discourse expressions with subjects

[nschneid]

The subject child rule in amir-zeldes/gum@efab974 flags "I guess", "I mean", and "God forbid" attaching as discourse. See UniversalDependencies/docs#1066 (comment). Should the rule be relaxed for these?

In

• You might be able to get a good deal on some nice furniture -- which I did -- but they're not very communicative and god forbid something goes wrong, you'll have to fight to get it resolved.

it almost seems like "god forbid" takes the place of "if", so should it be a fixed expression functioning as mark?? (UPDATE: actually maybe just the verb attaching as mark instead of discourse, cf. "provided")

[amir-zeldes]

it almost seems like "god forbid" takes the place of "if",

I think treating it as a mark is too avant-garde for my taste. TBH I think this would still be compatible with using "if" alongside, so I wouldn't say it has the same category as "if". And can't you also post-pose the God forbid in the same sentence? Mark shouldn't be able to do that. Plus there are plenty of conditionals like that without "if" and without "God forbid". I would treat this as discourse and an asyndetic advcl, we already have some of those.

[nschneid]

I think this would still be compatible with using "if" alongside, so I wouldn't say it has the same category as "if". And can't you also post-pose the God forbid in the same sentence?

I don't think you can simply omit "god forbid" here. In conversation maybe you could imply an "if" at the beginning of an utterance, but it looks off to do so in the middle of the sentence.

Moving it to the end—"but they're not very communicative and something goes wrong god forbid, you'll have to fight to get it resolved."—looks as weird as simply dropping it.

Yes the more basic function of "god forbid" is as an interjection-like discourse marker, so that holds if "if" is present.

I would treat this as discourse and an asyndetic advcl, we already have some of those.

Do you have a good example with a finite verb attaching as advcl? https://universal.grew.fr/?custom=67796187c8c36 is mostly turning up errors and constructions like "so X that Y".