adverbial gerunds

[linas]

The following is parsed incorrectly:

He grew up speaking English

"grow up" is an intransitive verb, yet the parser recognizes "English" as the object of this sentence and "speaking" as an adjective describing English erroneously.

Reported by Stephen Frechette 14 June 2021 via email

[linas]

More examples:

we went out drinking beer
we grew up drinking root beer
After a long absence, he showed up speaking English
he arrived speaking English

The above are awkward, because the only context where they make sense would be for a spy, who arrives unexpectedly speaking a foreign language.

Ooops:

I remember him drinking beer
I remember him only drinking beer that night
I remember him drinking only beer that night

The the following seem similar, but are quite different, and they do work correctly. Note the comma breaks these up into two distinct sentences.

he arrived, playing music
he departed, whistling to himself
he celebrated by lifting his glass
he cheered, lifting his glass
he arrived unexpectedly, speaking a foreign language
he came around again, demanding rent
he came to, thinking of revenge

Some of the above parse without the comma; and those parses are wrong.

See also:

he arrived at the door, playing music
he arrived at the church playing music

[stephenfrechette]

What the parser seems to be doing is mistaking adverbial gerunds with objects for adjectival present participles modifying an object of the sentence (even for intransitive verbs).
"Adverbial gerunds" might be a better title for this issue.

[linas]

Any suggestions for what the correct linkage should be? I'm guessing

    +---->WV---->+------XXX-----+
    +->Wd--+--Ss-+---K--+       +---YYY--+
    |      |     |      |       |        |
LEFT-WALL he grew.v-d up.r speaking.g English

but its not clear what XXX and YYY should be. I guess YYY should be O because of I am speaking English. It seems that a new link type for XXX might need to be invented. The AG link type? Or maybe a new MV subtype, say MVg ?

The number of verbs that would take it seems slim. So far, I have this list:

• grew up
• woke up -- I woke up thinking of her
• went out -- we went out drinking beer
• died -- he died thinking of her

Any others? Most other examples I can think of are really two distinct sentences, with a missing comma (e.g. he departed, whistling to himself -- with the comma, its clearly two distinct sentences. Without the comma, its ... ???)

More confusing cases, with and without commas:

He passed away, leaving his family bereft.
He passed away, clutching a rosary.
He died thinking of her
*He died, thinking of her

It seems the verb has to be past-continuous, and has to describe a transition.

[stephenfrechette]

It appears MVg is already a linkage. It does not appear to be documented?
After some playing around, I found the following parses correctly (with an MVg linkage):
The swan swam, causing waves to form.

[stephenfrechette]

Is there a distinction between the Pg linkage and the MVg linkage in this case? They seem to have the same function, perhaps they should be consolidated?

[stephenfrechette]

A few more examples that link differently in the current version:
He sat there crying (interprets "crying" as an object, I don't think this makes sense)
He went running (Parser uses a Pg linkage)
I now realize all of these examples could be used with any adjective, so perhaps these ARE adjectival participles, and NOT gerunds.
He passed away happy
He died lonely
The swan swam fast
He sat there naked
He went crazy

Some of these parse with variants of the MV linkage, some with variants of the P linkage, and some not at all.

So, this seems to not be an issue with gerunds or participles, but in constructions with adjectives acting adverbially?

[linas]

Hmm. OK, yes, looks like in most cases, Pg should be used.

There are still some confusing cases.

• he swam, leaving a wake -- the swimming is causing the wake, so Pg
• he sat, crying -- the sitting is not causing the crying; its a distinct activity. so no Pg link. ??
• he cheered, lifting his glass -- the cheering is not causing the lifting; a distinct activity. To Pg or not Pg ??
• he grew up speaking English --- a comma is NOT allowed. The growing is not causing the speaking, but its deeply tangled in. So, sure, a Pg link here.

Welcome to my land of confusion.

[stephenfrechette]

I agree with your confusion here, this originally started due to what I thought were adverbial gerunds, but it turns out they were actually adverbial adjectival verbals!

Some of these seem similar to constructions with a "while" preposition omitted from them,
such as
He sat, while crying
He cheered, while lifting his glass
He grew up while speaking English ??
But then what is
He went running
in that case? Is this causal? None of this is very clear to me currently.

[linas]

I worked on this a bit, but have to put it down for the day. Here is what I found so far.

• The Pg links is to be used when the present participle is mandatory. For example, I enjoy running, vs. *I enjoy.
• The MVg can be used when the present participle is used as a modifier. For example, it swam away, leaving a wake
• The current rules in LG force a comma to be used; without the comma it swam away leaving a wake fails to parse. I tried to make the comma optional, but this leads to massive failures of the unit tests: lots of nonsense sentences suddenly become parsable.
• The above problem points at a design flaw. The @MV link appears all over the place. The comma was used as a crutch, to tighten the constraints. I don't like this but don't see any easy solution right now (other than to handle the comma with a phantom, as discussed in Zero (phantom, unvoiced) word support. #224)

Thus the sentences he grow up speaking English and we went out drinking beer remain problematic. I don't want to use Pg because the participle is not mandatory. I can't use MVg because of the comma issue. Note that both sentences parse OK, if a comma is inserted: he grew up, speaking English.

It is tempting to invent a new link, say, the PG link, or the MVG link, and sprinkle it into selected verbs. However, it's hard to see how this won't devolve into just being a version of MVg without the comma (and thus allowing infelicitous parses)