Referring to phrases, clauses, and other things bigger than words

[jonathanrobie]

Sometimes we need annotations to refer to phrases or clauses. How can we create stable identifiers for structures larger than individual words?

[jonathanrobie]

Randall's example:

A good example is:

 <Node Cat="S" Start="2" End="3" Rule="Np2S" Head="0" nodeId="010020070060091" Length="9">
  <Node Cat="np" Start="2" End="3" Rule="Np-Appos" Head="0" nodeId="010020070060090" Length="9">
    <Node Cat="np" Start="2" End="2" Rule="N2NP" Head="0" nodeId="010020070060041" Length="4">
      <Node n="010020070021" Cat="noun" Start="2" End="2" Length="4" morphId="010020070021" Unicode="יְהוָ֨ה" nodeId="010020070060040">
        <m n="010020070021" lang="H" after=" " lemma="3068" morph="Np" id="01pPp" pos="noun" type="proper">יְהוָ֨ה</m>
      </Node>
    </Node>
    <Node Cat="np" Start="3" End="3" Rule="N2NP" Head="0" nodeId="010020070100051" Length="5">
      <Node n="010020070031" Cat="noun" Start="3" End="3" Length="5" morphId="010020070031" Unicode="אֱלֹהִ֜ים" nodeId="010020070100050">
        <m n="010020070031" lang="H" after=" " lemma="430" morph="Ncmpa" id="01ieN" pos="noun" type="common" gender="masculine" number="plural" state="absolute">אֱלֹהִ֜ים</m>
      </Node>
    </Node>
  </Node>
</Node>

"Yahweh God" is the implied subject of the verb "he breathed" (n="010020070082"), but the SubjRef just uses 010020070021 for Yahweh because Yahweh is the head of the noun phrase. Head, Start, & End are zero-based. So, Start="2" End="3" tells us that words 3 & 4 in the verse are in the phrase. Head="0" tells us that the first word inside the phrase, "Yahweh," is the head of the noun phrase. We can safely take the whole noun phrase as the referent. You could theoretically use the nodeId. However, nodeId="010020070060090" is currently consonant based. If it were word based, it would be 010020070030020. For the Ref & SubjRef, theoretically prepositional phrases in the node with Cat="pp" Rule="PrepNp" also still have the head noun as the head. So, we could end up with systematically bringing in the prepositional phrase when only the noun phrase that is the object of the preposition is the referent. We will want to make the head of the prepositional phrase consistently the preposition to avoid this problem.

"Yahweh God" is the implied subject of the verb "he breathed"  (n="010020070082"), but the SubjRef just uses 010020070021 for Yahweh because Yahweh is the head of the noun phrase. Head, Start, & End are zero-based. So, Start="2" End="3" tells us that words 3 & 4 in the verse are in the phrase. Head="0" tells us that the first word  inside the phrase, "Yahweh,"  is the head of the noun phrase. We can safely take the whole noun phrase as the referent. You could theoretically use the nodeId. However, nodeId="010020070060090" is currently consonant based. If it were word based, it would be 010020070030020. For the Ref & SubjRef, theoretically prepositional phrases in the node with Cat="pp" Rule="PrepNp" also still have the head noun as the head. So, we could end up with systematically bringing in the prepositional phrase when only the noun phrase that is the object of the preposition is the referent. We will want to make the head of the prepositional phrase consistently the preposition to avoid this problem.