Ablative absolute and related constructions

[jnivre]

How do we annotate constructions similar to the latin ablative absolute such as the following:

(1a) (it came) with a warning attached to it
(1b) (they fought) with the pen as their weapon
(1c) (she arrived) with a suitcase in her hand

And how do they compare to:

(2a) (it came) with a warning
(2b) (they fought) with the pen
(2c) (she arrived) with a suitcase

The examples in (2) seem like clear cases of obl, and an obvious solution for the examples in (1) is therefore to maintain the obl analysis and analyse the added constituents ("attached to it", "as their weapon", "in her hand") as xcomp, advcl or nmod.

The alternative is to recognise the predicative nature of the constructions in (1) and instead treat them as clausal structures, with "attached to it", "as their weapon" and "in her hand" as the predicate, the preceding nominal as "nsubj", and "with" as mark. This would lose the parallelism with the examples in (2) and would be special in that "with" is not used as a subordinating conjunction elsewhere in English, but it might capture the parallelism to other languages (such as Latin), where the (1) construction often lack a preposition/subordinator.

[daghaug]

I think the predicative nature should take precedence. Your (1) and (2) seem very parallel, but many examples of the predicative construction do not have intuitive parallels in (2). For example, (3a) With the engine removed, unbolt the rear engine mount that's positioned on the subframe and remove it along with the two front insulator mounts. (3b) With the enemy destroyed, the prisoners released from the bondage of sin and death, the king enters his rest. In Norwegian (and Swedish?) there will be a distinction based on whether the nominal has an article or not (4a) Kirurgen arbeidet med brekt nese. The surgeon worked with his nose broken. (4b) Kirurgen arbeidet med ei brekt nese. The surgeon worked on a broken nose. The preposition "med" couldn't really take a bare singular NP as its complement in the absence of a predicate, except perhaps on a generic reading. So there seems to be a syntactic difference in that "brekt" is omissible in (4b) but not in (4a), which suggests that "brekt" is the head in (4a) but not in (4b).

[jnivre]

So what is the concrete proposal?

advcl(unbolt, removed)
nsubj(removed, engine)
mark(removed, engine)

[daghaug]

advcl(unbolt, removed) nsubj(removed, engine) is how we do an ablative absolute in Latin, so I'd vote for that. And then mark(removed, with)

[gossebouma]

Shouldn't that be
nsubj:pass(removed,engine)?

Dutch has this construction as well. The literature suggests these can occur with adjectives or passive participles, but in our treebank I find only cases with PPs:

met Sheila E op de drums
with Sheila E on the drums

sometimes with the PP preceding the NP:

met tussen haakjes de postnummers
with between brackets the postnumbers

including 'adverbial PPs'

met daarin de adel
with in-it the nobility

and a somewhat dubious case with an adverb:

met deze plechtigheid vandaag geven we betekenis...
with this ceremony today give we meaning...

Note that the word order variation suggests that there is indeed a predicative construction here, and not just a complex NP with a PP dependent. In that case, one would have to analyze the NP as subject of the predicate PP/adverb.

[jnivre]

Yes, it should be nsubj:pass. Nice catch!

In Swedish the case with prepositional phrases also dominate. Given that we have now decided to treat prepositional phrases as predicates in copula constructions, it seems appealing to give a parallel treatment in these constructions:

NN is on the drums
nsubj(drums, NN)

with NN on the drums
nsubj(drums, NN)

[gcelano]

I think that in the end it depends on how much one is willing to treat such constructions as a grammaticalized way to express a clause.

This is the case of the Latin ablative absolute, where it is treated as a kind of subordinate clause (so advcl + nsubj, which has :pass only if the participle is passive). Another similar Latin construction is ad + acc + gerundive, which usually, but not always, expresses a final clause, even if I am not sure I would like to analyze it as a clause, because there are other similar constructions (preposition + noun + participle) which are not usually treated/analyzed as clauses.

The parallelism with English (with + noun + participle) is pertinent. But how to treat the other cases where there is another preposition + noun + participle (i.e, "after a moment taken for ...")? I am fine with both solutions, even if I would tend to prefer the version where prepositions remain such (as already noted, they are not conjunctions) and a participle depends on the noun as acl (i.e. a relative clause). I would reserve the advcl annotation only for "very clear" cases of grammaticalized constructions, such as the ablative absolute.

[daghaug]

I think the point is that if you remove "removed" from "with the engine removed", you get a very different meaning, which shows that it cannot be a mere adjunct. So it is too surfacey to just look at P + N + participle strings. Also, there are syntactic differences in many languages. Dutch and Scandinavian were mentioned. In English too, "with the engine removed" is different from "with the removed engine" although this contrast is neutralized when the predicate is more complex.

[nschneid]

In addition to a participle or PP, the construction can also be used with a non-participial adjective phrase complement:

With the staff unavailable, we had to do the work ourselves.

The construction is sometimes analyzed as a verbless small clause: With the staff ∅(BEING) unavailable.

[gcelano]

it also seems that the case "with the engine removed..." and "it comes with a warning attached to it" are the same only on the surface. While the first with-constituent could be substituted with "after the removal of the engine", I cannot find a similar substitution for the second "with" (Prep + the attachment of a warning). In my view, the posiibility of a substitution with a deverbal noun supports a clausal interpretation of the with-constituent.

It may be, therefore, that the second with-case is really "prep + noun + relative clause" (... with a warning which is attached to it(?)).

Another famous Latin example occurs to me: "post urbem conditam", literally "after the city fouded", i. e, "after the foundation of the city" (so, similar to the first with-example)