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We need to represent labeled edges between nodes. Traditionally, this is realized by means of feature structures: each node is a feature structure and an edge is represented by the presence of a feature
on
, such that
. This, however, is a lousy idea when the goal is to take advantage of active constraint propagation. The problem is that, in the traditional view, features are partial functions: i.e.
is a partial function from nodes to nodes (from now on, we will write
instead of
). It is rather inconvenient to try to express constraints on
when it is not always defined!
However, a slight change of representation allows us to turn into a total function. Instead of
being either undefined or defined and denoting a node, we let it denote a set of nodes. Now instead of being undefined
is simply empty. In the case where it was originally defined, it now denotes a singleton set.
Thus denotes the set of subjects of
: empty except when
is a finite verb, in which case it is a singleton. We say that
is a daughter set of
, i.e. a set of daughters. This idea has the second advantage that, in addition to complements (like subject), it also naturally accommodates modifiers (like adjectives):
is the set of adjectives of
. The difference is that a modifier daughter set may have any number of elements instead of at most 1 for a complement daughter set.
Formally, for each role , we introduce a function
such that
is the set of immediate daughters of
whose dependency edge is labeled with
:
in the constraint model is a finite set variable.
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