Comb pass 2026-05-21 (item 16).
Pre-fix ``classify_intent`` applied ``_normalize_subject`` only to
DEFINITION / CAUSE / VERIFICATION paths. COMPARISON, FRAME_TRANSFER,
TRANSITIVE_QUERY (non-"means" branch), and BELONG_QUERY returned
bare ``.strip()`` subjects. A probe like *"Compare the parent and
a child"* would carry the articles ("the parent", "a child") into
the subject slot, breaking downstream pack-resolver lookups that
key on bare lemmas.
Fix: apply ``_normalize_subject(..., IntentTag.DEFINITION)`` at every
classifier return site that was previously bare ``.strip()``.
DEFINITION mode preserves multi-word noun phrases (only strips
leading articles + trailing punctuation + infinitive markers); the
aux-verb stripping that's only meaningful for CAUSE/VERIFICATION
stays scoped to those paths.
Sites fixed (5):
* COMPARISON subject + secondary_subject
* FRAME_TRANSFER subject + frame
* TRANSITIVE_QUERY subject (both the regular and "means" → DEFINITION
redirect branches now share one normalized binding)
* BELONG_QUERY subject
Behavior:
* Eval cases without articles (the entirety of cognition v1) are
byte-identical: ``"memory"`` and ``"recall"`` survive
``_normalize_subject`` unchanged.
* Multi-word noun phrases survive intact: ``"artificial
intelligence"`` is preserved (no aux-verb-strip wrongly trimming
to head-noun).
* Article-prefixed subjects ("the parent") now strip consistently
with the DEFINITION path that's done so since ADR-0049.
Validation:
* 7 new tests in
``tests/test_intent_subject_normalization_consistency.py``
pin the consistency contract across COMPARISON, FRAME_TRANSFER,
TRANSITIVE_QUERY, BELONG_QUERY, DEFINITION (regression guard
on the pre-existing path), and CAUSE (regression guard on the
aux-verb-strip behavior).
* ``core eval cognition`` byte-identical across all three splits:
public 100/100/91.7/100, dev 100/100/78.6/100, holdout
100/100/83.3/100.
* ``core test --suite cognition`` 120/0/1, ``smoke`` 67/0.
* ``pytest -k intent`` 229/0.
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