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 languages/en/23-complementation.md (which verb takes which preposition), languages/en/24-coordination-subordination.md and languages/en/25-relative-clauses.md. 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}
}