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French and Romanian verbless relative adjuncts are incidental adjuncts which have been described as elliptical relative clauses. We show that this analysis is not empirically adequate and propose an alternative non-elliptical analysis. We analyze verbless relative adjuncts as sentential fragments whose head can be a cluster of phrases. They are marked by a functor phrase which displays selection properties with respect to the head phrase and makes an essential contribution to the semantics of the adjunct. The analysis relies on the interaction of grammatical constraints introduced by various linguistic objects, as well as on a constructional analysis of verbless relative adjuncts distinguishing several subtypes.
The paper aims to present approach to HPSG phonology which would account for underlying forms of phonemes. It shows some of the issues arising in monostratal analyses of phonology, and proposes a solution based on a notion of underlying representations. The approach presented, partly inspired by Optimality Theory, resolves cases of neutralisation and opacity by formulating constraints which either restrict the surface representation or relate it to the underlying form.
I reconsider the HPSG Raising Principle which is introduced in Pollard & Sag (1994) to constrain the way in which lexical entries describe the SUBCAT lists of the words they license. On the basis of whether a complement is assigned a semantic role in a lexical entry or not, this entry may not or must describe this complement as structure-shared with the unrealised subject of some other (non-subject) complement. The formal status of this principle is still unclear, as it is formulated as a 'meta principle' that does not talk about linguistic objects directly but rather about the lexical entries that license them. I show that, although its meaning cannot be expressed faithfully by the usual kind of constraints employed in HPSG, the Raising Principle can nevertheless be replaced by two such constraints which make largely the same predictions. Most importantly, these constraints interact with the output values of description-level lexical rules in the style of Meurers (2001) in a way that makes predictions available that Pollard & Sag (1994) intended the Raising Principle to make but that it cannot possibly make if description-level lexical rules are employed.
Previous HPSG accounts of extraction blur the distinction between valents and adjuncts by allowing verbs to lexically control the modifiers that combine with their phrasal projections. However, assuming that adjuncts are valents runs into various difficulties. This paper argues that the distinction between complements and adjuncts can be maintained, and that certain semantic phenomena that challenge traceless theories of extraction can be seen as an instance of a more general process. Finally, this paper also discusses a uniform mechanism for case assignment to valents and adverbial nominals.
In this paper, I discuss the case and agreement system of Nias, a language that has been described as a marked-absolutive system by various authors (Donohue and Brown, 1999; Corbett, 2006; Cysouw, 2005; Handschuh, 2008; Wichmann, 2005). I shall argue in particular that the ergativity of this language is highly superficial in nature, showing that hypothesised marked-absolutive arguments fail to display typical subject properties. Extending the linking theory of ergativity by Manning (1994) and Manning and Sag (1999), which assumes an inverse linking pattern for transitive, I shall suggest that Nias transitives are best analysed as a Nominative-Accusative system, attributing the ergative split in Nias to an inverse linking of intransitives instead. Under this perspective, case, agreement, and word order will receive a natural explanation.
Although the original framework of HPSG is mostly compatible with independent theoretical claims or analyses in lexical lexeme base morphology (Anderson 1992, Aronoff & Fudeman 2004, Beard 1995, Booij 2005, Carstairs-McCarthy 1992, Fradin 2003, Haspelmath 2002, Matthews 1991, Plag 2003, for example), so far, most research in morphology has been done on inflexional phenomena (Orgun & Inkelas 2002, Bonami & Boyé 2006), and few on derivational morphology (Koenig 1999, Riehemann 1998). Yet, we believe it is worth investigating how the formal and theoretical apparatus of HPSG deals with capturing multilevel constraints that apply in the lexeme formation of French Verb-Noun nominal compounds, such as as GRILLE-PAIN (lit. grill-bread, 'toaster'), PERCE-OREILLE (lit. pierce-ear, 'earwig'), TOURNEVIS (lit. turn-screw, 'screwdriver'), or LÈCHE-VITRINE (lit. lick-window, 'window-shopping'). Contrary to what has often been said, we argue VN lexemes formation comes under morphological constraints but not under syntactic mechanisms. Our analysis integrates VN lexemes into a multiple-dimension typed-hierarchy of lexemes and provides an account for semantic generalizations involved in different types of lexeme formation (compounding, derivation, and conversion).
This paper discusses ergative case assignment in Hindi and its interaction with aspectual verb complexes or complex predicate constructions. It is shown that ergative case is assigned by the last head in the aspectual verb complex and that ergative case on the subject of intransitive verbs denoting bodily-functions is associated with a counter-to-expectation meaning. It is then shown that aspect complex predicates in Hindi involve two distinct syntactic structures, which have similar semantics. While one syntactic structure involves argument composition, the other involves a head-modifier structure. It is argued that the existence of two structures favor approaches to the interface between syntax and semantics which do not require a uniform isomorphism between the semantics and syntax of aspect.
This paper analyzes the interrelation of two understudied phenomena of English: discontinuous modifier phenomenon (so willing to help out that they called early; more ready for what was coming than I was) and the complex pre-determination phenomenon (this delicious a lasagna; How hard a problem (was it)?). Despite their independence, they frequently occur intertwined, as in too heavy {a trunk} (for me) to lift and so lovely a melody that some people cried. This paper presents a declarative analysis of these and related facts that avoids syntactic movement in favor of monotonic constraint satisfaction. It demonstrates how an explicit, sign-based, constructional approach to grammatical structure captures linguistic generalizations, while at the same time accounting for idiosyncratic facts in this seemingly complex grammatical domain.
This article discusses the divergent status of the two particles lé and lá in the grammar of Konkomba, a Gur language (Niger-Congo) of the Gurma subgroup. While previous studies claim that both particles are focus markers, this author argues that only the particle lá should be analyzed as a pure pragmatic device. Distributional studies suggest that the use of particle lé, on the other hand, is only required under specific focus conditions, and primarily represents a syntactic device.