Linguistik
Refine
Year of publication
- 2005 (187) (remove)
Document Type
- Part of a Book (54)
- Conference Proceeding (52)
- Article (51)
- Preprint (13)
- Book (7)
- Working Paper (5)
- Report (3)
- diplomthesis (1)
- Other (1)
Language
Has Fulltext
- yes (187)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (187)
Keywords
- Deutsch (14)
- Artikulation (13)
- Artikulatorische Phonetik (13)
- Phonetik (13)
- Englisch (11)
- Artikulator (9)
- Bedeutungswandel (6)
- Computerlinguistik (6)
- Japanisch (6)
- Akustische Phonetik (5)
Institute
Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass Phraseologismen zum einen als prototypische Verkörperung des ,,kulturellen Gedächtnisses" einer Diskursgemeinschaft, zum anderen als ein universelles, jeder Sprachkultur immanentes Kulturphänomen angesehen werden können. In diesem Zusammenhang setzt er sieh zum Ziel, das Spannungsfeld der Verflochtenheit von ,Kultur" und "Sprache" mit ihren Ausprägungen und Konsequenzen am Material der Phraseologie im Hinblick auf das Deutsche und das Ungarische analytisch herauszuarbeiten und mehrperspektivisch zu hinterfragen. Denn die - im Titel der Tagung hervorgehobene - Kulturgeschichte und die Phraseologie stellen eine äußerst facettenreiche Thematik dar, die eine Reihe kulturphilosophischer, kultursemiotischer, interkultureller, kognitiv-linguistischer u. a. Fragen aufwirft und sowohl einen synchronen als auch einen diachronen Betrachtungsrahmen effordert. Der vorliegende Aufsatz kann sich jedoch auf lediglich einige aktuelle theoretische, methodologische und empirische Aspekte konzentrieren und möchte in disziplinärer Hinsicht kontrastiv und kontaktlinguistisch - dabei methodologisch phänomen- bzw. belegorientiert und problernbezogen - vorgehen.
This study investigates supralaryngeal mechanisms of the two way voicing contrast among German velar stops and the three way contrast among Korean velar stops, both in intervocalic position. Articulatory data won via electromagnetic articulography of three Korean speakers and acoustic recordings of three Korean and three German speakers are analysed. It was found that in both languages the voicing contrast is created by more than one mechanism. However, one can say that for Korean velar stops in intervocalic position stop closure duration is the most important parameter. For German it is closure voicing. The results support the phonological description proposed by Kohler (1984).
Articulatory token-to-token variability not only depends on linguistic aspects like the phoneme inventory of a given language but also on speaker specific morphological and motor constraints. As has been noted previously (Perkell (1997), Mooshammer et al. (2004)) , speakers with coronally high "domeshaped" palates exhibit more articulatory variability than speakers with coronally low "flat" palates. One explanation for that is based on perception oriented control by the speaker. The influence of articulatory variation on the cross sectional area and consequently on the acoustics should be greater for flat palates than for domeshaped ones. This should force speakers with flat palates to place their tongue very precisely whereas speakers with domeshaped palates might tolerate a greater variability. A second explanation could be a greater amount of lateral linguo-palatal contact for flat palates holding the tongue in position. In this study both hypotheses were tested.
This article combines a brief introduction into a particular philosophical theory of "time" with a demonstration of how this theory has been implemented in a Literary Studies oriented Humanities Computing project. The aim of the project was to create a model of text-based time cognition and design customized markup and text analysis tools that help to understand ‘‘how time works’’: more precisely, how narratively organised and communicated information motivates readers to generate the mental image of a chronologically organized world. The approach presented is based on the unitary model of time originally proposed by McTaggart, who distinguished between two perspectives onto time, the so-called A- and B-series. The first step towards a functional Humanities Computing implementation of this theoretical approach was the development of TempusMarker—a software tool providing automatic and semi-automatic markup routines for the tagging of temporal expressions in natural language texts. In the second step we discuss the principals underlying TempusParser—an analytical tool that can reconstruct temporal order in events by way of an algorithm-driven process of analysis and recombination of textual segments during which the "time stamp" of each segment as indicated by the temporal tags is interpreted.
Heterogeneity and standardization in data, use, and annotation : a diachronic corpus of German
(2005)
This paper describes the standardization problems that come up in a diachronic corpus: it has to cope with differing standards with regard to diplomaticity, annotation, and header information. Such highly heterogeneous texts must be standardized to allow for comparative research without (too much) loss of information.
Georgian is a language allowing reflexives to be marked by ergative. The subject use of the Georgian reflexive phrase was first documented with causative verbs by Asatiani (1982). The later works such as (Amiridze and Everaert, 2000), (Amiridze, 2003), (Amiridze, 2004) discuss the use with object-experiencer verbs and transitive verbs on non-agentive reading. The present paper offers the first hand data on subject uses of the Georgian reflexive phrase with transitive verbs on their agentive reading in special contexts (such as a twin context, Madame Tussaud context, etc.) which are problematic for the Binding Theory of Chomsky (1981) as well as for the Reflexivity Theory of Reinhart and Reuland (1993). The data could be accounted for within the approach developed in (Reuland, 2001). However, the subject uses of the Georgian reciprocal ertmanet- leave the issue of subject anaphors open.
HPSG accounts of filler-gap dependencies hold considerable potential for explaining the cross-linguistic variation in unbounded dependency constructions (UDCs), specifically filler-gap dependencies. This potential comes from the SLASH specifications that are posited in all nodes along the extraction path (the path between filler and gap). However, as Hukari and Levine (1994, 1995, 1996) have observed, the HPSG analysis presented by Pollard and Sag (1994) fails to embody the generalizations required in order to explain key universal properties of UDCs, in particular the ˋregistration' of such dependencies in cases of subject- and adverb-extraction. This demonstration led Bouma et al. (2001) to propose a revised UDC analysis that avoids these difficulties by ˋthreading' the SLASH specfications through all heads within an extraction domain. However, Levine (2002) points out that this analysis encounters a new difficulty concerning the interaction of extraction and coordination. This paper revisits these issues, arguing that a small modification of the BMS analysis provides a solution to the important problem observed by Levine.
The present paper investigates a certain subset of clause linkage phenomena and develops a constraint-based account to the empirical fact that clauses need to be distinguished with respect to their degree of integratedness into a potential matrix clause. Considering as example German, it is shown that the generally assumed twofold distinction between main and subordinate clauses (or root and embedded clauses) does not suffice to deal with the presented data. It is argued that the discussed linkage phenomena originate from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of the clauses involved, and should hence be encoded in grammar.
We present a method for automatic RMRS semantics construction from dependency structures, following the semantic algebra of Copestake et al. (2001). We have applied this method to a subset of the TIGER Dependency Bank for German (Forst et al., 2004) to obtain a semantic treebank for (HPSG) parser evaluation. We describe the semantics construction mechanism and give evaluation figures from manual validation of the treebank. These indicate high precision of the automatic RMRS construction process.
I examine the semantic contrasts exhibited by argument/oblique alternations (argument realization alternations where one or more participants may be realized either as a direct argument or an oblique). Previous HPSG accounts of these have proposed that alternating verbs are ambiguous, where each variant has a structured semantics that makes different participants more or less structurally prominent in the semantic representation. I argue that such accounts fail to capture the full richness of the contrasts exhibited by such alternations, and propose instead a model that derives alternations from the lexical entailments each verb associates with the alternating participant.
In this paper we present a proposal to integrate pragmatic information, both from the preceding discourse and the extra-linguistic context, in the grammar. We provide an analysis of elliptical fragments according to how they are anchored to the context and the kind of resolution they require. We also present an alternative view about the syntax of fragments.
As has been shown in other Polynesian languages, in Tongan, adnominal elements can modify incorporated nouns in the noun incorporation construction. Two analysis are considered in this paper for understanding this construction within HPSG. The first, lexical sharing (Kim and Sells, this volume), views the verbs that include incorporated nouns as being single words corresponding to two syntactic atoms. However, this analysis makes incorrect predictions on the transitivity of incorporation clauses. A second analysis, extending Malouf (1999), views these words as verbs, but with some of the combinatorial properties of nouns. This offers both a better account of the data, and preserves the more restrictive theory of the morphology-syntax interface.
This paper proposes a distinct approach to local binding effects for reflexives and pronominals in English whereby the nature of local binding domains is a by-product of the incremental interpretation of syntactic derivations (Uriageraka 1999, Chomsky 2000, 2001), emphasizing the role of the Conceptual /Intentional interface and the computational system (i.e. bare output conditions) in shaping general principles of grammars. A significant development of the Minimalist framework is the proposal that derivations operate through phases or multiple spell outs, which allows to reduce the strict cyclicity of derivations, and related locality effects of movement, to interface (bare output) conditions and economy conditions. In this paper I propose that incremental interpretation can further capture local binding domains effects of conditions A and B of Chomsky's (1981, 1986) Binding Theory. Basically, local binding domains are shown to correspond to accessible phase domains. Our proposal hence contrasts with standard analyses (e.g. Reinhart and Reuland 1993, Pollard and Sag 1992) that define co-argumenthood as the core factor from which binding conditions are developed. Our proposal also provides a new perspective on the core contrasts between A-chain and A-bar chain w.r.t. binding and scope reconstruction effects and argues that checking of the uninterpretable feature Case is what defines potential phase domains.
Syncretism in German: A unified approach to underspecification, indeterminacy, and likeness of case
(2005)
In this paper I address the phenomenon of syncretism in German and show how Flickinger (2000)'s approach to related issues in English can be adapted to provide a compact, disjunction-free representation of German nominal paradigms by means of combined case/number/gender type hierarchies. In particular, I will discuss the issue of case identity constraints in German coordinate structures, which has so far prevented successful application of Flickinger's proposal to German, and show how likeness constraints targetting individual inflectional dimensions of a combined type hierarchy can be expressed by means of typed lists that abstract out the relevant dimension.
I further show that current type-based approaches to feature neutrality are unable to combine the treatment of this phenomenon with the virtues of underspecification. I will then propose a revised organisation of the inflectional type hierarchies suggested by Daniels (2001), drawing on a systematic distinction between inherent and external (case) requirements.
In this paper we argue that at least for some languages, when there are suitable o-commanders of its selectional domain, a reflexive in the bottom of its obliqueness hierarchy escapes exemption via a reshuffling of its local binding domain. The outcome of such reshuffling is that the local domain extends to include o-commanders of the reflexive in the subcategorization domain immediately upstairs, that is in the domain whose head predicator directly subcategorizes the domain headed by the predicator directly subcategorizing the reflexive.
This paper describes the processing of MRI and CT images needed for developing a 3D linear articulatory model of velum. The 3D surface that defines each organ constitutive of the vocal and nasal tracts is extracted from MRI and CT images recorded on a subject uttering a corpus of artificially sustained French vowels and consonants. First, the 2D contours of the organs have been manually extracted from the corresponding images, expanded into 3D contours, and aligned in a common 3D coordinate system. Then, for each organ, a generic mesh has been chosen and fitted by elastic deformation to each of the 46 3D shapes of the corpus. This has finally resulted in a set of organ surfaces sampled with the same number of 3D vertices for each articulation, which is appropriate for Principal Component Analysis or linear decomposition. The analysis of these data has uncovered two main uncorrelated articulatory degrees of freedom for the velum's movement. The associated parameters are used to control the model. We have in particular investigated the question of a possible correlation between jaw / tongue and velum's movement and have not find more correlation than the one found in the corpus.
This paper contributes to the understanding of vocal folds oscillation during phonation. In order to test theoretical models of phonation, a new experimental set-up using a deformable vocal folds replica is presented. The replica is shown to be able to produce self sustained oscillations under controlled experimental conditions. Therefore different parameters, such as those related to elasticity, to acoustical coupling or to the subglottal pressure can be quantitatively studied. In this work we focused on the oscillation fundamental frequency and the upstream pressure in order to start (on-set threshold) either end (off-set threshold) oscillations in presence of a downstream acoustical resonator. As an example, it is shown how this data can be used in order to test the theoretical predictions of a simple one-mass model.
Maligne Tumore der Mundhohle und der Zunge stehen weltweit an sechster Stelle aller Krebserkrankungen (Becker, 1997; Werner, 2000). Neben einer Reihe therapeutischer Behandlungsmöglichkeiten nimmt die chirurgische Resektion der Tumore eine wichtige Stellung ein. Auf Grund der häufig sehr ausgedehnten Befunde führt der resektionsbedingte Verlust anatomischer Strukturen im Bereich des Kiefers, des Mundbodens oder der Zunge oft zu Störungen aller oraler Funktionen und Funktionsabläufe. Bei vielen Patienten sind das Kauvermögen, das Schlucken, das Sprechen; die Sensibilität, die Geschmacksempfindung, aber auch die Ästhetik im Kopf- und Halsbereich betroffen (Schroder, 1985; Grimm, 1990; Panje &. Morris, 1995; Reuther & Bill, 1998; Lenarz & Lesinski-Schiedat, 2001). Orale Tumore haben daher einen massiven Einfluss auf die postoperative Lebensqualität der betroffenen Patienten. Neben dem Bemühen das Überleben der Patienten zu sichern, nimmt daher das Bestreben die Lebenssituation der Patienten zu verbessern einen zunehmend wichtigeren Platz ein. Hierzu gehört zum einen, das medizinische Vorgehen so zu planen, dass ein maximaler Funktionserhalt angestrebt wird. Zum anderen ist postoperativ das gezielte sprachtherapeutische Vorgehen wichtig um funktionelle und artikulatorische Fähigkeiten gezielt schulen zu können (Stadtler, 1989). Dies ist jedoch nur möglich, wenn die postoperativen funktionellen Veränderungen bekannt sind. Um eine Prüfung der oralen Fähigkeiten zu ermöglichen, wurde am Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft ein Motorischer Bogen entwickelt, der eine gezielte und systematische Überprüfung ermöglicht.
In order to investigate the articulatory processes of the hasty and mumbled speech of clutterers, the kinematic variability was analysed by means of electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA). In contrast to stutterers, clutterers improve their intelligibility by concentrating on their speech task. Variability is an important criterion in comparable studies of stuttering and is discussed in terms of the stability of the speech motor system. The aim of the current study was to analyse the spatial and temporal variability in the speech of three clutterers and three control speakers. All speakers were native speakers of German. The speech material consisted of repetitive CV-syllables and foreign words, because clutterers have the most severe problems with long words which have a complex syllable structure. The results showed a higher quotient of variation for clutterers in the foreign word production. For the syllable repetition task, no significant differences between clutterers and controls were found. The extremely large and variable displacements were interpreted as a strategy that helps clutterers to improve the intelligibility of their speech.
The contribution of von Kempelen's "Mechanism of Speech" to the 'phonetic sciences' will be analyzed with respect to his theoretical reasoning on speech and speech production on the one hand and on the other in connection with his practical insights during his struggle in constructing a speaking machine. Whereas in his theoretical considerations von Kempelen's view is focussed on the natural functioning of the speech organs – cf. his membraneous glottis model – in constructing his speaking machine he clearly orientates himself towards the auditory result – cf. the bag pipe model for the sound generator used for the speaking machine instead. Concerning vowel production his theoretical description remains questionable, but his practical insight that vowels and speech sounds in general are only perceived correctly in connection with their surrounding sounds – i.e. the discovery of coarticulation – is clearly a milestone in the development of the phonetic sciences: He therefore dispenses with the Kratzenstein tubes, although they might have been based on more thorough acoustic modelling.
Finally, von Kempelen's model of speech production will be discussed in relation to the discussion of the acoustic nature of vowels afterwards [Willis and Wheatstone as well as von Helmholtz and Hermann in the 19th century and Stumpf, Chiba & Kajiyama as well as Fant and Ungeheuer in the 20th century].
A visual articulatory model and its application to therapy
of speech disorders : a pilot study
(2005)
A visual articulatory model based on static MRI-data of isolated sounds and its application in therapy of speech disorders is described. The model is capable of generating video sequences of articulatory movements or still images of articulatory target positions within the midsagittal plane. On the basis of this model (1) a visual stimulation technique for the therapy of patients suffering from speech disorders and (2) a rating test for visual recognition of speech movements was developed. Results indicate that patients produce recognition rates above level of chance already without any training and that patients are capable of increasing their recognition rate over the time course of therapy significantly.
This paper summarizes our research efforts in functional modelling of the relationship between the acoustic properties of vowels and perceived vowel quality. Our model is trained on 164 short steady-state stimuli. We measured F1, F2, and additionally F0 since the effect of F0 on perceptual vowel height is evident. 40 phonetically skilled subjects judged vowel quality using the Cardinal Vowel diagram. The main focus is on refining the model and describing its transformation properties between the F1/F2 formant chart and the Cardinal Vowel diagram. An evaluation of the model based on 48 additional vowels showed the generalizability of the model and confirmed that it predicts perceived vowel quality with sufficient accuracy.
We measure face deformations during speech production using a motion capture system, which provides 3D coordinate data of about 60 markers glued on the speaker's face. An arbitrary orthogonal factor analysis followed by a principal component analysis (together called a guided PCA) of the data has showed that the first 6 factors explain about 90% of the variance, for each of our 3 speakers. The 6 derived factors, therefore, allow us to efficiently analyze or to reconstruct with a reasonable accuracy the observed face deformations. Since these factors can be interpreted in articulatory terms, they can reveal underlying articulatory organizations. The comparison of lip gestures in terms of data derived factors suggests that these speakers differently maneuver the lips to achieve contrast between /s/ and /R/. Such inter-speaker variability can occur because the acoustic contrast of these fricatives is shaped not only by the lip tube but also by cavities inside the mouth such as the sublingual cavity. In other words, these tube and cavity can acoustically compensate each other to produce their required acoustic properties.
In order to understand the functional morphology of the human voice producing system, we are in need of data on the vocal tract anatomy of other mammalian species. The larynges and vocal tracts of four species of Artiodactyla were investigated in combination with acoustic analyses of their respective calls. Different evolutionary specializations of laryngeal characters may lead to similar effects on sound production. In the investigated species, such specializations are: the elongation and mass increase of the vocal folds, the volume increase of the laryngeal vestibulum by an enlarged thyroid cartilage and the formation of laryngeal ventricles. Both the elongation of the vocal folds and the increase of the oscillating masses lower the fundamental frequency. The influence of an increased volume of the laryngeal vestibulum on sound production remains unclear. The anatomical and acoustic results are presented together with considerations about the habitats and the mating systems of the respective species.
This paper discusses the NP-internal agreement strategies observed in an empirical (corpus based) study of Portuguese, and proposes an analysis which is formalized in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). The empirical study suggests that what were previously thought to be rare or non-existent strategies occur with surprising frequency. Capturing these strategies poses problems for many standard approaches to agreement. The formalization shows how they can be captured with a relatively conservative extension of the existing HPSG theory of agreement.
This paper discusses the nature of habits in the use of languages. It is well-known that the habits of one's first language can influence the acquisition of a second language. This paper discusses the less well-known phenomenon of how an acquired second language can influence one's first language, and explains this influence by reference to the nature of communicative behavior.
Studying kinematic behavior in speech production is an indispensable and fruitful methodology in order to describe for instance phonemic contrasts, allophonic variations, prosodic effects in articulatory movements. More intriguingly, it is also interpreted with respect to its underlying control mechanisms. Several interpretations have been borrowed from motor control studies of arm, eye, and limb movements. They do either explain kinematics with respect to a fine tuned control by the Central Nervous System (CNS) or they take into account a combination of influences arising from motor control strategies at the CNS level and from the complex physical properties of the peripheral speech apparatus. We assume that the latter is more realistic and ecological. The aims of this article are: first, to show, via a literature review related to the so called '1/3 power law' in human arm motor control, that this debate is of first importance in human motor control research in general. Second, to study a number of speech specific examples offering a fruitful framework to address this issue. However, it is also suggested that speech motor control differs from general motor control principles in the sense that it uses specific physical properties such as vocal tract limitations, aerodynamics and biomechanics in order to produce the relevant sounds. Third, experimental and modelling results are described supporting the idea that the three properties are crucial in shaping speech kinematics for selected speech phenomena. Hence, caution should be taken when interpreting kinematic results based on experimental data alone.
Algorithmic approaches to anaphor resolution are known to benefit substantially from syntactic disjoint reference filters. Typically, however, there is a considerable gap between the scope of the formal model of grammar employed for deriving referential evidence and its implementation. While accounting for many subtleties of language, such formal models at most partially address the algorithmic aspects of referential processing. This paper investigates the issue of implementing syntactic disjoint reference for robust anaphor resolution. An algorithmic account of binding condition verification will be developed that, on one hand, captures the theoretical subtleties, and, on the other hand, exhibits computational efficiency and fulfils the robustness requirements. Taking as input the potentially fragmentary parses of a robust state-of-the-art parser, the practical performance of this algorithm will be evaluated with respect to the task of anaphor resolution and shown to be nearly optimal.
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.
This paper focuses on passive constructions in Dutch. Specifically, we focus on worden, as well as krijgen passives in Dutch, for which we propose a uniform, raising analysis in HPSG. We also show that such an analysis can be carried over to account for passives cross-linguistically. Specifically, we look at corresponding structures in German and show that there is no need for a dual raising and control analysis for the German "agentive" (werden) and the German "dative" (kriegen) passives, respectively, as has been proposed in Müller (2002) and Müller (2003).
This paper investigates the binding of pronouns and reflexives in picture noun phrases, and focuses on data showing that reflexives and pronouns are not in complementary distribution in picture NPs with possessors. In particular, we discuss data showing that whereas reflexives can take either the possessor or the subject of the sentence as antecedent, pronouns are restricted to an antecedent other than the possessor phrase. We suggest that this asymmetry can be straightforwardly explained if we assume that (1) the possessor of a picture NP is not part of the head noun's argument structure and (2) Binding Theory is stated over dependents structure, the representation encompassing both a head's argument structure and other phrases dependent on it in various ways. If the possessor of a picture NP (PNP) is not part of the head's argument structure, it follows that reflexives in PNPs with possessors will be exempt from Binding Theory, which paves the way for an analysis of the reflexive data. Furthermore, we also show that if BT is regarded as defined over dependents structure, it follows that a pronoun in a picture NP with a possessor must be disjoint from that possessor phrase.
This contribution is concerned with integrating the phenomenon of selectional restrictions in HPSG. Firstly, the question of treating selectional restrictions purely in the semantic module is tackled, as there are some contextual (or pragmatic) influences, which can repair the ill-formedness of violated selectional restrictions. Secondly, we present existing approaches to selectional restrictions within the framework and, lastly, make our own proposal which describes the subject as part of the semantics-pragmatics interface. In particular, we show how a semantic ontology can be integrated.
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.
Persian free relatives
(2005)
Free relatives (FRs) in Persian are Unbounded Dependency Constructions, containing gaps or resumptive pronouns (RPs). In some positions only gaps are allowed, and in some other positions only RPs. The structure of Persian FRs is bipartite, containing two constituents: a phrasal part and a sentential. Persian FRs are sensitive to the matching effect and show distinct properties from noun phrases, ordinary relative clauses, and interrogative complements. This paper proposes a unified HPSG account which assumes that the phrasal part of a FR is the head and the filler at the same time. The propped approach is presented in two versions (with and without traces) and can take care of the dependency between the gap or the RP and the licencing constituent with a truly single mechanism.
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.
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.
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).
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.
The paper reviews basic patterns of reflexive binding in Norwegian, and explores a possible implementation of them in an HPSG grammar using the LKB platform. Norwegian has two reflexive elements, with distinct constraints and corresponding 'anti-binding' effects; they can cooccur but also occur independently. As over-all strategy for resolving reflexive binding we use one resembling the 'slash' procedure for wh-dependencies. Binding constraints are imposed partly through lexical specification, partly through phrasal combination rules. Challenges are noted residing in the possibility for sentences to contain an unbounded number of reflexives.
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.
We present a novel well-formedness condition for underspecified semantic representations which requires that every correct MRS representation must be a net. We argue that (almost) all correct MRS representations are indeed nets, and apply this condition to identify a set of eleven rules in the English Resource Grammar (ERG) with bugs in their semantics component. Thus we demonstrate that the net test is useful in grammar debugging.
We examine how a large-scale computational grammar can account for the complex nature of Japanese verbal compounds. Previous computational Japanese grammars have tried to avoid the problem by simple solutions such as enumerating as many verbal compounds in the lexicon as possible. In contrast, we develop the analysis that is linguistically adequate and computationally tractable and thus meets the requirement of a syntactically and semantically precise natural language processing of Japanese like Bond et al. (2005). Our analysis distinguishes between two kinds of verbal compounds: syntactic compounds, which are fully productive; and lexical compounds, which are of varying productivity.
In Pollard & Sag (1994) and in Ginzburg & Sag (2000) phrases are either headed or non-headed, and if they are headed, there is a relation of selection between the daughters: either the head daughter selects its non-head sister(s), as in the phrases of type 'head-complements', or the non-head daughter selects its head sister, as in the phrases of type 'head-adjunct'. In the non-headed phrases, by contrast, there is no selection; in a coordinate structure, for instance, there is no relation of selection, neither between the conjuncts nor between the conjunction and the conjuncts. The central claim of this paper is that there are also phrases which are headed but in which neither daughter selects the other. To model such phrases I propose a new type, called 'head-independent'. Its properties are spelled out and its range of application is illustrated with various examples, including asymmetric coordination and apposition.
Die Durchführung kontrastiver Untersuchungen setzt vor allem eine gründliche Beschreibung der zu vergleichenden Sprachen auf der Grundlage eines Grammatikmodells voraus. Kontrastive Arbeiten zum Sprachenpaar Deutsch/Türkisch, die diese Bedingung erfüllen, finden sich nur selten. Das dürfte auf die nur bedingt vergleichbaren Strukturen der besagten Sprachen zurückzuführen sein. Zwar existiert die semantische Kategorie Reflexivum im Deutschen und im Türkischen. In vielen Fällen ist es jedoch nicht möglich, die Existenz eines syntaktischen und semantischen Reflexivums in den beiden Sprachen nachzuweisen. Im folgenden Beitrag soll der Versuch unternommen werden, dieses Problem anhand eines Vergleichs der reflexiven Konstruktionen im Deutschen und im Türkischen zu verdeutlichen.
While the sortal constraints associated with Japanese numeral classifiers are well-studied, less attention has been paid to the details of their syntax. We describe an analysis implemented within a broad-coverage HPSG that handles an intricate set of numeral classifier construction types and compositionally relates each to an appropriate semantic representation, using Minimal Recursion Semantics.
Focusing on the examples of multiple degree modification, this paper argues that the class of degree expressions in English is syntactically and semantically diverse, subdivided both according to the semantic effects of its members and according to the extent to which they permit, and participate in, multiple layers of modification. We argue that these two factors are linked, and result in (at least) a three-way distinction between ˋtrue degree morphemes', which map gradable adjectives to properties of individuals and combine with their arguments in a Head-Specifier structure; ˋintensifiers', which are syntactic and semantic modifiers of properties constructed out of gradable adjectives; and ˋscale modifiers', which are also syntactic and semantic modifiers, but which combine with ˋbare' gradable adjectives (relations between individuals and degrees) rather than properties formed out of gradable adjectives.
This paper provides a treatment of Polish Plural Comitative Constructions in the paradigm of HPSG in the tradition of Pollard and Sag (1994). Plural Comitative Constructions (PCCs) have previously been treated in terms of coordination, complementation and adjunction. The objective of this paper is to show that PCCs are neither instances of typical coordinate structures nor of typical complement or adjunct structures. It thus appears difficult to properly describe them by means of the standard principles of syntax and semantics. The analysis proposed in this paper accounts for the syntactic and semantic properties of PCCs in Polish by assuming an adjunction-based syntactic structure for PCCs, and by treating the indexical information provided by PCCs not as subject to any inheritance or composition, but as a result of applying a set of principles on number, gender and person resolution that also hold for ordinary coordinate structures.