Recursivity

In some cases, a rule or grammatical structure requires to be applied several times to deal with with recursive expressions such as, for instance, ``nice red car''. In this expressions the noun ``car'' is modified by two adjectives in the same way. DepPattern can deal with this phenomenon in several ways: using a block of rules, applying twice the same rule, or using the operator ``Recursivity''. Here you are the 3 possible representations:

Block of rules:

AdjunctLeft : [ADJ] ADJ NOUN

NEXT

AdjunctLeft : ADJ [ADJ] NOUN

%

Repetition of the same rule:

AdjunctLeft : ADJ NOUN

%

AdjunctLeft : ADJ NOUN

%

Recursivity operator:

AdjunctLeft : ADJ NOUN

Recursivity: 1

%

``Recursivity'' is specified by numeric values: ``1'' means that the rule must be applied once more, that is, twice. By default, the value is 0, that is a rule is applied only once. This operator permits to specifiy the number of times a rule can be applied. It allows both a more compact representation and an easier control of rule recursivity.

Pablo Gamallo 2009-01-19