Accompaniment

Representation of accompaniment

In grammars, the prepositional case "s + Instrumental" (with + Instr) is analyzed as an adverbial of accompaniment. Its representation in our scenario depends on its position in the sentence, esp. on agreement with the predicate.

Under normal circumstances, this prepositional case is an adverbial, and as such it should be suspended on the verb and should be assigned afun Adv. However, this is done only in case that there is a grammatical agreement between the subject and the predicate, as illustrated by the following examples:

  1. image

    zpíval   Rus   s   Němcem  
    sang-Sing   Russian-Sing   with   German  
  2. image

    zpívali   Rusové   s   Němci  
    sang-Plur   Russians   with   Germans  
  3. image

    vidíme   Rusy   s   Němci  
    we-see   Russians   with   Germans  

If a semantic rather than grammatical agreement gets priority, and the predicate is in Plural while the subject is in Singular, the accompaniment is suspended on the subject (i.e. on the node with Sb) as its Atr. This makes it possible to understand the subject as a whole to be an entity understood as a Plural.

image

zpívali   Rus   s   Němcem  
sang-Plur   Russian-Sing   with   German-Sing  

The following example illustrates the case when both elements are governed by some common denomination:

image

zpívali   přátelé   Rus   s   Němcem  
sang-Plur   friends   Russian-Sing   with   German-Sing