WHAT-initial clauses (free relative clauses)

[nschneid]

As part of UniversalDependencies/docs#454, it is difficult to tell from the guidelines what the conventions are/should be for initial clauses like these (including examples from the English treebank):

1. What was left in place was a...

2. What your morning paper did not tell you was...

3. What I heard was...

In (1) the WH-word occupies a missing core role (the passive subject). The WH-clause is treated as a clausal subject of the item left in place (the answer to the WH-question). (2) and (3) have the main verb of the sentence as the root, even though it is a copula. In (2), the WH-word corresponds to the clausal complement of the embedded verb, and is analyzed as the head of a relative clause. In (3), the analysis is the same, though "heard" normally licenses either a direct object ("I heard the announcement") or a complement clause ("I heard that...").

Is the clausal complement vs. subject/object distinction the defining criterion for deciding between these analyses?

[sylvainkahane]

Your examples are free/fused "relative" clauses, that is "relative" clause where the antecedent is fused with relative pronoun. They must be definetely analyzed as phrases headed by WHAT. When they are subjects they must be analyzed as nsubj and when they are objects as obj:

I bought what I needed.
obj(bought,what)
acl:relcl(what,needed)

I wouldn't have any sense to analyze this latter case as a ccomp, BUY can never have a ccomp.

[nschneid]

@sylvainkahane are you saying that the tree for (1) is incorrect?

[sylvainkahane]

Yes

[dan-zeman]

We need documentation of free relative clauses in the guidelines.

[nschneid]

We need documentation of free relative clauses in the guidelines.

Yes! See also #23

[nschneid]

These are now documented in the English guidelines as pseudoclefts, a construction that utilizes free relatives.

I was able to find false negatives in

• EWT - when fixing these make sure to consider edeps and Cxn (cf. Edeprels from reduced relative clauses #392, Add Cxn information on relative clause subtype #474)
  • pseudoclefts: Q1, Q2
  • Q3 (object "what")—many of these should be free relatives
  • Q4 possible preposition marking—some free relatives?
  • Q5 right cop dependent—some free relatives?
• GUM

Need to also check for PronType=Rel (#278)

[amir-zeldes]

Agreed, some of the GUM ones are errors, will fix those!