Open Access

Progress toward distinguishing clearly between generative and model-theoretic syntactic frameworks has not been smooth or swift, and the obfuscatory term 'constraint-based' has not helped. This paper reviews some elementary subregular formal language theory relevant to comparing description languages for model-theoretic grammars, generalizes the results to trees, and points out that HPSG linguists have maintained an unacknowledged and perhaps unintended allegiance to the idea of strictly local description: unbounded dependencies, in particular, are still being conceptualized in terms of plugging together local tree parts annotated with the SLASH feature. Adopting a description language with quantifiers holds out the prospect of eliminating the need for the SLASH feature. We need to ask whether that would be a good idea. Binding domain phenomena might tell us. More work of both descriptive and mathematical sorts is needed before the answer is clear.

This paper concerns the argument structure analysis of raising-to-subject with passive predicates in Swedish and other Germanic languages. Support is given for the analysis in which the raising-to-subject construction constitutes a regular passive, the passive counterpart of active raising-to-object. The fact that there does not seem to be an active counterpart for certain predicates, such as the predicate say, as well as the fact that raising-to-subject does not seem to be possible with the periphrastic passive in Swedish is attributed to certain semantic restrictions on the raising-to-object construction and the periphrastic passive construction, respectively.

This paper points out certain flaws in the semantics for lexical rule specifications developed in Meurers (2001). Under certain circumstances, certain words may not be licit inputs to a rule according to this semantics while one would expect them to be from inspecting the specification of the rule. The reasons for this are shown to be that whether properties of paths should be transferred from the input of a rule to its output is decided considering only the respective paths and their properties in isolation, ignoring the ‘non-local’ effects that transferring their properties can have. Furthermore, the semantics is insensitive to the possible shapes of inputs to the rule, which also makes it possible that inputs of certain shapes are unexpectedly not accepted. An alternative semantics is developed that does not suffer from these deficits.

We show how linguistic grammars of two different yet related languages can be developed and implemented in parallel, with language-independent fragments serving as shared resources, and language-specific ones defined separately for each language. The two grammars in the focus of this paper are of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic, and the basic infrastructure, or core, of the grammars is based on "standard" HPSG. We identify four types of relations that exist between the grammars of two languages and demonstrate how the different types of relations can be implemented in parallel grammars with maximally shared resources. The examples pertain to the grammars of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic, yet similar issues and considerations are applicable to other pairs of languages that have some degree of similarity.

Causative, which is analyzed in the context of voice, differs widely in Turkish and German languages. A causative can be obtained nearly from each verb in Turkish language while this category is not productive in German Language. Like prefixes, which are of great importance in German language, the causative has the same significance in Turkish language. Causatives can be divided into three: a) lexical causative, causative existing in words' own meaning; for instance, there exists such a relationship between the words "slide" and "fall"; b) morphological causative consists of morphemes (öl-dür-t-mek); c) whereas, the context is important for the operant causative. When we say “It smells gas in here’ it may have been intended to open a window and we can make it done. There is a direct connection between the causative and causality. Because, in causative instead of doing something directly, it may be caused to be done or occurred. The notion of causative in German has been reviewed in the semantic context at a low degree. This is because of the fact that, morphological causative verbs are fewer and new causative voices can't be formed. However, this issue has been handled in a very detailed manner especially at morphological level in Turkish language. There is even fine detail under the title causative itself. The most important characteristic of causative is to change the combination value of the verbs. However, the relation between causative and passive is just the opposite of this and asymmetric. Structures having semantic similarities with causatives and named as Funktionsverbgefüge (put into practice = apply) in German exist. Reciprocal voices and reflexive voices, the most important voices of Turkish language, generally allow the formation of causative verb.