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arXiv · cmp-lg/9610001

Death and Lightness: Using a Demographic Model to Find Support Verbs

Mark Dras·Mike Johnson
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Abstract

Some verbs have a particular kind of binary ambiguity: they can carry their normal, full meaning, or they can be merely acting as a prop for the nominal object. It has been suggested that there is a detectable pattern in the relationship between a verb acting as a prop (a \term{support verb}) and the noun it supports. The task this paper undertakes is to develop a model which identifies the support verb for a particular noun, and by extension, when nouns are enumerated, a model which disambiguates a verb with respect to its support status. The paper sets up a basic model as a standard for comparison; it then proposes a more complex model, and gives some results to support the model's validity, comparing it with other similar approaches.

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Mark Dras, Mike Johnson. 1996-10-02. Death and Lightness: Using a Demographic Model to Find Support Verbs. https://arxiv.org/abs/cmp-lg/9610001

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