gf

Writing in the form of "One of XXX (plural)" in GF

I'm trying to generate the sentence One of my friends on GF using the GF library. I failed at finding the right method for constructing a prep after a numeral and on creating the relation of one of with the plural noun.

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as the class of Noun Phrase shows, Numeral or Digits only have Common Noun or Noun after them.

Solution

  • CountNP

    There is a function for this in the Noun module, but unfortunately it's not in the RGL API. The function is CountNP:

    CountNP : Det -> NP -> NP ;    -- three of them, some of the boys

    To use it in your grammar, you need to open the module NounEng. The usual practice is to open non-API modules qualified: instead of open NounEng in { … }, we give it a shorthand, like N: open (N=NounEng) in { … }. Then in the body of the grammar, you need to write N.CountNP. Here's an example, you can copy and paste it into a file called Friend.gf.

    resource Friend = open SyntaxEng, LexiconEng, (N=NounEng) in {
  oper
    one_Det : Det = mkDet (mkNumeral n1_Unit) ;

    my_friends_NP : NP = mkNP (mkDet i_Pron pluralNum) friend_N ;

    friend : NP = N.CountNP one_Det my_friends_NP ;
}

    Predet

    Other times when you want to modify an already existing NP, you can use the Predet category. Here are examples (you can paste them into the same file Friend.gf).

    -- The RGL includes some Predets, like all, most and only:
all_friends : NP = mkNP all_Predet my_friends_NP ;
most_friends : NP = mkNP most_Predet my_friends_NP ;
only_friends : NP = mkNP only_Predet my_friends_NP ;