I expected the MRS for phrases of the shape “Hi, [fragment or phrase], please” to at least have one parse that represents the phrase as meaning: “Friendly greeting”, followed by phrase, with politeness indicated on the verb. I.e. it would have in its MRS:
discourse(i,h,h)
greet(c,i)
please_a_1(e,e)
I do find such a parse for all variations of
“hi/hello/howdy, [fragment]” such as “Hi, table for 2” (obviously missing the please_a_1)
“hi/hello/howdy, [phrase]” such as “Hi, I want a table for 2” (obviously missing the please_a_1)
“hi/hello/howdy, [phrase], please” such as “Hi, I want a table for 2, please”
But for this example, there are no parses that contain both _please_a and discourse(greet, _). Only one or the other:
“hi/hello/howdy, [fragment], please” such as “Hi, table for 2, please”
I’ve moved up to using the 2023 ERG grammar, and I’m still not seeing consistent handling for phrases of the form “[Greeting], phrase, [politeness]”. @Dan, is this a bug or feature request I should enter? Or is it something that can’t be fixed for some reason?
In the new grammar, my workarounds have shifted. I used to get MRSs that would handle “Hello” as a noun and treat “Howdy” and “Hi” as proper names, with the rest of the MRS being consistent.
I see that the 2023 grammar left those politeness phrases in an unsatisfactory state, sorry. The “trunk” version of the ERG now provides a more useful analysis of such expressions, if you’re willing to try it:
svn co - Revision 29447: /erg/trunk
I am aiming to produce a stable 2024 release of the ERG by June which will include those improvements, if you would rather wait for that.