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 L03 FS: Heads and inheritance of feature-structures


    Head Daughter of a Tree

o There are typically many daughters (children) of
  a node.

o One of the daughters of a node is the "HEAD" node.
  + Ex. For the NP node, the head is the 'noun' node.

o Properties of the head-node are inherited by the mother node.
  + For ex., feature-structure with the 'noun' node can
    be unified with (copied to) NP node.

               NP
            /  |   \
          /    |     \
        /      |       \
     noun  apostrophe   noun
      |        |         |
     Ram      's        house
      .                   .
      .                   .
   [CAT   det ]      [ CAT       n ]
   [SPEC  def ]      [ NUMBER   sg ]
                     [ PERSON   3  ]
                     [ ROOT  house ]

- This inheritance rule represents the fact that if you say 
    Ram's house is beautiful
  you are referring to the house, and not to Ram. In other words,
  NP refers to what the noun refers. Other components of the
  phrase specify other properties, but are not the same as
  the NP.
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