orphan: orphan in ellipsis
The orphan relation is used to provide a satisfactory treatment of certain instances of
ellipsis where simple promotion would result in unnatural and misleading dependency relation (in the case of gapping and stripping, where a predicational or verbal
head gets elided).
իւր բնակութիւնն հանապազ ի կաղնի ծառն լինի, եւ իւր հոտն՝ հոտած դժնիկ ։ \n Diwr bnakowt’iwnn hanapaz i kaġni çaṙn lini, ew iwr hotn՝ hotaç džnik . Its dwelling is always in the oak tree, and its odor - like the rotten buckthorn .
nsubj(ծառն, բնակութիւնն)
nsubj(tree, dwelling)
cop(ծառն, լինի)
cop(tree, is)
conj(ծառն, հոտն)
conj(tree, odor)
orphan(հոտն, դժնիկ)
orphan(odor, buckthorn)
cc(հոտն, եւ)
cc(odor, and)
In this example, the subject հոտն “odor” is promoted to the head position in the second conjunct. Attaching the predicate (without copula) դժնիկ “buckthorn” to the
subject is necessary to preserve the integrity of the clause, but using the standard relation nsubj would be misleading because դժնիկ “buckthorn” can’t be the
predicate of հոտն “odor” without the copula. Therefore, the orphan relation is used to indicate that this is a non-standard attachment. By contrast, the coordinating
conjunction եւ “and” performs essentially the same function as in the non-elliptical case and therefore retains its normal relation cc.
orphan in other languages: [axm] [bm] [cop] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [fi] [fr] [fro] [ga] [gsw] [hy] [it] [kk] [lt] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [sv] [swl] [tr] [u] [vi] [xcl] [yue] [zh]