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Remarks on binding theory
(2005)
We propose some reformulations of binding principle A that build on recent work by Pollard and Xue, and by Runner et al. We then turn to the thorny issue of the status of indices, in connection with the seemingly simpler Principle B. We conclude that the notion of index is fundamentally incoherent, and suggest some possible approaches to eliminating them as theoretical primitives. One possibility is to let logical variables take up the explanatory burden borne by indices, but this turns out to be fraught with difficulties. Another approach, which involves returning to the idea that referentially dependent expressions denote identity functions (as proposed, independently, by Pollard and Sag and by Jacobson) seerms to hold more promise.
It has been commonly assumed since Chomsky (1981) that the distribution of reflexive pronouns is subject to Binding Condition A. Reinhart and Reuland (1993) formulate Condition A in terms of the notion of syntactic predicate. The proposal I will develop in this paper is to factor out semantic and syntactic conditions on the occurrence of reflexive pronouns and to reduce them to independently motivated semantic and syntactic mechanisms. The semantic part is attributed to a theory of semantic composition recently developed by Chung and Ladusaw (2004), while the syntactic residue falls into the proper characterization of syntactic chains, as proposed by Reinhart and Reuland (1993) and Reuland (2001). To the extent that this approach is successful, Binding Condition A is rendered superfluous.
The process of turning a hand-written HPSG theory into a working computational grammar requires complex considerations. Two leading platforms are available for implementing HPSG grammars: The LKB and TRALE. These platforms are based on different approaches, distinct in their underlying logics and implementation details. This paper adopts the perspective of a computational linguist whose goal is to implement an HPSG theory. It focuses on ten different dimensions, relevant to HPSG grammar implementation, and examines, compares, and evaluates the different means which the two approaches provide for implementing them. The paper concludes that the approaches occupy opposite positions on two axes: faithfulness to the hand-written theory and computational accessibility. The choice between them depends largely on the grammar writer's preferences regarding those properties.
Order domains were originally proposed to deal with constituent order, but have recently been concerned with more than just linearization. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by considering the possibility of analysing word forms in terms of order domains. We focus on the distribution of the English relative and interrogative pronouns who and whom. It is shown that a small number of constraints can accommodate the seemingly complex body of data. In particular, a linearization-based constraint can provide a straightforward account for the quite puzzling distribution which who and whom show in one of the register types.
In this paper, we claim that the filler-gap linkage in Korean UDCs needs to be handled at the level of syntax and that unbounded dependencies represented by traces, resumptive pronouns, and resumptive reflexives in Korean can be simply captured - without posing any extra mechanisms - in the traditional HPSG analysis of UDCs following Pollard and Sag (1994). It is because in HPSG traces are not all required to have the same feature, unlike in other movement-based approaches including the minimalist program and GB theory. In addition, we argue that the three kinds of Korean UDC elements appearing in gap positions do not form separate categories from their corresponding forms appearing in non-UDCs based on the same semantic and pragmatic properties such as logophoricity and contrastiveness. We also investigate some controversial issues of island constraints and strong crossover with respect to filler-gap linkage in Korean UDCs.
This paper presents an analysis of constructions involving the l-form of the verb in Polish, including primarily the past tense, the conditional mood, and the future tense. Previous approaches have attempted to treat these uniformly as auxiliary verb constructions. We argue against a unified treatment, however, in light of synchronic and diachronic evidence that indicates that only the future tense and the conditional still involve auxiliaries in modern Polish. We show that the past tense is now a simple tense, although the l-forms appear in combination with agreement affixes that can appear in different places in the sentence. We provide an account of the common linearization properties of the past tense markings and the conditional auxiliary. We present a detailed HPSG analysis of the past tense construction that relies on the introduction of two interacting agreement features. We then discuss the consequences of our proposals for the analysis of the conditional and future auxiliary constructions, and finally, we offer a treatment of constructions involving inflected complementizers in Polish.
In this paper, I first make an observation that there is a certain parallelism in the scope interpretation possibilities of adverbs and quantifiers with respect to different types complex predicates in Japanese, drawing on a comparison of the light verb construction and the causative construction. I will then argue that previous approaches to complex predicates in Japanese in the lexicalist tradition (Matsumoto 1996; Manning et al. 1999) fail to capture this generalization successfully. Finally, building on a novel approach to syntax/semantics interface in HPSG by Cipollone (2001), I develop an analysis of the semantic structure of complex predicates that accounts for the empirical observation straightforwardly.
We argue here for a lexicalist analysis of the Korean copula (following Kim, Sells and Wescoat (2004)), on the basis of different properties of sequences of noun-plus-copula, which shows word-like behavior, in contrast to noun and negative copula, which are independent syntactic units. The interactions of these items with various copy constructions brings out their clear differences. The analysis is formalized in HPSG using Lexical Sharing, from Wescoat (2002).
According to the Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981), expletives have no semantic content and thus cannot occur in theta-marked positions. However, there are many examples where expletive it appears as a direct object, in violation of the Projection Principle. The various attempts that have been made to account for such cases (e.g. the case-based analysis of Authier (1991), the predication analysis of Rothstein (1995), and the Specifier analysis of Stroik (1991, 1996)) all posit movement of the expletive from a non-theta marked position to direct object position. However, these analyses have so far been unsuccessful in capturing several important contrasts, e.g. variable optionality of the expletive it. This paper argues that such contrasts (and the complex behavior of expletive it more generally) follow straightforwardly from a lexicalist, constraint-based analysis in which lexical information and independently motivated constraints interact in subtle ways.