Connectives of English Speech: the Correct Usage of Prepositions, Conjunctions, Relative Pronouns and Adverbs

What it is about

A usage guide for the small words that join thoughts: prepositions, conjunctions, relative pronouns and conjunctive adverbs. The introduction argues that the "thought-connectives" carry the meaning of a sentence and shows the point by taking the Declaration of Independence and removing them. Part I defines each preposition in alphabetical entries (for example BESIDES, BETWEEN, BEHIND), with numbered senses, an illustrative quotation for each sense, and a "Distinctions" note that separates close synonyms such as besides, but, except and save. Parts that follow treat conjunctions and relative and conjunctive adverbs in the same way. The method is descriptive: each entry gives etymology, the sense list and the usage a writer should choose, without a statistical measure.

Ideas

• I1. Build a government table for prepositions and conjunctions from the entries (verb or adjective, then the preposition it takes), as a lexicon in en/src/dict.rs. Each row keeps its source entry id, so a parse can say why a preposition was attached to a verb.
• I2. Use the "Distinctions" notes as a contrast set: for each pair (besides/except, between/among), write sentences where the two forms are not interchangeable, and check that the tagger and the parser keep the sense apart.
• I3. Turn the numbered senses into features for the prepositional-attachment decision, with the sense number as a label, and measure attachment accuracy on UD EWT dev before and after.

For Mova

The chapters are 23. Complementation (which verb takes which preposition), 24. Coordination and subordination and 25. Relative clauses. The code is en/src/dict.rs for the table and the parser's attachment in en/src/parse.rs. Measure: LAS on UD EWT dev with and without the table, run twice for identical output, plus a negative control in which the prepositions are shuffled within each sentence, which must score worse.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@book{fernald1904connectives,
  title = {{Connectives of English Speech: the Correct Usage of Prepositions, Conjunctions, Relative Pronouns and Adverbs}},
  author = {Fernald, James C.},
  year = {1904},
  url = {https://archive.org/details/connectivesofeng00fernuoft}
}

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