWEs) are lexical items that consist of multiple words. They form a heterogeneous class of constructions which include, among others, compounds (e.g., *hot dog*), verb-particle constructions (e.g., *take off*), complex prepositions (e.g., *on top of*), adverbials (e.g., *by and large*) and verbal phrases (e.g., *spill the beans*). MWEs are characterized by their idiosyncratic behavior. The most prominent type of idiosyncrasy ascribed to MWEs is their semantic idiomaticity; their meaning cannot be systematically derived from the meanings that their parts have when they are used independently. For example, there is nothing about the meaning of the words *spill* and *beans* which is necessarily related to the meaning of the idiom *spill the beans*. MWEs may also display idiosyncrasy in other linguistic domains. At the lexical level, MWEs may contain components which are not part of the conventional lexicon (*ad hoc*). Morphologically, they may undergo idiosyncratic processes (*still lifes* and not *still lives* when referring to paintings). Some MWEs have an internal structure which is not accounted for by standard syntax (*by and large*).

MWEs are extremely prevalent: the number of MWEs in a speaker's lexicon is estimated to be of the same order of magnitude as the number of single words (Jackendoff 1997). This may even be an underestimate, as 41% of the entries in WordNet (Fellbaum 1998), for example, are multiwords (Sag et al. 2002). Erman & Warren (2000) found that over 55% of the tokens in the texts they studied were instances of *prefabs* (defined informally as word sequences preferred by native speakers due to conventionalization). However, while MWEs constitute significant portions of natural language texts, most of them belong to the long tail in terms of frequency: specific MWEs tend to occur only rarely in texts.

In this chapter we focus on *verbal* MWEs, often referred to as “verbal idioms” or simply “idioms”. Unlike syntactically idiosyncratic expressions such as *by and large*, the structure of verbal idioms is more often than not governed by productive syntactic rules: they contain a verbal head which combines with one or more complements (and possibly adjuncts) to form a verb phrase.<fnref n="1" /> Nevertheless, verbal idioms impose stringent selectional restrictions on their lexical components. Moreover, they are known to exhibit “transformational deficiencies” (Chafe 1968: 111), such as resistance to passivization, modification and topicalization. Not all idioms, however, are equally rigid, as some maintain their idiomatic meaning even when they do not appear in their canonical form. The versatile behavior of verbal MWEs raises a question regarding the speakers’ knowledge of idioms.

<footnote n="1">¹The internal structure of some idioms can be syntactically idiosyncratic (e.g., *find fault, close up shop*).</footnote>
Is information regarding their flexibility encoded for each idiom individually, or
can the behavior of idioms be predicted from general principles?

## 2 Decomposability and flexibility

The groundbreaking work of Nunberg et al. (1994) opened up the possibility of considering the behavior of idioms not as idiosyncratically specified for each idiom individually, but rather as determined by the semantics of the idioms. In this section we first present Nunberg et al.’s (1994) proposal regarding the correlation between the semantic decomposability of idioms and their flexibility/ rigidity. We then consider the notion of decomposability and its coherence, and present a number of studies which assessed whether this correlation holds in English and in other languages.

### 2.1 Decomposability and flexibility: A correlation

The contribution of Nunberg et al. (1994: 503) is set against the background of what they refer to as “well-established assumptions in generative grammar” which is that idioms are non-compositional. In contrast, the authors argue that most idioms do have identifiable parts with assigned interpretations. They distinguish between two types of idioms: **DECOMPOSABLE IDIOMS** (“idiomatically combining expressions” in their terminology) and **NON-DECOMPOSABLE IDIOMS** (“idiomatic phrases”). The former are idioms whose meaning, once known, can be distributed among their parts. A typical example is *spill the beans*, where *spill* roughly means ‘reveal’ and *beans* roughly means ‘secrets’. The meaning of non-decomposable idioms is associated with the *entire* expression; no meanings are assigned to individual words. The often-cited example of this type is *kick the bucket*, for which the meaning ‘to die’ is carried by the phrase in its entirety.

Nunberg et al. (1994) take their analysis a step further by suggesting that there is a correlation between the semantic type of idioms and their behavior. They propose that the semantic distinction between decomposable and non-decomposable idioms accounts for the difference between “transformationally productive” and “transformationally deficient” idioms. The fact that parts of decomposable idioms are assigned interpretations allows them to undergo different “transformations” similarly to ordinary verb phrases.<fnref n="2" /> These parts can be passivized, modified by adjectives or relative clauses, quantified, elided, topicalized/focalized and be antecedents to anaphora. Non-decomposable idioms, on the other hand, only allow verbal inflection.

<footnote n="2">²We adopt the cover term “transformation” for ease of exposition, with no commitment to its
theoretical implications.</footnote>
## 2.2 Identifying decomposability

Nunberg et al. (1994) do not provide precise definitions for the two categories, or a specific procedure for distinguishing between them. They do however explicitly warn against confusing decomposability with transparency, which they define as the relation between the literal and idiomatic meaning. Thus, although the idiom *saw logs* is transparent – there is an obvious relation between the sound made by sawing logs and the sound of snoring – it is non-decomposable, since there is no meaning that can be assigned to *logs* in this context. An additional distinction is made between decomposability and paraphrasability. The fact that the meaning of an idiom can be paraphrased using a phrase of a similar argument structure does not necessarily indicate that it is decomposable. For example, although the transitive idiomatic phrase *kick the bucket* could be paraphrased as the transitive phrase *lose one's life* there is nothing about the role of *bucket* in the idiom which suggests that it denotes ‘life’.

The coherence of this classification has been put to the test in a number of psycholinguistic experiments. In one experiment Gibbs et al. (1989) compiled a set of idioms which they categorized, based on their own intuitions, into three groups: **NORMALLY DECOMPOSABLE IDIOMS** for which a part of the idiom is used literally (e.g., *pop the question*), **ABNORMALLY DECOMPOSABLE IDIOMS** (e.g., *carry a torch*, which refers to the metaphorical extension of torches as warm feelings), and **SEMANTICALLY NON-DECOMPOSABLE IDIOMS** (e.g., *shoot the breeze*). They presented these idioms along with a paraphrase of their figurative meaning to subjects and asked them to decide whether the individual words in an expression made some unique contribution to its idiomatic meaning, thus testing their intuitions regarding decomposability. As a second step the subjects were instructed to distinguish among the decomposable idioms between those which “have words which are closely related to their individual figurative meaning” (i.e., normally decomposable idioms such as *pop the question*) and those “whose individual words have a more metaphorical relation to their figurative meanings” (i.e., abnormally decomposable idioms such as *spill the beans*).

Gibbs et al. (1989) found that with the exception of three idioms, there was at least 75% agreement among subjects regarding the classification of 36 idioms into one of the three categories. The mean proportion of subject agreement was 86% for those idioms which were initially labeled by the researchers as normally decomposable idioms, 79% for those identified as abnormally decomposable idioms and 88% for semantically non-decomposable idioms. In contrast, Titone & Conine (1994) did not find reliable agreement regarding decomposability in their study. Of the 171 idioms which they examined, only 40% were classified into one
of the three categories (normally decomposable, abnormally decomposable non-
decomposable) with at least 75% agreement among subjects. The authors suggest
that grouping idioms into these categories may rely on a type of linguistic knowl-
edge that is not easily accessed.

2.3 Empirical assessments of the correlation

Under the assumption that the decomposable/non-decomposable classification
is indeed valid, various studies have attempted to assess whether the correlation
between decomposability and flexibility holds. Gibbs et al. (1989) presented sub-
jects with idioms in which a lexical item was replaced with a semantically related
alternate and with paraphrases of the interpretation of the original idioms. The
subjects were asked to judge the similarity between the distorted idiom and the
original interpretation. Gibbs et al. found that decomposable idioms were judged
by native speakers to be less disrupted by lexical changes. For example, *burst
the ice* was found to be more related in meaning to the interpretation of *break
the ice* than *kick the pail* was to the interpretation of *kick the bucket*. Similar
results were obtained in a set of experiments which focused on syntactic varia-
tions (Gibbs & Nayak 1989). Non-decomposable idioms were found to be more
limited in terms of the syntactic changes that they can undergo and still retain
their figurative meaning. Differences were found also between normally decom-
posable and abnormally decomposable idioms, where the latter were relatively
more constrained in their syntactic behavior. Importantly, not all syntactic oper-
ations produced similar results. Some syntactic changes such as adjective inser-
tion and passivization were successful only with normally decomposable idioms.
Other changes, such as present participle and adverb insertion, which influence
the entire idiom phrase, and not only parts of it, were successful with all types.

A different research method was adopted by Riehemann (2001), who conduct-
ed an extensive study of verbal idioms using a 350 million token corpus. She
examined four sets of data: (i) idioms that have been discussed in the literature,
(ii) idioms that have interesting properties (e.g., passive, negation, adjuncts, no
verbal head, more than one idiomatic noun), (iii) idioms with "non-independent
words" (or "cranberry expressions", see Section 3.1 below), and (iv) a random
sample of frequent V+NP idioms. Riehemann classified the idioms as decompos-
able or non-decomposable by attempting to match them with a similarly struc-
tured paraphrase. She classified those for which she found an appropriate para-
phrase as decomposable. Nevertheless, she observed that the boundary between
the two categories is fuzzy. This notwithstanding, her findings show a clear dis-
tinction between the decomposable and non-decomposable idioms with respect
to their variability. On average, the canonical forms of idioms account for about 75% of the occurrences of decomposable idioms and 97% of the occurrences of non-decomposable idioms. Moreover, she found that decomposable idioms constitute a majority, with only 27% of the random sample of V+NP idioms classified as non-decomposable.

Nunberg et al.’s (1994) proposed correlation between decomposability and flexibility predicts that non-decomposable idioms would exhibit complete “transformational deficiency”. Nevertheless, Webelhuth & Ackerman (1999) identified a number of German idioms which appear to be non-decomposable yet maintain their idiomatic meaning under topicalization. Bargmann & Sailer (2015) noted similar observations with passivization. Schenk (1995) showed that non-decomposable idioms in German can participate in a verb-second configuration. Verb-second with non-decomposable idioms was also found in Dutch by Grégoire (2007).

Abeillé (1995) argued against the clear bifurcation between fixed and flexible idioms and questioned the validity of the concept of the distribution of the meaning of an idiom among its parts. She examined a sample of 2,000 French verbal idioms and found that most of them did not behave as predicted by Nunberg et al.’s (1994) theory. For example, she showed that a non-decomposable idiom can undergo clefting, provided that a contrastive interpretation, which is a general licensing condition of clefting, is possible.

## 2.4 Summary

Instances of flexible non-decomposable idioms challenge the all-or-nothing view of transformational deficiencies proposed by Nunberg et al. (1994). Moreover, findings regarding the behavior of idioms in German, Dutch and French cast doubts on the cross-linguistic validity of Nunberg et al.’s (1994) proposal, which was mostly concerned with English idioms. We follow Bargmann & Sailer (2015) in hypothesizing that further research of the flexibility of idioms, especially in languages that differ from English, would reveal language-specific variations that are dependent on language-specific constraints on different transformations.

## 3 Deconstructing idiomaticity and flexibility

In this chapter we challenge the validity of the hypothesized correlation between decomposability and flexibility. As previously mentioned, decomposability is a fuzzy notion which is difficult to apply when classifying idioms. Although it
was proposed by Nunberg et al. (1994) to be the semantic property of idioms which predicts their behavior, at times this hypothesis is turned around and idiom flexibility is used as a defining property of non-decomposable idioms. Moreover, empirical investigations of the above-mentioned correlation in languages other than English have revealed flexibility within idioms that were classified as non-decomposable. Thus, we argue that decomposability is not a primitive semantic property of idioms, nor can it be used to predict idioms' behavior.

As a first step we picked the quintessential non-decomposable idiom *kick the bucket* to serve as a test case. While this idiom is one of the most frequently cited idioms in the literature, it is scarcely attested in corpora. Moon (1998) did not find any instances of this idiom in the 18 million word corpus that she consulted. Riehemann (2001), using a 350 million word corpus, retrieved only twelve instances, of which one did not appear in the canonical form.

In order to verify that the idiom’s common characterization as a rigid idiom
is not an epiphenomenon of its low frequency, we consulted a much larger cor-
pus: *enTenTen13* (Baroni et al. 2009), a 20 billion word English corpus, available
on SketchEngine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004). Following are examples of determiner
variation (1a–1b), modification (1c) and passivization (1d–1e).

(1) a. When I kick my bucket, Cecelia's yarn can find a new good home.

b. So what if consuming the foods therein might make us kick that bucket a tad earlier?

c. My faithful old Samsung i730 PDA phone was starting to kick the battery bucket.

d. Constantine is a weary, dapper, neo-noir demon-hunting chainsmoker who carries the unfortunate burden of knowing that, when his bucket's kicked, he's going down, not up.

e. Then Melanie says her last words to Scarlett and falls back onto the starched pillows, her bucket finally kicked.

This preliminary mini-study has shown that given a large enough corpus, even *kick the bucket* can be found to exhibit variations. Consequently, we suggest that the answer to what determines the flexibility or rigidity of idioms is not whether they are decomposable or not. Moreover, we hypothesize that idioms cannot be categorically classified as either flexible or rigid. Rather, we envision a continuum with idioms exhibiting varying degrees of flexibility, possibly dependent on their semantic properties. In an effort to uncover the logic behind the behavior of idioms we reconsider the notions of idiomaticity and flexibility, and propose
an alternative classification, which we then empirically examine by consulting a
large corpus of Modern Hebrew.

3.1 Dimensions of idiomaticity

Idiomaticity is often characterized by **CONVENTIONALITY**; the meaning of idioms cannot be entirely predicted from the meaning of their parts when they appear in isolation from one another. There are, however, a number of other semantic dimensions according to which idioms can be characterized. The dimension which Nunberg et al. (1994: 498) assume plays a crucial role in determining the behavior of an idiom is its decomposability. Nevertheless, as was previously mentioned, determining whether an idiom is decomposable or not is rather impressionistic, and is prone to circularity, where its flexibility is taken as evidence for its decomposability.

In this chapter we consider an alternative categorization of idioms. More precisely, we cross-classify idioms according to two dimensions: **FIGURATION** and **TRANSPARENCY**. Figuration reflects the degree to which the idiom can be assigned a literal meaning. Transparency (or opacity) relates to how easy it is to recover the motivation for an idiom's use, or, in other words, to explain the relationship between its literal meaning and its idiomatic one. Idioms are **FIGURATIVE** if their literal meaning can conjure up a vivid picture in the speaker's mind. Within the figurative idioms we distinguish between two types. In **TRANSPARENT FIGURATIVE** idioms the relationship between the literal picture and the idiomatic meaning is perceived to be motivated. English examples include *saw logs* ('snore') and *the cat's out of the bag* ('previously hidden facts were revealed'). Conversely, **OPAQUE FIGURATIVE** idioms portray a picture whose relationship to the idiomatic meaning is not perceptible. English examples include *shoot the breeze* ('chat') and *chew the fat* ('talk socially, gossip'). Idioms which are not figurative do not have a comprehensible literal meaning, and as such are necessarily opaque. Among these idioms we find what are referred to as "cranberry idioms" (Moon 1998; Trawinski et al. 2008), which, similarly to "cranberry morphemes", have parts which have no meanings (e.g., *run amok* 'behave in an unrestrained manner' and *take umbrage* 'take offense'). These idioms may have been figurative and transparent once, but synchronically they contain a word whose meaning is not accessible to contemporary speakers.<fnref n="3" />

<footnote n="3">³Opaque non-figurative idioms are not necessarily cranberry idioms. One Hebrew example is *natan ba-kos lein-o* ‘gave in the cup his eye’ → ‘got drunk’. Although all the words in this idiom are common “everyday” words, it does not conjure up any type of image. Such idioms seem to be rare.</footnote>
In what follows we present a sample of Hebrew idioms representing each of the three categories, namely transparent figurative, opaque figurative and cranberry idioms. Each idiom is illustrated with a corpus example taken from the *heT-enTen 2014* corpus (see Section 4.1). We use boldface to highlight the canonical parts of the idioms.<fnref n="4" /> This set of idioms serves as the dataset for our corpus-based investigation of idiom flexibility presented in Section 4.

### 3.1.1 Transparent figurative idioms

#### 3.1.1.1 yarad me-ha-šec ‘descended from the tree’ → ‘conceded’

This idiom is part of a more complex expression. To get to a state where a person is required to concede they first need to adopt an unrealistic stance by idiomatically climbing a tall tree: *tipes šal šec gavoha* ('climbed on tree tall'). Once there, they may need to eventually climb down, or in other words – to concede.

(2) ?ulai mi še-be-šemdat ha-koaḥ carix laredet
maybe who that-in-position.cs the-power should to descended
me-ha-šec.
from-the-tree

‘Maybe whoever is in a position of power should concede.’

#### 3.1.1.2 *hosif femen la-medura* ‘added oil to the bonfire’ → ‘aggravated the situation’

This metaphorical idiom describes the act of making a situation worse than it already is. A similar English idiom is *add fuel to the fire*.

(3) beit ha-miṣpaṭ ha-meḥozi *hosif femen la-medura*: gam hu
house.SM.cs the-court the-district *added*.3SM oil to.the-bonfire also he
lo haya muxan lišmoša ?et ha-mevaqef.
not was ready to.hear ACC the-petitioner

‘The district court added fuel to the fire: it also wasn’t willing to hear out
the petitioner.’

<footnote n="4">⁴The citation form of Hebrew verbs is the third person singular masculine, past tense. Consequently idioms are presented in past tense, and translated as such. When verbs are referred to in isolation their translation is given in the standard English citation form (bare infinitive).</footnote>
3.1.2 Opaque figurative idioms

3.1.2.1 ṭaman yad-o ba-calaḥat ‘buried his hand in the plate’ → ‘refrained from acting’

The origin of this idiom is from the *Book of Proverbs* 19:24, where it describes a person who is so lazy that he leaves his hand in the plate instead of bringing it back into his mouth in order to eat.<fnref n="5" />

(4) ṭaman šacel yad-o ba-calaḥat gam ?el pi-hu lo buried.3sm sluggard.sm hand-his in.the-plate also to mouth-his not yašiv-ena.
return-it

‘A sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he will not even bring it back to his mouth.’

Most Hebrew speakers are not familiar with the original text and use the idiom in its truncated form. However, without the explicit mention of the actor – the sluggard – and out of context, the idiom is completely opaque, and even more so, it is confusing since it describes an action (i.e., the burying of the hand in the plate), while denoting inaction. Ironically, it is mostly used negatively, to describe someone who does not sit idle.

(5) gam be-yaḥasei ?enof lo ṭaman yad-o ba-calaḥat, also in-relations.cs human not buried.3sm hand-his in.the-plate pineq ve-ʔirgen lanu micraxim la-piqniq. spoiled.3sm and-organized.3sm to.us supplies to.the-picnic
‘Also with regards to interpersonal relations, he did not sit idle; he spoiled us and prepared supplies for the picnic.’

3.1.2.2 hešela ḫeres (be-yad-o) ‘brought up a shard (in his hand)’ → ‘tried in vain, failed’

This idiom is figurative since it is possible to imagine someone picking up a shard of clay with their hand. However, it is also opaque since there does not seem to be an obvious relationship between this act and failure. Similarly to the previous idiom, this idiom introduces a paradox: it literally describes the situation of finding something, but it is used to describe an unsuccessful attempt. The original context, unknown to most speakers, is of pearl retrievers who dove in search of

<footnote n="5">⁵The translation is taken from http://www.biblestudytools.com/proverbs/19.html.</footnote>
pearls, but only came up with a piece of clay (or a pearl-less shell, according to a different interpretation) instead.

(6) ha-ʔemet hi ʃe-ħipasti gam ʔani ʔax heʃeleti ħeres the-truth is that-searched.1s also I but brought.up.1s shard be-yad-i.
in-hand-my
'The truth is that I also searched, but I failed.'

3.1.2.3 *yaca me-ha-kelim* ‘came out from the tools’ → ‘became upset’

Evidence regarding the opacity of this idiom is found in the ambiguity of the word *kelim*, which could mean ‘tools’, ‘dishes’ or ‘instruments’. There is no consensus among speakers as to which of the meanings applies to this idiom, since none of them seems appropriate. Nevertheless, regardless of the chosen meaning, it is possible to conjure up an image associated with the literal meaning of this expression.

(7) hu nirʔa keʔilu hu yoce me-ha-kelim.
he looked.3SM as.if he coming.out.SM from-the-tools
'He looked as if he was becoming upset.'

3.1.3 Opaque non-figurative idioms (cranberry idioms)

3.1.3.1 ʔavad ʃal-av (ha-)kelaħ ‘(the-)KELAH was lost on him’ → ‘became outdated’

The cranberry word in this idiom is *kelaħ*, which has no known literal meaning. It appears three times in the Old Testament, twice as a name of a place, and once as part of this idiom (Book of Job 30:2). Nevertheless, this idiom is an established part of the Hebrew lexicon. Interestingly, although the noun *kelaħ* is indefinite in the original Biblical idiom, in Modern Hebrew it is mostly used with a definite prefix.

(8) ʔatem ʃosqim be-vikuaħ ʃe-ʔavad ʃal-av ha-kelaħ.
you engaged in-argument.SM that-lost.3SM on-him the-KELAH.SM
'You are engaged in an argument that has become outdated.'

Apart from the cranberry word, one idiosyncracy exhibited by this idiom is its argument structure. Outside the context of this idiom, the head verb ʔavad ‘lose’
does not appear with a PP complement headed by the preposition šal ‘on’. In addition, unlike the rest of the idioms presented here, this idiom is a full clause, with kelaḥ functioning as the subject. Although it is clausal, the complement of the PP is an open slot, and the property of being outdated is predicated on it. Consequently, it is mostly used as a relative clause in which the open slot is occupied by a resumptive pronoun (see also 56).

3.1.3.2 *yafav šal ha-meduxa* ‘sat on the *MEDUXA*’ → ‘deliberated’

The original meaning of the word *meduxa* is ‘mortar’, yet it is not used outside the context of this idiom and its meaning is not known to most Hebrew speakers.

(9) ha-cevet *yafav šal ha-meduxa* ve-qiyem kama yešivot. the-team.SM *sat.3SM on the-MEDUXA.SF* and-held.3SM several meetings ‘The team deliberated and held several meetings.’

3.1.3.3 *higdif ?et ha-seʔa* ‘overfilled the *SEAH*’ → ‘exaggerated’

The word *seʔa* is originally a biblical unit of measurement, usually of grain, but it is rarely used outside of this idiom (exceptions are texts which deal with religious laws). Interestingly, the verb *higdif* is hardly used outside of this context as well, although the consonantal root *g-d-f* is productive in a different verbal template (*gadaf* ‘fill’).<fnref n="6" /> The original literal meaning of the verb *higdif* was ‘to gather wheat sheaves’, and the literal meaning of the phrase was to overfill a set measure with wheat. The idiom can be used with an agentive subject (10) who “overdoes it”, or an abstract noun (11) which in itself is “too much”.

(10) bronil lifšamim *magdif ?et ha-seʔa* be-kama še-hu Bronil.SM sometimes *overfills.SM ACC the-SEAH.SF* in-how.much that-he meruce me-šacmo. pleased from-himself ‘Bronil sometimes overdoes it in how much he is pleased with himself.’

(11) šikuv ze *higdif ?et ha-seʔa*. delay.SM this *overfilled.3SM ACC the-SEAH.SF* ‘This delay was too much.’

<footnote n="6">⁶Semitic morphology is largely based on roots-and-patterns. Roots are sequences of (typically) three consonants. Patterns are sequences of vowels and possibly consonants with open slots for the roots consonants, indicated by capital Cs. For example, *higdif* and *gadaf* are formed by combining the same consonantal root *g-d-f* with two different templates: hiCCiC and CaCaC.</footnote>
3.1.3.4 *lo yesula be-paz* ‘will not be *sula* in gold’ → ‘priceless’

Unlike the other idioms in this category, the cranberry word in this case is a verb: *sula*. The verb is formed in a passive morphological template (CuCaC) and is never used in the active template (CiCeC). Its original (Biblical) meaning is ‘was measured’, but it is not used out of this context in Hebrew. The noun *paz* ‘gold’ is a very rare synonym of the commonplace *zahav*; its distribution is mostly restricted to fixed phrases (e.g., *hizdamnut paz* ‘golden opportunity’) and the current idiom.

(12) kenut tihiye kan, ve-ze davar *fe-lo yesula*
honesty.SF will.be.3SF here and-this thing.SM *that-not will.SULA.3SM*
*be-paz.*
*in-gold*

‘There will be honesty here, and that’s priceless.’

3.2 Types of flexibility

Section 3.1 described semantic dimensions of idiomaticity. In this section we present the formal aspect of this phenomenon, namely the set of lexical, morphological and syntactic transformations that verbal idioms can potentially undergo. We distinguish between four types of transformations: SYNTACTIC VARIATIONS, ARGUMENT STRUCTURE VARIATIONS, LEXICAL INSERTIONS and LEXICAL SUBSTITUTIONS.

3.2.1 Syntactic variations

Syntactic variations are those which preserve the lexical material of the idiom, as well as the grammatical function of the constituents which make up the idiom, but which vary the syntactic configuration of the expression. The occurrence of syntactic variations constitutes evidence against analyses of idioms as fixed phrases (“words with spaces”) which are entered in the lexicon as complete phrases, and which are inserted “as is” into the sentence.

Syntactic variations range from what could be considered as superficial argument shuffling within the VP to extra-phrasal operations such as argument fronting and relativization. One type of syntactic variation that we find is order alternations within the VP. The order of complements in Hebrew is fairly free. Thus, for example, with ditransitive verbs, the position of the two complements can be interchanged with no change of meaning or register.

(13) a. dan natan matana le-dana.
Dan gave present to-Dana
b. dan natan le-dana matana.
   Dan gave to-Dana present
   'Dan gave a present to Dana.'

A different case of word order alternation is verb-second. Although the un-
marked word order of Hebrew is SVO, subject–verb inversion may be triggered
by the occurrence of a clause-initial element, similarly to verb-second construc-
tions. The V2 configuration splits the VP and inserts the subject between the verb
and its complements (14b).

(14) a. * natan dan matana le-dana.
     gave Dan present to-Dana

b. ?etmol natan dan matana le-dana.
yesterday gave Dan present to-Dana
‘Yesterday Dan gave a present to Dana.’

In addition, we include in the category of syntactic variation two types of
long-distance dependencies: topicalization/focalization and relativization. Infor-
mation structure considerations motivate the fronting of VP-internal material to
a clause-initial position. A fronted constituent can be a focal element (15a) or a
topicalized element (15b).

(15) a. [gam le-sara] dan natan matana.
also to-Sarah Dan gave present
‘Dan gave a present also to Sarah.’

b. [?et ha-matana ha-zot] dan natan le-dana.
ACC the-present the-this Dan gave to-Dana
‘This present, Dan gave to Dana.’

An additional long-distance dependency involves relativization. When NP
complements are relativized in Hebrew a resumptive pronoun can optionally oc-
cur in the relativization site (16a). Oblique complements are obligatorily resumed
by a pronoun, and the language does not allow preposition stranding (16b).

(16) a. lo ra?iti ?et ha-matanaᵢ [[ʃe-dan natan (?otaᵢ) le-sara].
not saw.1s ACC the-present that-Dan gave (it) to-Sarah
'I didn't see the present that Dan gave to Sarah.'

b. lo ra?iti ?et ha-yaldaᵢ [[ʃe-dan natan l-aᵢ matana].
not saw.1s ACC the-girl that-Dan gave to-her present
‘I didn’t see the girl that Dan gave a present to.’
### 3.2.2 Argument structure variations

Argument structure variations involve a change in the mapping of arguments to grammatical functions (e.g., passive) as well as valence changing operations (e.g., causativization, reflexivization). Passivization, a primary example of argument structure variation, was found to be a feature that sets decomposable idioms apart from non-decomposable ones (Nunberg et al. 1994), but not in all languages (Bargmann & Sailer 2015).

Hebrew presents an interesting case in this respect, since argument structure variations are associated with the combination of one consonantal root with different morphological templates (Doron 2008; 2003). Thus, the following examples illustrate the root *l-b/v-f* in four different templates: active (17a), reflexive (17b), causative (17c), and passive (17d).

(17) a. dan **lavaf** ḫulca.
Dan wore shirt
‘Dan wore a shirt.’

b. dan **hitlabeš**.
Dan dressed
‘Dan got dressed.’

c. dan **hilbiš** ?et ha-yeled be-ḥulca.
Dan dressed ACC the-child in-shirt
‘Dan dressed the child with a shirt.’

d. ha-yeled **hulbaš** be-ḥulca.
the-child was.dressed in-shirt
‘The child was dressed in a shirt.’

### 3.2.3 Lexical insertions

Lexical insertions refer to the inclusion of non-selected lexical material within the idiom. This material includes adverbials, quantifiers and different types of noun modifiers. The ability to modify only a part of the meaning is taken by Nunberg et al. (1994) to be a key property of decomposable idioms. They assume that only idiom parts that have individual idiomatic meanings can be modified. However, Ernst (1981) proposed that not all idiom-internal modifiers are equal. He distinguished between **INTERNAL** and **EXTERNAL MODIFICATION**, which differ in the semantic scope of their modification. Internal modifiers modify only the element to which they are adjoined (18a). External modifiers, which attach to the object but are semantically associated with the entire verb phrase, are not
indicators of decomposability. The semantically external modifier in (18b) is a "domain delimiter" (Ernst 1981), which specifies the domain to which the idiom applies.

(18) a. Dan *pulled* some **important** *strings*. (= Dan used some important connections.)

b. Dan *pulled* some **economic** *strings*. (= In the domain of economics, Dan pulled some strings.)

The question of whether a modifier is internal or external relates to the issue of decomposability, but not to the question of flexibility. When idiom parts are syntactically modified in an idiom this is certainly an instance of variation; the idiom does not appear in its canonical form. Thus, modifications of all types are variations. The semantic scope of the modifier can provide evidence with respect to whether idiom parts are assigned individual idiomatic meanings or not. For a modifier to be internal the modified part must have its own meaning. For example, *spill royal beans* is acceptable and comprehensible due to the fact that *beans* means ‘secrets’ in the context of this idiom, and royal beans refer to ‘secrets of the royal family’. Conversely, the modifier in *kick the battery bucket* does not attribute any property to the bucket, but rather provides information regarding the domain or cause of death. Nevertheless, the two cases attest to the flexibility of their respective idioms.

### 3.2.4 Lexical substitutions

Although idioms are known to impose rigid selectional restrictions, there are idioms that maintain their idiomatic meaning even when some of their lexical components are substituted with others. Moon (1998) found verb variation to be the most common type (e.g., *bend/stretch the rules*). Interestingly, the inter-changeable verbs are not necessarily synonymous but in that particular context their co-substitution does not alter the idiomatic meaning. As Moon (1998: 50) noted, “searching for verbal variation is the hardest part of corpus-based investigations, and ultimately a matter of serendipity”. For this reason, it is impossible to conduct exhaustive searches of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, with manual inspection of the results of very general queries valuable findings can be gleaned.

## 4 Corpus findings

In the previous section we proposed an alternative semantic classification of idioms, which builds on the notions of TRANSPARENCY and FIGURATION. In addition,
we distinguished between four types of transformations which idioms can poten-
tially undergo. We hypothesize that the more transparent and figurative an idiom
is, the more likely it is to be “transformationally productive”.

To put this hypothesis to the test we conducted an empirical corpus-based
study of the behavior of the set of idioms presented in Section 3.1. In light of
our preliminary examination of the flexibility of the idiom *kick the bucket*, we
chose to consult a very large corpus of Modern Hebrew, which increased the
likelihood of finding variations even for relatively infrequently used idioms. The
corpus search revealed evidence for variability across the different dimensions
of idiomaticity and flexibility. We did not find any idiom which exhibited no vari-
ation at all. In what follows we present selected examples of our corpus findings.

**4.1 Method**

We used *heTenTen 2014* (Baroni et al. 2009), a billion-token web-crawled Hebrew corpus, available on SketchEngine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004), to search for different types of variations that occur with representative MWEs from the three semantic classes we outlined in Section 3.1. We focused on fifteen specific verbal MWEs, and annotated 400 examples overall. Nine of the fifteen MWEs are presented in Section 3.1.

SketchEngines’s Corpus Query Language (CQL) provides a way of defining
complex queries which target morphological features of words (e.g., POS, lem-
mas, clitics) and which make use of logical operators (AND/OR/NOT). These fea-
tures are particularly important when our goal is to cast a wide net to retrieve
variations in general, and in particular non-canonical word orders, discontinuous
elements and various morphological inflections. Nevertheless, a wide net comes
at a cost; not all the retrieved results are necessarily instances of the idiom. Often,
only a manual inspection of each result can weed out the false positives. For this
reason we do not present quantitative data with regard to the distribution of the
canonical idiom and its variations. We did, however, verify the occurrence of all
types of variation for each idiom.

In what follows we present our findings regarding the idioms described in Sec-
tion 3.1. The presentation is first divided into the four flexibility categories (i.e.,
syntactic variation, argument structure variation, lexical insertions, and lexical
substitutions), and within each category, by the three idiom types (i.e., transpar-
ent figurative idioms, opaque figurative idioms, and cranberry idioms). We use
boldface to highlight the canonical parts of the idioms, and underline the parts
which exhibit the variation under discussion (when possible).<sup>7</sup>

<footnote n="7">⁷Note that some example sentences exhibit more than one variation, yet in the text we refer
only to the one under discussion.</footnote>
## 4.2 Syntactic variations

### 4.2.1 Word order

Verb second configurations are found with all types of idioms. In what follows are examples of transparent figurative idioms (19–20), opaque figurative idioms (21–22), and cranberry idioms (23–24). Note that in all these examples, the clause-initial “trigger” is not part of the idiom. The fronting of idiom parts is discussed in Section 4.2.2.

(19) ha-favuša yarad kanir-e misrad ha-datot
the-week *descended*.3sm probably ministry.sm.cs the-religions
me-ha-šec ve-bitel ?et roša ha-gzera.
*from-the-tree* and-cancelled.3sm acc evil.cs the-decree

‘This week it seems as if the ministry of religions conceded and cancelled
the harsh decree.’

(20) yeter šal ken, mosifa ha-*muša* femen la-medura mispar
remainder on thus *adds.SF* the-rumor.SF oil to.the-bonfire few
yamim lifnei qrisat beit ha-haʃqašot liman braders.
days before downfall.cs house.cs the-investment Lehman brothers

‘Moreover, the rumor adds fuel to the fire a few days before the downfall
of the investment firm Lehman Brothers.’

(21) legabei danela hešelu ha-ma?amacim *heres*.
about Danella *brought.up.3PM* the-efforts.PM shard
‘As for Danella, the efforts were unsuccessful.’

(22) be-mahalax re?ayon be-yoman ha-caharayim
during interview in-daily.news broadcasts.cs the-noon
yaca profesor yosef ?agasi me-ha-kelim ve-amar...
came.out.3sm professor Yosef Agasi *from-the-tools* and-said.3sm

‘During the daily news broadcast at noon, Prof. Yosef Agasi became upset
and said ...’

(23) be-yamim ?elu yofevet vašadat german *šal ha-meduxa*.
in-days these sitting.SF committee.SF.cs German on the-MEDUXA.SF
‘These days, the German committee is deliberating.’
(24) be-ʃavuʕa ʃe-ʃavar higdif fridman ʔet ha-seʔa.
in-week that-passed overfilled.3sm Friedman.SM ACC the-SEAH.SF
‘Friedman overdid it last week.’

A different type of word order variation involves an alternative ordering of VP-
complements. This, of course, can only occur with ditransitive verbs. Instances of
complement ordering with the transitive idiom *hosif femen la-medura* ‘added oil
to the bonfire’ → ‘aggravated the situation’ with its canonical lexical parts were
not found. Examples (25–26) illustrate this variation, as attested with the opaque
figurative idioms *heʃela ħeres* (*be-yad-o*) ‘brought up a shard in his hand’ →
‘tried in vain, failed’ and *tāman yad-o ba-calaħat* ‘buried his hand in the plate’ →
‘refrained from acting’, respectively.<fnref n="8" />

(25) ḥašavti ṣe-ʔulai be-ʔarxion qaal ʔemca tšuvot, ʔax gam thought.1s that-maybe in-archive.cs JNF will.find.1s answers but also šam hešeleti be-yad-i ḫeres. there brought.up.1s in-hand-my shard ‘I thought that maybe I’d find answers in the JNF archive, but I was unsuccessful there as well.’

(26) ʔanoxi baħanti dark-a, ki lo tov, ve-lo tamanti ba-calaħat
I inspected.1s way-her that not good and-not buried.1s in.the-plate
yad-i.
hand-my

‘I inspected her behavior, realized it wasn’t good, and did not sit idle (regarding this matter).’

One can note that the canonical form of the cranberry idiom ʔavad ʃal-av
(ha-)kelaħ ‘(the-)KELAH was lost on him’ → ‘became outdated’ is in a marked
VOS order, which is used when the O argument is more topical than the S argu-
ment (Melnik 2016). In the following example the idiomatic clause appears in an
SVO word order. The placement of a cranberry word in this clause-initial position
suggests that it is more topical, which is surprising due to its lack of meaning.

(27) ha-kelaħ ?oved gam ʃal ha-tfisa ʃe-lefi-ha kol
the-KELAH.SM is.lost.SM also on the-view.SF that-according.to-her every
ma ʃe-lo racyonali hu ṭipʃi.
thing that-not rational is silly
‘The view that anything that isn’t rational is silly is becoming outdated.’

<footnote n="8">⁸The style of (26) belongs to a high/literary register.</footnote>
In the following example the PP, which canonically appears between the verb and the subject, appears postverbally, most likely due to “heavy PP shift”.

(28) ha-ʔiša hivhira fe-ʔavad kelaħ [šal ha-tguvot the-woman clarified that-lost.SM KELAH.SM on the-responses fe-ʃolelot ʔet ha-nituħim ha-ʔesteTIyim mi-kol va-xol]. that-denounce ACC the-operations the-aesthetic from-all and-all ‘The woman clarified that the responses that denounce plastic surgery altogether have become outdated.’

4.2.2 Topicalization/focalization of idiom-internal material

Instances of fronting of idiom parts were found across the three semantics types.
Following are examples of transparent figurative idioms (29–30), opaque figu-
rative idioms (31), and cranberry idioms (32–34). Note that the fronted part is
within square brackets.

(29) ʔaval levasof [gam me-ha-ʔec ha-ze] hu yarad.
but eventually also from-the-tree the-this he descended.3SM
‘However, eventually he abandoned this stance as well.’

(30) [ʔet ha-femen le-medurat ha-geruʃim] mosif ʔorex ha-din
ACC the-oil to-bonfire.CS the-divorce adds.SM editor.SM.CS the-law
fe-lo ṭovat ha-laqohot ke-neged ʔein-av ʔela ṭovat ḫeʃbon
that-not good.cs the-clients as-against eyes-his but good.cs account.cs
ha-banq ſelo.
the-bank his
‘The lawyer, who is interested in his bank account more than in his
clients’ interest, adds fuel to the divorce fire.’

(31) [gam yedei-hem] lo ṭamnu ba-calaxat.
also hands-their not buried.3P in.the-plate
‘Also, they did not sit idle.’

(32) [šal meduxa ḫașuva zo] yofvim horim rabim.
on MEDUXA.SF important.SF this.SF sitting.PM parents many
‘Many parents are deliberating on this important issue.’
(33) [ʔet ha-seʔa] higdif ṣadar radio populari...
ACC *the-SEAH.SF* overfilled.3SM announcer.SM radio popular.SM
‘A popular radio announcer overdid it...’

(34) ʕerk-o ʕacum u-muflag [ve-be-paz] lo yesula.
value.SM-its great.SM and-immense.SM and-in-gold not will.SULA.3SM
‘Its value is great, immense and priceless.’

As is evident from these examples, fronted idiom parts do not usually appear in their canonical form. The fronted constituents in (29) and (31) are modified with the focal marker *gam* ‘also’. In (29) the demonstrative *ha-ze* ‘the-this’ further emphasizes the contrastive interpretation. The topicalized idiom parts in (30) and (32) include modifiers. In fact, in (30) both idiomatic complements are fronted. In examples (32) and (33) the topicalized elements are cranberry words. In (32) the modifier *hafuva* ‘important’ reveals that *meduxa* is interpreted in this context as the issue on which the parents are deliberating (see more about this in Sections 4.4 and 4.5).

### 4.2.3 Relativization

When idiom parts are relativized, they surface as the head of the relative clause, which is modified by it. Instances of relativization were found for transparent figurative idioms and cranberry idioms. Examples are given in (35–36) and (37–38), respectively, with the relative clause in square brackets. No instances of relativization were found for opaque figurative idioms. Note that in (36), (37) and (38) a resumptive pronoun inside the relative clause is anaphoric, with an idiom part which functions as the head of the relative clause as its antecedent.

(35) ve-nesayem be-mila qtana ʕal *ha-femen* [fe-hosifu
and-will.conclude.1P with-word small on *the-oil* that-added.3PM
ha-ciyonim *la-medura*].
the-zionists *to.the-bonfire*
‘And we’ll conclude by mentioning the fuel that the Zionists added to the
fire.’

(36) ze lo ʕec gavoha [[fe-nitan laredet mime-no].
this not tree.SM tall.SM that-possible *to-descend from-him*
‘This is not an unrealistic stance that it is possible to withdraw from.’
(37) po šadayin lo heqimu ?et ha-meduxa [ʃe-ʔeʃʃar laʃevet
here yet not established.3P ACC the-MEDUXA.SF that-possible to.sit
šalei-ha ve-ladun ?eix niftarim me-ha-ħevra le-meʃeq
on-her and-discuss how get.rid.PM from-the-society to-economy
ve-kalkala].
and-economy

'Here they haven't yet figured out how to deliberate on the issue of how to get rid of Local Government Economic Services.'

(38) hu miher la-lifka, mosad.sm geriya-tri.sm fe-ha-kelaḥ
he hurried to.the-bureau institution geriatric that-the-KELAH.sm
[fe-ʔavad ſal-av] kvar hiḥlid mizman.
that-lost.3sm on-him already rusted.3sm long.ago

'He hurried to the bureau, a geriatric institution that had become outdated long ago.'

The cranberry words in these examples are clearly functioning outside their idiomatic context. In (37) the cranberry word meduxa serves as the complement of the verb heqimu 'established' in a unique and innovative yet comprehensible combination. In (38) kelaḥ is the head of a relative clause, yet it also functions as a subject of predicate: kvar hiḥlid mizman 'rusted long ago'. The speaker in this case attributes to this cranberry word physical properties which are related to aging. In doing so, s/he emphasizes his/her assessment of the bureau as an old and outdated institution.

## 4.3 Argument structure variations

### 4.3.1 Mapping variations

Variations with respect to the mapping of idiom parts to grammatical functions were found with transparent figurative idioms. Consider examples (39) and (40). In these examples femen 'oil', which is the complement of the verb in the canonical idiom, functions as the subject.

(39) be-xol ?ofen nifpax ha-femen šaxšav kmo ſe-ʔomrim
in-all way was.spilled.3sm the-oil.sm now as that-they.say
la-medura.
to.the-bonfire

'Anyway, fuel was now added, as they say, to the fire.'
(40) nitan lehosif le-kax ?et ha-gzerot ſel ?adri?anus ke-ſemen
possible to.add to-that ACC the-decrees of Adrianus as-oil.SM

ſe-hidliq ?et ha-medura ſel ha-mered.

that-ignited.3SM ACC the-bonfire of the-rebellion

'It is possible to add to that the decrees of Adrianus as fuel which ignited
the fire of the rebellion.'

In (39) the passive verb *nifpax* ‘was.spilled’ is used instead of the canonical
transitive verb *hosif* ‘added’. The agent is not expressed. In (40) the oil is the
causer which lights the idiomatic bonfire. Here, too, a different verb is used. This
idiom was found to be particularly prone to lexical substitutions (see Section 4.5).

None of the opaque figurative idioms were found to be passivized. Neverthe-
less, (41) illustrates a different type of argument realization pattern. Indeed, the
hand, which is realized as oblique in the canonical idiom (*heſela heres be-yad-o*
'brought up a shard in his hand' → 'tried in vain, failed') is realized in this case
as the subject.

(41) zar ha-mefaſpeſ be-ma?agarei hasfarim
outsider.SM that-rummaging.SM in-stock.CS the-books
yufta legalot ki yad-o maſala heres.
will.be.surprised.3SM to.discover that hand.SF-his brings.up.SF shard

'An outsider rummaging in the stock of books would be surprised to find
himself unsuccessful.'

In the cranberry idiom *higdif ?et ha-se?a* ‘overfilled the *SEAH*’ → ‘exaggerated’ the cranberry word *ha-se?a* functions as the complement of the verb. There are, however, instances of this idiom where *ha-se?a* functions as the subject and the verb is a morphological variant of the canonical verb: the passive *hugdefa* ‘was.overfilled’ in (42) and the middle *nitgadfa* ‘was.overfilled’ in (43).

(42) ha-paſam **hugdefa** ha-seʔa.
the-time **was.overfilled.3SF** the-SEAH.SF

'This time things went overboard.'

(43) ʕata **nitgadʃa** ha-seʔa ve-higiʕa ha-ʕet letaqen ?et now **was.overfilled.3SF** the-SEAH.SF and-arrived the-time to.fix ACC ha-meʕuvat.

the-wrong

'Now that things went overboard, it is time to fix the wrongdoing.'
4.3.2 Causativization

The verbs *yarad* ‘descend’, *yaca* ‘come out’ and *yafav* ‘sit’, which head a trans-
parent figurative, opaque figurative and cranberry idiom, respectively, are also
used in their causative form in the same idioms. The causee argument, indicated
by square brackets, is an “open slot”. This is illustrated in (44), (45) and (46).

(44) ?ein kmo ʕilot biṭhoniyot **lehorid** [ʔet ʃnei ha-cdadim] no like reasons security **to.bring.down** ACC both.cs the-sides **me-ha-ʕec.**

**from-the-tree**

‘There is nothing like security reasons to cause the two (opposing) sides to concede.’

(45) ha-ʔofanayim ha-ʔele yexolim **lehoci** [ʔafilu baħur ʕaqeṭ kamoni] the-bicycle.PM the-these can.PM **to.take.out** even guy quiet like.me **me-ha-kelim.**

from-the-tools

‘This bicycle can make even a quiet guy like me upset.’

(46) higiʕa ha-zman **lehofiv** ʕal ha-meduxa [kalkelanim arrived the-time **to.cause.sit** on **the-MEDUXA.SF** economists ve-aqtuʔarim]. and-actuaries

‘It’s time to make economists and actuaries deliberate (on some issue).’

The following example exhibits a neologism. The verb *heʔevid* is created by combining the consonantal root of the original verb *ʔavad* ‘lose’ (*ʔ-b/v-d*) with the causative template HiCCiC to create a verb whose meaning is ‘cause to be lost’.<fnref n="9" /> The cranberry word *kelaħ* serves as the causee and surfaces as a direct object (marked with the accusative case marker *ʔet*). This suggests that it is interpreted (at least in this case) as some property, perhaps relevance, whose absence makes something outdated. Although this neologism is attested only once in the corpus, it is comprehensible in the context of this idiom, due to the transparent morphological relationship between it and the canonical verbal form.

<footnote n="9">⁹The original Biblical meaning of *heʔevid* is ‘demolish, destroy’.</footnote>
(47) sifro ha-riṣon doħe ?et ha-haṣqafa ha-rovaḥat ſe-qant his.book the-first rejects ACC the-view the-common that-Kant.SM he?evid ?et ha-kelaḥ ſal ha-meṭafiziqa. cause.be.lost.3SM ACC the-KELAH.SM on the-metaphysics ‘His first book rejects the common view that Kant made metaphysics outdated.’

## 4.4 Lexical insertions

Transparent figurative idioms were found to be amenable to different types of modifications. Consider the following examples with the idiom *yarad me-ha-ſec* ‘descended from the tree’ → ‘conceded’.

(48) hi crixa laredet me-ha-ſec ha-cadqani she needs.SF to-descend from-the-tree.SM the-righteous.SM ve-ha-baxyani ſe-ſal-av hi ṭipsa. and-the-whiny.SM that-on-him she climbed.3SF ‘She needs to abandon the righteous and whiny stance which she adopted.’

(49) ?oto ſef mesaper ſe-hu himci ?et ha-ſuga ha-popolarit. yeſ same chef tells that-he invented ACC the-cake the-popular there.are ka?elu ſe-ḥolqim ſal-av ve-menasim lehorid ?oto qcat those.PM that-disagree.PM on-him and-try.PM to.bring.down him bit me-ha-ſec ha-ʃoqoladi. from-the-tree.SM the-chocolaty.SM ‘The same chef claims that he invented the popular (chocolate) cake. There are those who disagree and try to make him slightly abandon his stance re. chocolate.’

In example (48) the idiomatic tree is modified by two adjectives, and with a relative clause which includes the associated idiom *ṭipes ſal ſec gavoha* ‘climbed on a tall tree’ → ‘adopted an unrealistic stance’. In the canonical idiom the adjective *gavoha* ‘tall’ modifies *ſec* ‘tree’ by relating to its literal sense, yet in this example the adjectives modify the assumed idiomatic meaning of *ſec* ‘tree’ → ‘stance’. The modifier *foqoladi* ‘chocolaty’ in (49) also modifies *ſec* ‘tree’, but in this case it is an external “domain delimiter” (Ernst 1981), which specifies the domain to which the idiom applies.
A different type of variation is exhibited by the following example, where the idiomatic tree is both quantified and pluralized. In addition, the adverb *befeqet* 'quietly' externally modifies the entire phrase.

(50) kulam *yordim* **befeqet** mi-kol **ha-ʃecim**.
everyone *descending.PM* quietly from-all **the-trees**
'Everybody is quietly abandoning all of their stances.'

Opaque figurative idioms exhibit less variation in terms of different types of modification. Following are two examples.

(51) gam gugel lo ṭomenet ?et yad-a **ha-virṭuʔalit ba-calaħat**.
also Google.SF not *burying.SF* ACC hand.SF-her **the-virtual.SF** in.the-plate
'Google also isn't sitting idle.'

(52) heʃeleti be-yad-i ḫeres muħlaṭ.
brought.up.1s in-hand-my shard.SM absolute.SM
'I absolutely failed.'

The adjective *virṭuʔalit* ‘virtual’ in (51) is a domain delimiter, similarly to *fo-qoladi* ‘chocolaty’ in (49) above. The modification of *ḥeres* ‘shard’ in (52) is also external: the speaker describes a situation where she searches for something and finds *absolutely* nothing.

The occurrence of modification in cranberry idioms is especially surprising due to their opaqueness and lack of figuration. Nevertheless, as the following examples show, cranberry words are compatible with different types of modifications. In (53) the cranberry word *meduxa* is modified by an adjectival phrase and with a demonstrative, in (54) by a relative clause and in (55) *meduxa* is the head of a construct state NP which is modified by its complement. In all three instances, the modification suggests that the speakers perceive the interpretation of *meduxa* to be ‘issue’. A similar case was presented in (32) above.

(53) mišʔala codeqet ve-nexona zo ha-meqanenet be-lev kol
wish justified and-right this that-lies in-heart.cs every
ha-yošvim šal meduxa qaša ve-ṭragit zo...
that-sitting.PM on MEDUXA.SF difficult.SF and-tragic.SF this.SF
'This justified and right wish, that lies in the heart of all those
deliberating on this difficult and tragic issue...'
(54) notnim le-ʃofeṭ laʃevet ʃal meduxa ʃe-lo qayemet, ve-lehaxliṭ
give to-judge to.sit on MEDUXA.SF that-not exists.SF and-to.decide
ʃe-yef latet lahem ?et ?admot ha-negev ʃelanu.
that-must to.give to.them ACC plots.cs the-negev ours
‘(They) assign a judge to deliberate on a non-existing issue, and decide
that our plots in the Negev should be given to them!’

(55) ʃal meduxat heter ʃimuʃ be-neʃeq le-naʃim kvar yaʃvu
on MEDUXA.SF.CS license use.CS in-weapon to-women already sat.3PM
posqei dorenu.
adjudicators.PM.CS our.generation
‘The adjudicators of our time have already deliberated on the issue of
women using weapons.’

Instances of lexical insertions with the other cranberry idioms were also found. In (56) the cranberry word kelaḥ appears with an indefinite quantifier and an adjective, although it is not clear what it denotes, neither literally nor idiomatically. In (57) the cranberry word seʔa is modified with a relative clause, which refers to its literal meaning as a measure.

(56) hem ḫoqrim ʃe-miʃtamʃim be-ṭexniqot ve-tfisot ʃolam
they researchers that-use in-techniques.PF and-views.PF.CS world
ʃe-ʔavad ʃalei-hem ʔeize kelaḥ qaṭan.
that-lost.3SM on-them some KELAH.SM small.SM
‘They are researchers who use techniques and world-views that are a bit
outdated.’

(57) be-cašad ze higdaštem ʔet ha-seʔa ha-meleʔa gam kax
in-step this overfilled.2PM ACC the-SEAH.SF the-full.SF also this.way
be-pigušei ṭeror.
in-attacks.cs terror
‘With this step you overdid a situation that was already too much with
respect to the terror attacks.’
## 4.5 Lexical substitutions

### 4.5.1 Transparent figurative idioms

Note that transparent figurative idioms exhibit lexical substitution of both verbs and nouns. In (58) the verb *yarad* ‘descend’ is replaced with the more active *qafac* ‘jump’, without loss of idiomatic meaning.

(58) hu hevin ṣe-cadaqnu ve-maca derex mavriqa he understood.3sm that-were.right.1p and-found.3sm way brilliant liqpoc me-ha-šec. to.jump from-the-tree

‘He understood that we were right and found a brilliant way to concede.’

The idiom *hosif semen la-medura* ‘added oil to the bonfire’ → ‘aggravated the situation’ exhibits lexical substitutions of both the verb and the noun. The verb *hosif* ‘add’ is substituted by different verbs whose meaning approximates ‘adding something (mostly liquid) to something else’. One such case is exemplified in (59). Other examples are *nifpax* ‘be spilled’ in (39) and *hidliq* ‘ignite’ in (40).

(59) wiqipedia yoceqet semen la-medura ṣel hiluqeii
Wikipedia.SF pouring.SF oil to.the-bonfire of disagreements.cs
ha-dešot ha-beinle?umiyim.
the-opinions the-international

‘Wikipedia is seriously aggravating the situation of international disagreements.’

More creative variations are found with the substitution of nouns. In (60) ṣe-men ‘oil’ is substituted by the more general ḫomer nafic ‘explosive material’, still within the semantic domain of the literal meaning. In (61) it is replaced with an abstract noun which refers to its idiomatic interpretation.

(60) ?anaḥnu lo crixim leḥapes šod ḫomer nafic lehosif
we not need to.search more material explosive to.add
la-medura.
to.the-bonfire

‘We don’t need to search for additional ways to aggravate the situation.’
(61) mazuz šacmo *hosif* la-medura ?et ha-hitnahalut
Mazuz.SM himself added.3SM to.the-bonfire ACC the-conduct
ha-šašaruriyatit be-tiq qacav.
the-outrageous in-case.cs Katsav

‘Mazuz himself aggravated the situation, with the outrageous conduct in Katsav’s case.’

4.5.2 Opaque figurative idioms

Lexical substitutions are also found in the category of opaque figurative idioms. In (62) the idiom is exploited to describe not the act of bringing up a piece of shard, but rather the end result: remaining with it in your hand. This change of verb and perspective does not disrupt the meaning of the idiom.

(62) ?azai kʃe-tagiša kvar le-bħinat ha-hitqadmut
then when-will.arrive.2SM already to-examination.cs the-step
ha-hamca?atit **tivater** šim heres be-yad-xa.
the-inventive **will.remain.2SM** with shard in-hand-your

‘When you finally get to the examination of inventive step you will have failed.’

In (63) and (64) the hand which in the canonical idiom is buried (or not) in the plate, is replaced with other instruments: a camera and a sting. These expressions can only be understood provided that the canonical idiom is known.

(63) gam nadav lo ṭaman maclema-to ba-calaḥat
also Nadav.SM not buried.3SM camera-his in.the-plate
ve-cilem ba-moze?on lelo heref.
and-photographed.3SM in.the-museum without stop

‘Nadav also didn’t refrain from using a camera, and took pictures in the museum without stopping.’

(64) gam ha-cirša lo ṭomenet ?et šoqc-a ba-calaḥat.
also the-wasp.SF not bury.SF ACC sting-her in.the-plate

‘The wasp also does not refrain from using its sting.’

4.5.3 Cranberry idioms

Cranberry idioms are also subject to lexical substitutions. There are a few in-
stances of the idiom *lo yesula be-paz* ‘will not be *sula* in gold’ → ‘priceless’
where the cranberry verb *sula* is replaced with a Hebrew synonym *hešerix* ‘evaluate’. One such example is given in (65).

(65) ze mifgaš ḫevrati ṣe-lešolam lo yaḥzor ve-ʾein
this get.together.SM social.SM that-never not will.return.3S.M and-not
lehašarix-o be-paz.
to.evaluate-him in-gold

‘This is a social get-together that will never return and should be
considered priceless.’

In (66) the verb *yafav* ‘sit’ is substituted by the verb *hitqabec* ‘gather’, yet the
idiomatic meaning is maintained.

(66) *ṣal meduxa* zo **hitqabcu** harbe melumadim.
    *on MEDUXA.SF this.SF gathered.P* many scholars
    ‘Many scholars have deliberated on this issue.’

**4.6 Discussion**

Verbal MWEs in Hebrew turned out to be consistently more flexible than would
be expected given Nunberg et al.’s (1994) categorical bifurcation. All the idioms
we investigated in this study exhibited flexibility to a certain extent. The varia-
tions exhibited by the transparent figurative idioms refer to both the literal and
the figurative meanings of the expressions. Thus, speakers can relate to the tree
in *yarad me-ha-ʾec* ‘descended from the tree’ → ‘conceded’ in its literal mean-
ing as an entity with physical properties (e.g., ‘tall’ in 36) which can be physi-
cally manipulated, either by climbing down from it (in the canonical form) or
by jumping down from it (58). The height of the tree or the manner with which
one descends from it transfer metaphorically to the idiomatic meaning of the
phrase. Conversely, speakers can also attribute to the tree in the idiom abstract
properties which are only appropriate in the context of the idiom (e.g., *cadqani*
*ve-baxyani* ‘righteous and whiny’ in 48).

Even more flexibility is found with the transparent figurative idiom *hosif femen la-medura* ‘added oil to the bonfire’ → ‘aggravated the situation’. The vivid picture which this idiom conjures allows speakers to describe it in different terms, while still maintaining the idiomatic meaning. Thus, we find lexical substitutions for both the verb *hosif* ‘add’ and the noun *femen* ‘oil’, which refers to the material added to the bonfire (both literal as in (60) and idiomatic as in (61)). As far as we can tell, the word *medura* ‘bonfire’ cannot be substituted.
On the other side of the flexibility continuum are the opaque figurative idioms. While different types of variations were found to be compatible with these idioms, this class exhibited a more constrained behavior. We did not find any evidence for instances of relativization, and only a handful of cases of lexical insertions. Lexical substitutions, too, were rare. The two examples given for ṭaman yad-o ba-calaḥat ‘buried his hand in the plate’ → ‘refrained from acting’ in (63) and (64) are instances of what could be considered as “word play”. Furthermore, the opacity of this idiom is especially evident in light of attested instances where its use reflects a wrong/alternative interpretation of the idiom, one in which the burying of the hand indicates involvement in something. This is illustrated in (67).

(67) ?arba'im ḫavarot beinle?umiyot ṭomnot ?et yad-an forty companies.PF international.PF bury.PF ACC hand-their be-calaḥat ha-zihum ha-gduṣa ṣel sin. in-plate.SF.CS the-pollution the-full.SF of China ‘Forty international companies are involved in heavily polluted China.’

We suggest that the combination of figuration and opacity emphasizes the idiosyncracy of these idioms, and consequently speakers are more conservative in the way that they use them.

We were especially surprised by the behavior of the cranberry idioms. Our initial expectation was that the lack of transparency and figuration would render these idioms more rigid. Our corpus findings, however, reveal a different picture. The usage patterns exhibited by these idioms suggest that speakers attribute to the meaningless cranberry words some semantic content, or to put it more idiomatically – breathe new life into them. As was illustrated and discussed above, the usage patterns of these idioms suggest that speakers are imposing some interpretation on cranberry words. The word meduxa in yafav šal ha-meduxa ‘sat on the MEDUXA’ → ‘deliberated’ is interpreted as denoting the issue which is under deliberation (see 32, 53 and 55). A similar situation is found with respect to kelaḥ. From the examples, we can see that in spite of its lack of meaning it is conceptualized as a physical object which can be small (56) and can become rusty (38). Moreover, it can function as the topic of a clause (27 & 38). It would seem that the meaninglessness of cranberry words frees speakers to apply their own interpretation to them, and to provide idioms which are opaque and non-figurative with transparency and figuration.
## 4.7 Conclusion

In this chapter we challenged the predictive ability attributed to the notion of decomposability by Nunberg et al. (1994). We argued that this notion is too fuzzy to be used as a principle for reliably categorizing idioms, and, moreover, that it cannot be used to predict their flexibility or rigidity. On the contrary, we hypothesized that idioms cannot be categorically classified as either flexible or rigid, rather, that they occupy a continuum, with different idioms exhibiting varying degrees of flexibility.

We questioned the validity of the assumption that some idioms are completely rigid (modulo verbal inflection) and demonstrated that even the quintessential non-decomposable idiom *kick the bucket* can undergo transformations. However, since this idiom is used relatively rarely and idiom variations in and of themselves are relatively infrequent, non-canonical instances of it and other infrequent idioms can only be empirically attested in very large corpora. This, we believe, is an important methodological finding, which at this point in time, with the availability of large annotated corpora, cannot be overlooked.

Rather than focusing on decomposability as a defining property of idioms, we considered two distinct semantic dimensions: **FIGURATION** and **TRANSPARENCY**. We hypothesized that the more figurative and transparent an idiom is, the more amenable it is to various transformations. Our corpus-based investigation and subsequent comparison of idioms associated with three semantic types (transparent figurative, opaque figurative and opaque non-figurative) revealed that the usage patterns of opaque figurative idioms are the most conservative among the three.

Opacity, however, was found not to be the sole “culprit”, since cranberry idioms which contain meaningless words were found to be relatively flexible. Thus, we propose that neither transparency nor figuration alone can account for the behavior of idioms. Our findings suggest that there is an interaction between the two dimensions. Figurative idioms are flexible dependent on their transparency: when transparent they are relatively amenable to various transformations. Conversely, the flexibility of opaque idioms depends on their figuration: when opaque idioms are not figurative due to the inclusion of meaningless cranberry words speakers can ascribe to these meaningless words content which renders the idioms more figurative and less opaque, and consequently – more flexible. Naturally, this generalization, which is based on our work on only a limited set of Hebrew verbal idioms, requires further investigation.
## Abbreviations

<table><tr><td>1/2/3</td><td>person</td><td>ACC</td><td>accusative case</td></tr><tr><td>S/P</td><td>number</td><td>CS</td><td>construct state</td></tr><tr><td>F/M</td><td>gender</td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>

## Acknowledgements

This research was supported by The Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 505/11).

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# Chapter 3

## Multiword expressions in an LFG grammar for Norwegian

Helge Dyvik

University of Bergen

Gyri Smørdal Losnegaard

University of Bergen

Victoria Rosén

University of Bergen

This chapter describes the analysis of multiword expressions in NorGram, an LFG grammar of Norwegian. All multiword expressions need to be accounted for in the lexicon, but in different ways depending on the flexibility of the expression. Each multiword expression is provided with a lexical entry that has a special predicate name incorporating the lexical items that the multiword consists of and that specifies the argument structure of the predicate. In this way, analyses are provided for a wide range of multiword types, including fixed expressions, phrasal verbs, verbal idioms, and others.

### 1 Introduction

In this chapter we<fnref n="1" /> show how multiword expressions (MWEs) are represented in NorGram, a hand-written computational grammar of Norwegian (Dyvik 2000). The grammar is couched in the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) formalism (Bresnan 2001; Dalrymple 2001). It was first developed in the context of the Parallel Grammar Project (ParGram), an international cooperative effort to develop

<figure><img src="image_19.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_20.png" /></figure>

<footnote n="1">¹The authors have contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order.</footnote>
parallel LFG grammars for a number of languages (Butt et al. 2002). The Xerox Linguistic Environment (XLE) is the platform we use for grammar development and parsing (Maxwell & Kaplan 1993).

NorGram contains about 380 complex syntactic rules, corresponding to a transition network with more than 160,000 states and more than 4.7 million arcs. The lexicon comprises approximately 180,000 lemmas for Norwegian Bokmål and 110,000 lemmas for Norwegian Nynorsk. NorGram uses not only the grammar rules and the lexicon but also templates to efficiently encode linguistic generalizations. As noted in Dalrymple et al. (2004: 207), templates in LFG grammars "can play the same role in capturing linguistic generalizations as hierarchical type systems in theories like HPSG". Templates are for instance used to express generalizations about subcategorization frames for verbs; there are more than 200 such verbal templates.

NorGram analyzes several types of MWEs, including fixed and flexible expressions. The classification of MWEs according to their relative flexibility was initially proposed for English (Sag et al. 2002; Baldwin & Kim 2010), presupposing that MWEs with the same degree of flexibility may receive the same or similar treatment in NLP systems. The distinction between fixed, semi-fixed and syntactically flexible MWEs may thus be useful also for other languages than English, although the criteria for distinguishing between the classes may vary.

Fixed MWEs are found in most languages with MWEs and in basically every part of speech. These are expressions that are completely invariable, with no morphosyntactic variation or internal modification, such as the adverb *by the way* and the determiner *each and every*. Semi-fixed MWEs, as defined for English, allow some lexical and morphological variation such as limited internal modification and inflection, while the relative word order of the components does not change. Examples are compound nominals (*chicken soup*), proper names, such as *Donald Duck*, and the subset of verbal idioms with fixed word order, such as *shoot the breeze* 'chat' and *kick the bucket* 'die'. Syntactically-flexible expressions display a wider range of flexibility, allowing some or all types of syntactic variation including passivization, relativization and other operations that are not possible in semi-fixed MWEs. All flexible MWEs are verbal. They include verb-particle constructions, light verbs, and the subset of verbal idioms whose word order is less restricted than semi-fixed expressions. Table 1 illustrates how common types of English MWEs distribute over these classes.

The syntactic variation in verbal MWEs in English has given rise to a theory of semantic decomposability (Nunberg et al. 1994) which has led to increased interest in the relation between the syntax and semantics of verbal MWEs. Semantic decomposability is a measure of whether the meaning of the expression
<table><caption>Table 1: Classes of flexibility</caption><thead><tr><th>Flexibility class</th><th>Type</th><th>Example MWE</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Fixed</td><td></td><td>by the way</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Semi-fixed</td><td>compound nominals</td><td>chicken soup</td></tr><tr><td>proper names</td><td>Donald Duck</td></tr><tr><td>non-decomposable idioms</td><td>kick the bucket</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Flexible</td><td>verb-particle constructions</td><td>give up</td></tr><tr><td>light verbs</td><td>give a speech</td></tr><tr><td>decomposable idioms</td><td>spill the beans</td></tr></tbody></table>

distributes over the MWE components or only relates to the expression as a whole. It may explain why individual parts of an expression may be fronted, topicalized, and relativized, and may also in other ways contribute meaningfully to the information structure of the sentence. On the other hand, semantic non-decomposability blocks compositional interpretations, which again explains why semi-fixed MWEs are not subject to operations that would normally indicate that their components are associated with some independent meaning.

While a distinction between semantically decomposable and nondecomposable verbal idioms may also hold for Norwegian, the correlation between syntactic flexibility and semantic decomposability seems less conspicuous than for English. In particular, Norwegian has subject-verb inversion in interrogative main clauses, so that the word order will vary in MWEs that are otherwise highly restricted. Most verbal idioms may also undergo at least some modification (e.g., impersonal passives). Furthermore, the mechanisms for representing restrictions and variation in NorGram are technically the same for semi-fixed and flexible MWEs. Since no distinction is reflected in the way verbal MWEs are represented in the lexicon and grammar, all such MWEs are considered flexible, and MWEs with similar morphosyntactic properties are accounted for with templates which are in effect mini-grammars for subsets of MWEs.

With respect to subtypes of MWEs, the types of MWEs analyzed by NorGram more or less correspond to the types in Table 1, with a few exceptions. As in many other Germanic languages, compound nominals in Norwegian form single graphical words. These are thus not considered multiword expressions. In addition to prepositional verbs, NorGram analyzes nouns and adjectives with selected prepositions as MWEs. Expressions that are completely regular on the morphological
and syntactic levels, such as light verb constructions, are analyzed composition-
ally by the grammar and are not represented in the lexicon as MWEs. A special
case is complex numerals such as *hundre og to* ‘one hundred two’ and *to og nitti*
‘ninety two’, which may also be considered a subtype of MWE. The particular
syntax and semantics of such expressions is accounted for with a special set of
lexical entries and syntactic rules.

NorGramBank, a large parsebank for Norwegian, has been created by parsing
a corpus with NorGram (Dyvik et al. 2016). Because of lexical and syntactic am-
biguity, parsing with NorGram often results in many analyses for each sentence,
and efficient disambiguation is therefore necessary. The INESS project<fnref n="2" /> has de-
veloped a treebanking infrastructure for parsing, disambiguating, storing, and
searching the texts in NorGramBank (Rosén et al. 2012). The parsebank currently
consists of about 60 million words of analyzed text, of which sentences covering
350,000 words have been manually disambiguated by computer-generated dis-
criminants (Rosén et al. 2007). The remainder of the corpus has been stochasti-
cally disambiguated. INESS Search is a tool for searching in LFG and other tree-
banks in the treebanking infrastructure (Meurer 2012). MWEs are analyzed by
NorGram in such a way that the different types may be searched for.

The original lexical resource used for the NorGram lexicon, NorKompLeks, contained a small number of fixed expressions (Nordgård 2000). The main design of the treatment of MWEs in NorGram was developed during ParGram (Butt et al. 2002) and especially during the LOGON machine translation project (Lønning et al. 2004). A large number of MWEs have been added to NorGram’s lexicon during the construction of NorGramBank. When disambiguators discovered MWEs that did not receive an analysis or that received an incorrect analysis, they constructed new lexical entries or edited existing lexical entries as needed in order to cover the MWEs (Losnegaard et al. 2012; Rosén et al. 2016).

This chapter is organized as follows. In Section 2 an overview of the basics of
LFG is given, showing how constructions without MWEs are analyzed in Nor-
Gram as a background for the treatment of MWEs in the following sections. Sec-
tion 3 illustrates the NorGram analysis of MWEs, both fixed expressions and
flexible expressions such as phrasal verbs, verbal idioms, and nonverbal flexible
expressions. Section 4 shows how various syntactic modifications are handled, in-
cluding intervening words, long-distance dependencies and passive alternations.
Section 5 discusses numerous complex complementation patterns that are cov-
ered by NorGram for Norwegian MWEs. Section 6 presents our conclusions.

<footnote n="2">²http://clarino.uib.no/iness</footnote>
## 2 Syntactic analysis in LFG

LFG analyses have two distinct levels of syntactic representation: constituent structure (c-structure) and functional structure (f-structure). The c-structure is a phrase structure tree that represents precedence and dominance relations. The f-structure is an attribute-value matrix with information about grammatical functions such as subject and object and grammatical features such as tense, gender and number. An example of a NorGram analysis of the sentence in (1) is given in Figure 1.<fnref n="3" />

(1) Hun tenkte på buss-en.
    she thought on bus-DEF.SG
    'She was thinking (while) on the bus./She thought about the bus.'

<figure><img src="image_21.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: C- and f-structure for Hun tenkte på bussen.</figcaption></figure>

This sentence is ambiguous, as shown by the two idiomatic translations. The analysis in Figure 1 concerns the first translation, where the prepositional phrase

<footnote n="3">³In this example the morphological structure of the word form *bussen* is indicated since it is relevant for the analysis being discussed. Otherwise, we simplify the glossing by omitting morpheme-by-morpheme analysis and using two English words to render one Norwegian word when necessary.</footnote>
på bussen ‘on the bus’ is an adjunct (adverbial). The second reading, where tenke
på ‘think about’ is a phrasal verb, will be treated in Section 3.2.

The phrase structure rules and lexicon of an LFG grammar assign the c-struc-
ture. NorGram uses a version of X'-syntax that is inspired by Bresnan (2001),
with some adjustments which depart from strictly binary branching structures.

The f-structure is projected from the c-structure by the functional description (f-description), which describes correspondences between the two levels. One such correspondence is illustrated in Figure 1 by the highlighting of the PP node and the corresponding partial f-structure. The phrase structure rules that assign this f-structure are given in (2) and (3). The rule daughters are listed vertically after the horizontal arrow, with each node’s functional annotations following after a colon.<fnref n="4" />

$$
(2) \quad \begin{array}{rcl}
\text{PP} & \rightarrow & \text{P: } \uparrow = \downarrow \\
& & \text{NP: } (\uparrow \text{OBJ}) = \downarrow
\end{array}
$$

$$
(3) \quad \mathrm{NP} \rightarrow \mathrm{N}: \uparrow = \downarrow
$$

The annotations on the rule daughters describe the associated f-structures. In
the equations, ↑ refers to the f-structure of the mother node (the category on the
left-hand side of the rule), while ↓ refers to the f-structure of the daughter node
(the category carrying the annotation on the right-hand side of the rule). Thus
the equation ↑=↓ annotated to a rule daughter means that the daughter node
and its mother node will project the same f-structure. The equation (↑ OBJ) = ↓ on
the NP node in (2) specifies that the f-structure of the mother node (PP) has an
object (OBJ) which is the f-structure of the daughter node (NP). In this way the
highlighted f-structure with the index “2” at its lower left corner in Figure 1 is
projected from the PP node. Both the PP node and the P node are highlighted in
the c-structure since they both project this same f-structure.

The annotations on the phrase structure rules account for only part of the in-
formation in the f-structure. Other information comes from the word forms in the
terminal nodes of the tree. For instance, the lexical and morphological informa-
tion for the word *bussen* contributes all the equations in (4). These equations are
part of the f-description for the f-structure that is the value of the OBJ attribute
(with the index “5”) in Figure 1.

<footnote n="4">⁴The examples of rules, lexical entries, and templates in the following are simplified for the purpose of exposition. Neither the format nor the content is exactly the same as in NorGram.</footnote>
(4) (↑ PRED) = 'buss'
(↑ NTYPE NSEM COMMON) = count
(↑ NTYPE NSYN) = common
(↑ GEND NEUT) = -
(↑ GEND MASC) = +
(↑ GEND FEM) = -
(↑ PERS) = 3
(↑ NUM) = sg
(↑ DEF-MORPH) = +
(↑ DEF) = +

The first equation, which assigns the PRED(icate) value 'buss', is specific to this noun, but the others are common to many other words. Some of the equations come from features assigned to the word form *bussen* by the morphological analyzer run prior to parsing; these features are +Noun, +Sg, +Def and +Masc, and they will appear in the string presented to the syntactic parser. Other equations come from the lexical entry for the noun *buss*. Both the features and the noun must have entries in the lexicon; these are shown in (5–9). Each lexical entry specifies a lexical category; SUFF (for suffix) is the category for morphological features.

(5) +Noun SUFF (↑ PERS) = 3

(6) +Sg SUFF (↑ NUM) = sg

(7) +Def SUFF @DEF

(8) +Masc SUFF @MASC

(9) buss N @((COUNTNOUN buss)

The equations in the first two entries each contribute one attribute-value pair to the f-structure. Entries (7–9) contain template invocations rather than equations. The @-sign indicates a call to a template, while DEF, MASC and COUNT-NOUN are names of templates. A template is an f-description, a collection of equations which it is convenient to refer to by a name rather than listing all the equations. Templates can be used in different places in the grammar and lexicon, and template definitions may refer to other templates.

The definition of the template named DEF is shown in (10). All nouns inflected in the definite form will carry these two equations, so it can be convenient to refer to them together.
$$ (10) \quad \begin{aligned} \text{DEF} &= (\uparrow \text{DEF-MORPH}) = + \\ (\uparrow \text{DEF}) &= + \end{aligned} $$

Norwegian has a complicated system of gender agreement because of some nouns that may have either masculine or feminine agreement, and because adjectives and determiners may be unspecified for certain gender distinctions. To account for this, each noun must receive a plus or minus value for each of the three genders. The equations needed for specifying masculine gender are included in the template in (11). These equations do not simply describe attribute-value pairs; they describe paths through the f-structure. The equation $(\uparrow \text{GEND MASC}) = +$ states that the f-structure has an attribute GEND which has as its value a subsidiary f-structure which in its turn has an attribute MASC with the value +.

$$ (11) \quad \begin{aligned} \text{MASC} &= (\uparrow \text{GEND MASC}) = + \\ (\uparrow \text{GEND FEM}) &= - \\ (\uparrow \text{GEND NEUT}) &= - \end{aligned} $$

Like the template MASC, the template COUNTNOUN also describes paths through the f-structure. The NTYPE NSYN features distinguish between common nouns, proper nouns, pronouns, etc. while the NTYPE NSEM COMMON features distinguish between count nouns, mass nouns, etc. All nouns must contribute a PRED feature to the f-structure, but the PRED feature itself will differ from noun to noun. The template in (12) is parameterized; the parameter P will be substituted by the argument supplied in the invocation of the template, for example the word *buss* in (9).

$$ (12) \quad \begin{aligned} \text{COUNTNOUN}(P) &= (\uparrow \text{PRED}) = P \\ (\uparrow \text{NTYPE NSEM COMMON}) &= \text{count} \\ (\uparrow \text{NTYPE NSYN}) &= \text{common} \end{aligned} $$

The value of a PRED attribute is a semantic form. A semantic form is always enclosed in single quotation marks, indicating that the value is unique, which means that it cannot be unified even with an identical-looking value of some other attribute. For some words the semantic form includes not only the word itself, but also a syntactic argument list. This is the case for two of the words in *hun tenker på bussen* (in the interpretation being considered in this section). The verb has the semantic form `tenke([SUBJ])`, meaning that the verb is intransitive
and subcategorizes only for a subject, and the preposition has the semantic form
'på<([OBJ])>', indicating that it requires an object.

Verbs can of course subcategorize for several arguments. For example, the verb
slå 'hit' has the semantic form 'slå<([SUBJ,OBJ])>' since it requires a subject and an
object. The completeness requirement for f-structures stipulates that each of the
syntactic functions mentioned in the semantic form of a PRED feature must occur
on the same level of f-structure as that PRED. There is also a coherence require-
ment to the effect that subcategorizable syntactic functions may only occur on
the same level of f-structure as a PRED feature if they are mentioned in its seman-
tic form. The argument lists in semantic forms are thus crucial for determining
grammaticality. The semantic forms "govern the process of semantic interpreta-
tion" (Kaplan & Bresnan 1982: 177).

3 Implementing MWEs

The crucial challenge of representing MWEs is that they defy normal composi-
tional analysis. The LFG solution that is implemented in NorGram is to assign
to each MWE a special lexical entry that has its own PRED value and thus its
own argument structure. Each MWE has a semantic form with a special predi-
cate name and a list of any syntactic arguments that this predicate requires. This
will be shown in detail for the various types of MWEs in the following.

3.1 *Fixed expressions*

Fixed expressions, such as *ad hoc*, *déjà vu*, and *vice versa*, are those that do not vary with respect to inflection and that do not admit any internal modification. They are also called inflexible expressions or “words with spaces”. Fixed expressions are the simplest MWEs to implement; they are entered into the NorGram lexicon as single graphical words containing white space, so they are literally treated as words with spaces.

(13) Hun likte **i bunn** og **grunn** ikke **New York i det hele** tatt.
    she liked in bottom and ground not New York in the whole taken
    ‘She basically didn’t like New York at all.’

The sentence in (13) contains three such expressions: *i bunn og grunn*, *New York*, and *i det hele tatt*.<fnref n="5" /> The c-structure of (13) is shown in Figure 2. The simplified

<footnote n="5">⁵In this and subsequent examples the lexically fixed words making up the MWE are highlighted with boldface.</footnote>
f-structure is shown in Figure 3; this is the “PREDs only” view of f-structure where feature paths that do not end in PRED values are suppressed. The three expressions belong to different parts of speech: ADVcmt (commitment adverb), PROP (proper noun), and ADVs (sentence adverb). The adverbs have the function ADJUNCT in the f-structure while the proper noun functions as the OBJ. There are numerous fixed expressions in most parts of speech in Norwegian.

<figure><img src="image_22.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: C-structure for example (13)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: F-structure for example (13)</figcaption></figure>

## 3.2 Basic properties of flexible MWEs and method of analysis

Flexible expressions may exhibit a great deal of syntactic variation, but in some respects they are inherently fixed or restricted. One of the characterizing features of MWEs is that they are lexically fixed, meaning that they consist of at least two words that cannot be substituted with near-synonyms or semantically related words without the expression losing its idiomatic meaning. The verbal idiom *komme på kant med* in (14) has four such fixed lexical words.
(14) Hun var ikke villig til å **komme på kant med** det gode selskap.
    she was not willing to come on edge with the good company
    'She was not willing to fall out with the in-crowd.'

Flexible MWEs are often also morphosyntactically restricted, with constraints on grammatical features, on the modification of component words, and on specifiers such as quantifiers and determiners. For instance, the noun *kant* in (14) can only be in the singular indefinite form, and it does not admit any specifiers or modifiers. The PP *på kant med*, however, does admit modifiers; in (15) the modifier *helt* ‘completely’ has scope over the entire expression. In NorGram, no distinction is currently made in the representation of internal and (semantically) external modification of MWEs.

(15) Hun **kom** helt **på kant med** det gode selskap.
    she came fully on edge with the good society
    ‘She completely fell out with the in-crowd.’

The mechanisms for representing lexical and morphological restrictions in flexible MWEs are the same as the ones used for regular constructions. As described in Section 2, simplex words are assigned predicate values through equations in the lexical entry, as in the entry for the simplex lexeme *buss* in example (4), which has the predicate assignment equation (↑ PRED) = 'buss'. For words that subcate- gorize for other elements, such as verbs, this is done through the assignment of a predicate-argument structure (or subcategorization frame). For instance, the intransitive verb *klage* ‘complain’ is assigned a frame through the template call @*(V-SUBJ klage)* in the lexical entry, invoking the template V-SUBJ. Part of this template is shown in (16).

$$ (16) \quad \text{V-SUBJ}(P) = (\uparrow \text{PRED}) = 'P\langle(\uparrow \text{SUBJ})\rangle' $$

The predicate value of the verb is parameterized and listed together with its arguments in the subcategorization frame, which includes everything between quotation marks in (16). When the template is invoked, the lemma form *klage* in the template call replaces the parameter *P*. The equation on the second line as- signs one argument, the subject, to *P*, yielding the predicate-argument structure ‘*klage*\<(↑ *SUBJ*)\>’ as the *PRED* value for the intransitive reading of this verb.

Lexical fixedness in flexible MWEs is handled through lexical selection in the entry of the subcategorizing word. In addition to its usual intransitive reading, the verb *klage* ‘complain’ is the syntactic head of the VP idiom *klage sin nød* ‘pour out one’s troubles’, where it subcategorizes for the object noun *nød* ‘need’.
(17) Og hun **klaget** **sin nød** til alle som ville høre. and she complained her need to all who wanted hear 'And she poured out her troubles to everyone who wanted to listen.'

Lexical entries for VP idioms are listed as alternative subcategorization frames under the entry of the verb. As in the case of simplex verbs, templates assign predicate-argument structures and other relevant features. The word that subcategorizes for the other parts of the MWE lists the predicate values of the selected arguments together with its own predicate value in the template invocation. The template call in (18) shows that the verb *klage* selects the noun *nød*.

(18) @**(VPIDIOM-DEFOBJ klage nød)**

(19) (↑ PRED) = '%FN(↑ SUBJ)(↑ OBJ)'

The predicate values of the fixed MWE components, i.e. the verb and its selected complements, are merged to form one single idiom predicate which is substituted for the relevant parameter in the predicate-argument structure. In one of the equations in the template, the predicate assignment in (19), the parameter %FN is replaced by the predicate name `textsfklage#nød`, where we use the symbol `#` to signal idiomatic combinations of this kind. Only the free arguments of verbal MWEs are specified as semantic arguments to the verb. The subcategorization frame `klage#nød(↑ SUBJ)(↑ OBJ)` lists the semantic argument, in this case SUBJ, inside the angled brackets, while the selected argument OBJ is placed outside the brackets. The parameter %FN and the construction of predicate names such as `klage#nød` are accounted for in Section 3.3.1.

Constraints on grammatical features are specified with constraining equations and existential constraints in the entries or templates. A constraining equation is an equation with a “c” attached to the equal sign. This means that the equation does not actually assign the specified value to the attribute in the f-structure; instead it requires that this value has been assigned to the attribute somewhere else. The restriction that the object `sin nød` in (17) must be definite is specified with the equation in (20). The constraint in (21) is an existential constraint which simply provides a path of attributes without assigning a particular value. The interpretation is that this path of attributes must have some value in the f-structure, thus ensuring that there is a possessive.

(20) (↑ OBJ DEF) = c +.
(21) (↑ OBJ SPEC POSS POSS-TYPE)

(22) ~ (↑ OBJ SPEC)

The selection of grammatical words and modifiers is handled in a slightly dif-
ferent way from the selection of syntactic heads. If a determiner is selected or
otherwise restricted, this is specified with a constraint requiring that the type or
form of the determiner must match the specification. The existential constraint
in (21) ensures that a possessive will specify *nød*. If no determiner is possible in
an idiom, this is specified with a negative constraint, as in (22).

Lexical constraints on modifiers are represented in the same way as grammat-
ical constraints, using equations. Some nouns do not admit modification at all,
such as *kant* in (14). Others may require that the choice of modifier is restricted
to a specific predicate or set of predicates, such as *øye* ‘eye’ in the VP idiom *ha
et godt øye til* ‘have eyes for’ in (23), where the only possible modifier is the
adjective *god* ‘good’.

(23) Det kan være han **har et godt øye til** deg.
it can be he has a good eye to you
‘He might have eyes for you.’

When a modifier is lexically restricted, a constraint equation is used to specify
the possible modifier predicate(s). In the entry for *ha et godt øye til*, the equation
in (24) ensures that the modifier (ADJUNCT) of the selected object (the noun *øye*)
has the PRED value god.

(24) (↑ OBJ ADJUNCT PRED) = c god

The treatment of lexical restrictions in VP idioms in NorGram thus depends
on the function of the component word within the MWE. While syntactic heads
are subcategorized for by the verb, dependents are specified using constraint
equations.

3.3 Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are MWEs consisting of a verb and an adverb, preposition or other
word that together have a meaning that is in some way idiosyncratic. It is com-
mon to distinguish between two main classes of phrasal verbs, prepositional
verbs and verb-particle constructions. We present these two types in Sections
3.3.1 and 3.3.2, respectively. There are also constructions where both prepositions
and particles occur; these are presented in Section 3.3.3.
### 3.3.1 Prepositional verbs

In Section 2 the sentence in (1) *Hun tenkte på bussen* was shown to have two readings. When the prepositional phrase functions as an adjunct, the analysis shown in Figure 1 obtains. When the preposition is selected by the verb, the verb and the preposition constitute an MWE, as indicated in (25), where these words are boldfaced. The analysis corresponding to this reading is shown in Figure 4.

(25) Hun tenkte på bussen.
she thought on the bus
‘She thought about the bus.’

<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4: C- and f-structure for example (25)</figcaption></figure>

In the c-structure *på bussen* forms a prepositional phrase *PPsel-n*, marked as selected by *sel-n* in the node label. This analysis captures the fact that the selected preposition *på* can only occur before the object, and that the preposition and its complement behave as one constituent with respect to movement, as in the topicalized version *På bussen tenkte hun ofte*. ‘The bus she was often thinking of’. The preposition does not provide its own predicate in the f-structure, but is analyzed as incorporated in the predicate expressed by the verb to form the predicate name *tenke*på. In predicate names the symbol “*” is used to signal such combinations of a lexical predicate with a selected particle or preposition. The complement of the preposition, *bussen*, fills the function *OBL-TH* – oblique-theta – as an argument of this predicate, i.e., an oblique argument expressing a theta role.
The lexical entry for *tenke* is associated with the relevant frame through an invocation of the template describing this class of constructions. The relevant part of the lexical entry for *tenke* is shown in (26).

(26) tenke V { [...] | @ (V-SUBJ-POBJ tenke på) | [...] }

The invocation of the template V-SUBJ-POBJ has two parameters, the predicate name for the verb *tenke* and the form of the selected preposition *på*. In (27) part of the template is shown (other parts of this template for handling passive and other modifications are discussed in Section 4).

(27) V-SUBJ-POBJ (P prp) =
@(CONCAT P '* prp %FN)
(↑ PRED) = '%FN((↑ SUBJ)(↑ OBL-TH))'
(↑ OBL-TH CHECK P-SELFORM) = prp

The template invokes another template CONCAT, which concatenates the pred-
icate name P and the preposition form prp as the value of the variable %FN. In
this example the result is the predicate name tenke*på*, which is then included in
the value of PRED. The last line assigns the value of prp (*på* in the example) as
the value of the attribute P-SELFORM under the OBL-TH argument. This feature
is checked by the syntactic rule which introduces the selected PP, ensuring that
only the preposition selected by the verb is accepted.

3.3.2 Verb-particle constructions

Verb-particle constructions consist of a verb and a selected particle in the form of
an adverb or an intransitively used preposition; in NorGram such elements are
classified as PRT in the c-structure. The verb and the particle express an idiosyn-
cratic meaning. As in English, verb-particle constructions in Norwegian can have
the particle either before or after an object, and obligatorily after if the object is
pronominal; cf. Baldwin & Kim (2010: 276). The analysis is illustrated in Figures 5
and 6 for the sentence in (28).

(28) Han skrev opp nummeret.
he wrote up the number
'He wrote down the number.'