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The aim of this paper is to provide a syntactico-semantic analysis of hybrid coordination, in which what is coordinated are phrases bearing different grammatical functions and different semantic roles. The proposed account improves on previous HPSG analyses by giving up the assumption that all conjuncts are dependents of the same head and, more importantly, by taking into account the syntax–semantics interface and providing semantic representations. This aspect of the analysis builds on and generalizes previous HPSG work on polyadic quantification.
Resultative phrases are generally believed to conform to the Direct Object Restriction: that is, they describe the direct object if verbs are transitive. However, some exceptions have occasionally been reported, and this paper investigates the problem by focusing on resultative phrases that occur with the valency alternation verbs in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Verbs that license the locative alternation and locatum-subject alternation describe events that involve two arguments, the location and the locatum, which are perceived to concurrently undergo a change of state. It will be shown that resultative phrases with a valency alternation verb can be predicated of either argument regardless of whether it is expressed as direct object. Furthermore, resultative verbal suffixes in Mandarin, interpreted as description of either the location or the locatum, give rise to the locative alternation while their interpretation remains the same. Thus, it is claimed that in Japanese and Mandarin, the predication relation of resultative phrases is not determined by the grammatical function of arguments as generally believed, but rather by the lexical semantics of the verbs.
This talk addresses the puzzle why there are different 'need' verbs in Germanic languages, which all are lexically polysemous and which all display some extent of negative polar behaviour. Whereas all the uses of Dutch 'hoeven' are negative polar, Modern Swedish 'behöva' is mostly distributionally unrestricted and only in its epistemic uses negative polar. Data suggest that this is a result of a gradual erosion of NPI-hood. The diverging behaviour of 'need'-verbs in Germanic languages can be most accurately managed assuming that lexical polysemy involves type hierarchy in which the different uses inherit from an abstract entry that defines semantics all these uses share. Moreover, it is concluded that if there is an NPI feature it is mandatorily inherited to all to its descendants. In languages such as Dutch this feature has scope over all uses, in languages such as Modern Swedish. it only bears scope over the epistemic uses.
As observed at various occasions, the usage of epistemic adverbs in information seeking questions is by far more restricted than the usage of epistemic adjectives. Starting from Lyons (1977) this contrast was motivated assuming that different types of epistemic operators come with different semantics and scope positions in the utterance, namely objective vs. subjective epistemic modality. However it is not possible to define clear classes of objective epistemic modal operators in terms of clear diagnostics. It will be shown here that the contrast of acceptability is more accurately explained in terms of locality and binding properties of the variable for the attitude holder rendering the epistemic judgement. If locally bound, epistemic modal operators can be embedded, if not, they are subject to much stricter conditions in order to be interpretable.
The current study presents an HPSG analysis for verbal reduplication in Mandarin Chinese. After discussing its interaction with Aktionsarten and aspect markers, we argue that it is a morphological rather than syntactic process. We put forward a lexical rule for verbal reduplication in Mandarin Chinese and the different forms of reduplication are captured in an inheritance hierarchy. The interaction between verbal reduplication and aspect marking is handled by multiple inheritance. This analysis covers all forms of verbal reduplication in Mandarin Chinese and has none of the shortcomings of the previous analyses.
Saying and shaking 'No'
(2021)
In many instances, the head shake can be used instead of or in addition to verbal 'No'. Based on previous work on negation in dialogue, we observe head shaking as answer particles and as responding to an implicit or an exophoric (i.e., real world situation) antecedent. Exophoric head shake, however, seems to come in two flavours: with positive and with negative emotional valuation of the antecedent situation. We provide semantic analyses for all three uses (and a head nod) within an HPSG version which is implemented in Type Theory with Records and the dialogue framewok KoS. In particular, we extend on previous work by grounding ''exophoric negation'' in positive or negative appraisal. Finally, we briefly speculate about differences between verbal 'No' and head shaking due to (the lack of) simultaneity.
The paper argues that there is compelling evidence for analyzing copy raising in English as a lexical rule that converts a subtype of perception verb with a stimulus subject (so-called "flip-perception" verbs) into a semantically bleached verb of mild evidentiary force, roughly equivalent to seem in some uses, which identifies the index of its external argument with the index of the pronominally expressed external argument of its complement.
Expletive negation refers to constructions where a negator in the complement of certain lexical items does not change the polarity of the complement proposition. Jin & Koenig (2021) show that expletive negation occurs rather widely in languages of the world and in very similar environments. They propose a language production model of why such apparently illogical uses of negation arise in language after language. But their study does not address the grammatical status and representation of expletive negation. In this paper, we argue that expletive negation is part of the lexical knowledge speakers have of their language and that the negator in expletive negation constructions contributes a negation to a non-at-issue content associated with expletive negation triggers. We provide a Lexical Resource Semantics analysis of how triggers combine in a non-standard manner with the standard semantic content of their complements: the negation (and in some cases an additional modal operator) of the content of their complement is part of the trigger's non-at-issue content while the scope of the negation is an argument of the trigger's MAIN content. Finally, we suggest that the expletive use of the French negator ne includes a lexical constraint that requires it to modify a verb that reverse selects for an expletive negation trigger.
The topic of this paper is the expression of negative directives in several Romance languages. The majority of Romance languages do not express negative directives by adding (pre-verbal) negation to the positive imperative form, but by using a different verb form (infinitive, subjunctive or something else), to which negation is attached. The present analysis shows that (some) directive verbal forms in Romance lost some hallmarks of their verbhood. The phenomenon is taken as witnessing different stages of de-verbalisation. De-verbalisation makes directive verb forms similar to interjections. The variation documented in the Romance imperatives with respect to the compatibility/incompatibility with negation may thus seen as tendencies of different degrees of the imperatives to come closer either to the verb, or to the interjection. In the context of these tendencies, the incompatibility between negation and imperatives may be explained through the concept of marking. Put briefly, imperatives require to be marked by negation but negation is or is not able to mark them.
The Dutch and German verbs wijsmaken/weismachen 'make wise' have an idiomatic interpretation as verbs of deception 'to fool'. As such, they have the unusual property of being contrafactive (presupposing the falsity of their complement). With second person or generic pronoun subjects, under negation and with future orientation, they are used to express disbelief on the part of the entity denoted by the indirect object. A corpus study shows this secondary use to be especially prominent in Dutch. It depends on the availability of the point of view of experiencer and is most common with first person dative objects.
For the past 20 years, the question of a ''creole prototype'' has been at the center of heated debates. Among features that are claimed to be typical of creole formation is the placement of negation, which usually appears preceding tense, aspect and mood markers (e.g. McWhorter 2018). In this paper, I examine diachronic data, in particular, French compound tenses and show that the position of negation in at least French-related creoles is nothing but the result of regular grammaticalization given input. As such the expression of negation typically exemplifies coalescence of the already grammaticalized negator pas into an inflectional exponent in the creoles.
This paper presents a study of so-called neg-phrases in Eton, a negative concord language spoken in Cameroon. These phrases strongly resemble negated noun phrases that consist of a negative determiner and a noun, however, I will show that Eton neg-phrases are built differently. Reconciling the non-negative approach to negative indefinites by Penka & Zeijlstra (2005) and the negative approach by Richter & Sailer (2004a,b, 2006), I will argue that Eton neg-phrases consist of an inherently negative modifier and a non-negative indefinite derived from a noun. Embedding the analysis in Lexical Resource Semantics, I will reveal the inherent negativity of Eton neg-phrases and account for their composition by using a lexical rule based on the semantic approach to noun phrases by Beavers (2003).
Middle Welsh is a VSO language with the verb before the subject in all kinds of finite clause. However, positive declarative main clauses normally show verb-second order with a constituent of some kind before the finite verb. There are questions about the nature of this restriction. There are also questions about subject-initial sentences, which show surprising agreement properties, whether the subject is a topic or a focused constituent. All these questions can be given plausible answers within HPSG.
We present an analysis of multiple question fronting in a restricted variant of the HPSG formalism (DELPH-IN) where unification is the only natively defined operation. Analysing multiple fronting in this formalism is challenging, because it requires carefully handling list appends, something that HPSG analyses of question fronting heavily rely on. Our analysis uses the append list type to address this challenge. We focus the testing of our analysis on Russian, although we also integrate it into the Grammar Matrix customization system where it serves as a basis for cross-linguistic modeling. In this context, we discuss the relationship of our analysis to lexical threading and conclude that, while lexical threading has its advantages, modeling multiple extraction cross-linguistically is easier without the lexical threading assumption.
The Smurf comics series is, among others, famous for the so-called "smurf language", in which words or parts of words can be replaced by "smurf". We will argue that this "smurfing" has the properties of placeholding. Based on data from German translations of Smurf comics, we will provide a formalization of smurfing in German which can be generalized to a theory of placeholder expressions.
This paper sketches an analysis in Lexical Resource Semantics of adverbial and adjectival modification in nominal projections which is extensible to modification of other syntactic categories. It combines insights into the syntax-semantics interface of recursive modification in HPSG with underspecified semantics and type-logical meaning representations in the tradition of Montague grammar. The analysis is phrased in such a way that it receives a direct implementation in the Constraint Language of Lexical Resource Semantics as part of the TRALE system.
The indigenous languages of North America have played a critical role in discussions of the universality of part-of-speech distinctions. In this paper, we show that Oneida does not include a grammatical distinction between nouns and verbs. Rather, Oneida inflecting lexical items are subject to two cross-cutting semantic classifications, one that concerns the sort of entities they describe, the other the sort of semantic relation they include in their content. Labels such as ‘noun' and ‘verb' can still be used for cross-linguistic comparison, as the semantic partition of lexical items corresponds to canonical nouns and verbs according to morphologists and some typologists. But the meta-grammatical status of these labels is quite distinct from the status of corresponding labels in Indo-European languages like English.
This paper presents an incremental approach to verb clusters in German which radically differs from standard HPSG accounts. While the common assumption is that the verbs in subordinate clauses form clusters and accumulate all their valence requirements on a SUBCAT list, the assumption in this paper is that the arguments in verb final clauses are encapsulated incrementally into syntactic and semantic structures before the verbs are attached. The proposed analysis is in line with psycholinguistic findings. A grammar fragment of German demonstrating an implementation of the analysis is presented.
This paper proposes an account for the four auxiliaries in Kazakh that express the imperfective aspect. The main factors – the auxiliary, the main verb, their inflections and the aspectual specifications reveal a complicated system, which can be captured with an appropriate monotonic, multiple inheritance type hierarchy using online-type construction with the implementation of Pāṇinian competition. This analysis sheds light to a very different auxiliary system that we find in Indo-European languages.
Unrealized arguments in SBCG
(2020)
In null instantiation (NI) an optionally unexpressed argument receives either anaphoric or existential interpretation (Fillmore, 1986; Mauner & Koenig, 2000; Kay, 2002; Ruppenhofer & Michaelis, 2010, 2014). Examples include Lexically licensed NI (Nixon resigned.), Contextual accessibility NI (Can I see?), Labelese (Contains alcohol), Diary NI (Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head), Generic-habitual NI (The police only arrest (people) when there's probable cause). We think of a predicator as having NI potential when one or more of its frame elements may remain unexpressed under certain conditions. While one cannot accurately predict a predicator's NI potential based either on semantic factors (e.g., Aktionsart class of the verb, as in Hovav & Levin (1998)) or pragmatic factors (e.g., relative discourse prominence of arguments, as in Goldberg (2006)), NI potential, while highly constrained, is not simply lexical idiosyncrasy, but is instead the product of both lexical and constructional licensing. In the latter case, a construction can endow a verb with NI potential that it would not otherwise have. Using representational tools of Sign Based Construction Grammar (Sag 2012, a.o), we offer a lexical treatment of null instantiation that covers both distinct patterns of construal of null instantiated arguments and the difference between listeme-based and contextually licensed, thus construction-based, null complementation
Research on unbounded dependency constructions (UDCs) has focused mainly on the properties that are shared by all UDCs, but a satisfactory theory of syntax also needs to capture the properties that distinguish specific UDCs and the properties that are shared by some but not all of them. Three Welsh unbounded dependency constructions – wh-interrogatives, free relatives, and cleft sentences – are of interest here because they show a challenging array of similarities and the differences. However, given a slightly expanded hierarchy of phrase types, HPSG can capture both the similarities and the differences in this area.
In this paper, we provide a novel account of French causatives that crucially derives the core properties of the construction inside-out from the downstairs lexical verb to the causative verb, rather than outside-in, as is commonly assumed by argument composition (Miller & Sag, 1997; Abeillé & Godard, 1997; Abeillé et al., 1998). We shall argue on the basis of clitic trapping (Miller & Sag, 1997), as well as marking of the downstairs subject (Koenig, 1998) that the downstairs verb assumes a more active role than what is suggested by an argument composition approach and, conversely, we shall show that argument composition leads to problems with coordination and with en-cliticisation. The analysis we are going to propose combines an inversion analysis of the downstairs subject as a downstairs complement, accounting for scrambling and case marking, with an analysis of clitic climbing in terms of inflectional periphrasis (Aguila-Multner & Crysmann 2020).
Dutch has four pronouns "er" which show an intriguing pattern of syntactic haplology when a finite verb has more than one "er" dependent. We present a theory that captures this pattern by relying on two central aspects of HPSG: (i) the distinction between ARG-ST and COMPS and (ii) the distinction between canonical and non-canonical synsem objects. No deletion rules of the kind used in transformational analyses of "er" are necessary.
The paper proposes a representational re-encoding of the scalar, pragmatic accounts of NPI licensing within the framework of Lexical Resource Semantics (LRS). The analysis focuses on a less researched distribution pattern: emphatic NPIs occurring in result clause constructions that receive an intensification reading. We will provide a scalar extension of a standard semantic account of result clauses to capture the high degree interpretations. Our investigation will also offer new insights on NPI licensing in embedded clauses. We will primarily consider Romanian data.
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.
Gapping in Japanese, which is an SOV language, differs from gapping in SVO languages in that the conjuncts with the elided verbs appear in non-final position. In this paper I present an incremental approach to gapping in Japanese, where it is assumed that an argument structure type is constructed in the non-final clause(s) in the gapping construction. This type is unified with the construction type created by the final clause resulting in identical construction types for all conjuncts in the construction.
This paper presents a formalization of proportional analogy using typed feature structures, which retains all key elements of analogical models of morphology. With the Kasem number system as an example, I show that using this model it is possible to express partial analogies which are unified into complete analogies. The analysis presented is accompanied by a complete TRALE implementation.
The Welsh copula has a complex set of forms reflecting agreement, tense, polarity, the distinction between main and complement clauses, the presence of a gap as subject or complement, and the contrast between predicative and equative interpretations. An HPSG analysis of the full set of complexities is possible given a principle of blocking, whereby constraints with more specific antecedents take precedence over constraints with less specific antecedents, and a distinction between morphosyntactic features relevant to syntax and morphosyntactic features relevant to morphology.
We examine the fine structure of clausal right-node raising constructions in Japanese, and argue that there are sentences in which a tensed verb is right-node-raised out of coordinated tensed clauses as well as sentences in which a verb stem is right-node-raised out of coordinated tenseless phrases. In the latter case, the tense morpheme has to be assumed to take a tenseless complement clause, and we note that the existence of such a structure contradicts the so-called lexicalist hypothesis, according to which a verb stem and the tense morpheme immediately following it always form a morphosyntactic constituent.
In this paper we describe insights gained from building an extension to the LinGO Grammar Matrix customization system to cover adnominal possessive phrases. We show how the wide range of such constructions attested in the world's languages can be handled with the typical major phrase types used in HPSG and discuss the value of feature bundling in the multilingual grammar engineering context.
This study aims to analyze and develop a detailed model of syntax and semantics of passive sentences in standard Indonesian in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) (Pollard & Sag, 1994; Sag et al., 2003) and Minimal Recursion Semantics (MRS) (Copestake et al., 2005), explicit enough to be interpreted by a computer, focusing on implementation rather than theory. There are two main types of passive in Indonesian, following Sneddon et al. (2010, pp. 256-260) and Alwi et al. (2014, pp. 352-356), called 'passive type 1' (P1) and 'passive type 2' (P2). Both types were analyzed and implemented in the Indonesian Resource Grammar (INDRA), a computational grammar for Indonesian (Moeljadi et al., 2015).
The copula construction in Hebrew has received much attention in the linguistic literature. Nevertheless, one non-canonical variant has been largely neglected. In this variant the copula, flanked by two NPs, exhibits agreement with the post-copular NP, contrary to the canonical variant, where the agreement controller is the initial NP. This phenomenon challenges the notion of subject and its relation to agreement. The current corpus-based study investigates the word order and agreement patterns exhibited by the Hebrew copular constructions and shows that their distribution is largely motivated by information structure considerations. The proposed analysis accounts for the syntactic symmetry and semantic asymmetry between the two NPs.
In this paper, we argue that by making a more detailed distinction of theta-roles, while at the same time investigating the correlation of case marking, theta-role assignment, and eventuality types, we can describe different psych-verb subclasses and explain their alignment patterns in Spanish and Korean. We propose a neo-Davidsonian treatment of psych-verbs in HPSG that allows us to account for the underspecification of theta-roles which are modeled in an inheritance hierarchy for semantic relations. By assuming linking properties modeled lexically, we can constrain the properties for psych-verbs which shows the mapping of semantic arguments (i.e. experiencer, stimulus-causer, subject matter and target) to the elements in the argument structure. The type hierarchy and lexical rules proposed here capture the alternation in case marking not only of the experiencer (as traditionally assumed in the literature), but also of the stimulus. This analysis leads us to a new fourfold classification of psych-verbs for both languages.
The paper shows how the plural semantic ideas of (Sternefeld, 1998) can be captured in Lexical Resource Semantics, a system of underspecied semantics. It is argued that Sternefeld's original approach, which allows for the unrestricted insertion of pluralisation into Logical Form, suffers from a problem originally pointed out by Lasersohn (1989) with respect to the analysis offered by Gillon (1987). The problem is shown to stem from repeated pluralisation of the same verbal argument and to be amenable to a simple solution in the proposed lexical analysis, which allows for restricting the pluralisations that can be inserted. The paper further develops an account of maximalisation of pluralities as needed to obtain the correct readings for sentences with quantiers that are not upward monotone. Such an account is absent in the orginal system in (Sternefeld, 1998). The present account makes crucial use of the possibility to have distinct constituents contribute identical semantic material offered by LRS and employs it in an analysis of maximalisation in terms of polyadic quantication.
We present an analysis of clausal nominalization developed in the context of the LinGO Grammar Matrix (Bender et al., 2002, 2010) to support the addition of subordinate clauses to the grammar customization framework. In particular, we examine the typological variation of nominalized clausal complements and nominalized clausal modifiers. To account for the range of variation in nominalized clauses across the world's languages and to support linguists in exploring alternative analyses, we propose a flexible library of analyses, allowing nominalization of the clause to occur at the V, VP or S level.
The paper addresses verbal agreement in German sign language from a constraint-based perspective. Based on Meir's Agreement Morphology Principles it presents an HPSG analysis of plain, regular and backwards agreement verbs that models the interaction between phonological (manual) features and syntactico-semantic relationships within a verbal sign by well-defined lexical restrictions. We argue that a sign-based declarative analysis can provide an elegant approach to agreement in sign language since it allows to exploit cross-modular constraints within grammar, and hence permits a direct manipulation of all relevant phonological features of a verb depending on its syntactic and semantic properties.
I describe an analysis of valence-changing verbal morphology implemented as a library extending the LinGO Grammar Matrix customization system. This analysis is based on decomposition of these operations into rule components, which in turn are expressed as lexical rule supertypes that implement specific, isolatable constraints. I also show how common variations of these constraints can be abstracted and parameterized by their axes of variation. I then demonstrate how these constraints can be recomposed in various combinations to provide broad coverage of the typological variation of valence change found in the world's languages. I evaluate the coverage of this library on five held-out world languages that exhibit these phenomena, achieving 79% coverage and 2% overgeneration.
In this paper, we study Old French declension, a system which exhibits the theoretically challenging phenomenon of morphological reversal (Baerman, 2007). Furthermore, the declension system of Old French only recognises a single exponent -s, which marks different case/number combinations in different paradigms, contrasting with the unmarked form. We show that reversal is only one of several syncretism patterns found in the language and propose that Old French declension is best understood in terms of two systematic syncretisms: a natural split between singular and plural for feminines, and a Paninian split for masculines that systematically marks the objective plural. Reversal, and other seemingly morphomic splits arise as a result of idiosyncrasy in the NOM.SG cell, comprising inflection class-specific s-marking, as well as stem alternation and overabundance. We provide a formal analysis in terms of Information-based Morphology (Crysmann & Bonami, 2016) that effortlessly captures the systematic splits, as well as the variation in the nominative singular. We suggest that the high degree of idiosyncrasy in this cell paired with the reduced frequency of overt nominative NPs when compared to objective NPs may serve to explain why the system was actually quite short-lived.
Dutch is well-known for the formation of verb clusters. A characteristic aspect of such constructions is that the order of the verbs may differ from the order in which they are selected. Across the Dutch language area verb clusters show different types of word order variation. This paper proposes a constructivist account of word order variation in Dutch verb clusters. Linearization is not modelled in terms of the GVOR feature, after Kathol (2000). Instead, it relies on the bidimensional phrase hierarchy initiated by Ginzburg & Sag (2000), which is extended for the analysis of constructions with verb clusters. This proposal accounts for the most common instances of word order variation in Dutch verb clusters, and it can be easily adapted to model a specific variety or dialect.
This paper discusses the syntactic properties of 'prepositional numeral constructions (PNCs)' in English, which is exemplified by 'about 250 babies' and 'over 16,000 animals'. In PNCs a preposition is followed by a numeral. Previous analyses have claimed that the preposition and the numeral make a prepositional phrase in PNCs, but we argue that this is not a satisfactory approach. In HPSG there are some possible analyses that might be proposed, but there are reasons for supposing that the best analysis is one in which the preposition is a functor, a non-head selecting a numeral head.
This paper investigates the syntax of the English "not only ... but also ..." construction, focusing on the linearization possibilities of "not only". Based on novel corpus data, I argue that the "not only ... but also ..." construction exhibits different properties from the "not ... but ..." construction or the adverbial "only". I propose that a linearization-based account, along with coordinate ellipsis, can explain the various linearization possibilities of "not only". I also propose that the construction as a whole is a subtype of the type correlative-coord-ph, which is a novel subtype of coord-ph. Finally, I argue that subject-auxiliary inversion triggered by the clause-initial not only is a new subtype of the type "negative-inversion-ph".
Partial inversion in English
(2017)
A typical finite clause in English has a single constituent that serves as subject. This constituent precedes the finite verb in non-inverted clauses like simple declarative clauses, follows the finite verb in inverted clauses like polar questions, agrees in person and number with the finite verb and with a tag subject when a tag is present, undergoes subject raising, and so on (Postal 2004). Five constructions violate these generalizations and in the literature have called into question the identity of the subject constituent. In each of these five constructions the finite verb agrees with a following constituent in a declarative clause despite the fact, among others, that the constituent preceding the verb exhibits subject behaviors of the kind identified by Keenan (1976). To the authors' knowledge, despite intensive analysis of several of these patterns, the group as a whole has not been subject to prior study. The constructions are: Presentational Inversion (e.g., On the porch stood marble pillars), Presentational there (e.g., "The earth was now dry, and there grew a tree in the middle of the earth"), Deictic Inversion (e.g., "Here comes the bus"), Existential there (e.g., There’s a big problem here) and Reversed Specificational be (e.g., "The only thing we’ve taken back recently are plants"). The approach of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (Sag 2012) enables us to establish precisely what all five patterns have in common and what is particular to each, revealing that a constructional, constraint-based approach can extract the correct grammatical generalizations, not only in 'core' areas of a grammar, but also in the hard cases, where concepts such as subject, which readily handle the more tractable facts, fail to fit the facts at hand. We see further that the five split-subject patterns, sometimes identified as clausal, yield to a strictly lexical analysis.
Against split morphology
(2017)
In this paper I present data from several Niger Congo languages, illustrating how the paradigms which make up the noun class systems of these languages are problematic to analyze within traditional morphosyntactic frameworks. I outline possible solutions to this problem, and argue for the introduction of an exemplar based Word and Paradigm (Blevins 2006) approach to morphology within SBCG. I then outline the consequences of this approach for the structure of the SBCG lexicon.
In this paper I present an incremental approach to gapping and conjunction reduction where it is assumed that the first sentence in these constructions is fully parsed before the second sentence with the elided verb is parsed. I will show that the two phenomena can be given a uniform analysis by letting the construction type of the first conjunct be carried over to the second conjunct. This construction type imposes constraints on the arguments that the second conjunct can have. The difference between gapping and conjunction reduction is captured by the already existing constructions for sentence and VP coordination. The analysis is implemented in an HPSG grammar of Norwegian.
This paper explores the conundrum posed by two different control constructions in Yucatec Maya, a Mayan language spoken by around 800,000 speakers in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize. Basic syntactic structure of the language is introduced, and a general SBCG treatment of control in YM is presented, alongside with an example of motion verbs as control matrices. The unruly case of intransitive subjunctive control, where the controllee appears with an unexpected status (incompletive) and without set-A morphology, is discussed and a proposal to treat it as nominalization is evaluated. The nominalization proposal is rejected based on the following grounds: (1) nominalization tends to attract definitive morphology, which is absent from intransitive subjunctive control constructions, (2) nominalization does not truly explain the lack of set-A morphology if one desires to provide a unified account of set-A morphemes, (3) verbs bereft of otherwise expected set-A morphemes have an independent motivation in the form of agent focus constructions.
In this paper we discuss two contrasting views of exponence in inflectional morphology: the atomistic view, where content is associated individually with minimal segmentable morphs, and the holistic view, where the association is made for the whole word between complex content and constellations of morphs. On the basis of data from Estonian and Swahili, we argue that an adequate theory of inflection should be able to accomodate both views. We then show that the framework of Information-based Morphology (Crysmann and Bonami, 2016) is indeed compatible with both views, thanks to relying on realisation rules that associate m units of forms with n units of content.
Over the past few years, there has been renewed interest in the treatment of resumption in HPSG: despite areas of convergence, e.g. the recognition of resumptive dependencies as dependencies, as motivated by Across-the-Board (ATB) extraction, there is no unified theory to date, with differences pertaining, e.g., to the exact formulation of amalgamation (Ginzburg and Sag, 2000), or the place of island constraints in grammar. While Borsley (2010) and Alotaibi and Borsley (2013) relegate the difference in locality of gap and resumptive dependencies to the performance system, Crysmann (2012, 2016) captures insensitivity to strong islands as part of the grammar. Harmonising existing proposals becomes even more acute, if we consider the cross-linguistic similarity of the phenomenon, in particular, if we compare languages like Hausa and Arabic, which both feature island insensitivity to some degree, as well as bound pronominal resumptive objects and zero pronominal resumptive subjects, to name just a few of the parallels. In this paper, I shall reexamine resumption (and extraction) in Modern Standard Arabic (henceforth: MSA) and propose a reanalysis that improves on Alotaibi and Borsley (2013) in several areas: first, I shall argue that controlling the distribution of gaps and resumptives by means of case is not only empirically under-motivated but also leads to counter-intuitive constraint specifications in the majority of cases. Second, I shall show that the case-based account of Alotaibi and Borsley (2013) can be straightforwardly supplanted with the weight-based account I proposed in Crysmann (2016): in doing this, one does not only get a better alignment of case assignment constraints with overtly observable manifestations of case, but such an account is also general enough to scale from case languages, such as MSA, to languages without case, such as Hausa, or many Arabic vernaculars. Finally, I shall address case in ATB extraction and propose a refinement of the Coordination Constraint of Pollard and Sag (1994) that accounts for exactly the kind of mismatch observed in mixed gap/resumptive ATB extraction
Explanations and "engineering solutions"? Aspects of the relation between Minimalism and HPSG
(2017)
It is not simple to compare Minimalism and HPSG, but it is possible to identify a variety of differences, some not so important but others of considerable importance. Two of the latter are: (1) the fact that Minimalism is a very lexically-based approach whereas HPSG is more syntactically-based, and (2) the fact that Minimalism uses Internal Merge in the analysis of unbounded dependencies whereas HPSG employs the SLASH feature. In both cases the HPSG approach seems to offer a better account of the facts. Thus, in two important respects it seems preferable to Minimalism.
The Polynesian language Tongan appears to lack surface-oriented motivation for a VP constituent. Even so, adverbial elements appear in both a rightwards location and a leftwards location, superficially similar to the S-adverbs and VP-adverbs in well-studied western European languages. This paper explores how the Tongan ''VP-adverbs'' (as well as others) can be analyzed in HPSG without a VP for those adverbs to attach to. Several kinds of analyses, representing different strands of research on the syntax of adjuncts in HPSG, are explored: a Adjuncts-as-Valents analysis, a VAL-sensitive Adjuncts-as-Selectors analysis, and a WEIGHT-sensitive Adjuncts-as-Selectors analysis. All suggest that an analysis of the adverbs without a VP is possible; a WEIGHT-sensitive Adjuncts-as-Selectors seems to have the fewest issues.
This paper is the third in a series of papers dedicated to the investigation of subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic. It began with Arad Greshler et al.'s (2016) search for obligatory control predicates in the language and continued with Arad Greshler et al.'s (2017) empirical and theoretical investigation of the backward control construction. In this paper we show that Arad Greshler et al.'s (2017) findings and ultimate analysis, which is cast in a transformational framework, can be straightforwardly formalized using the existing principles and tools of HPSG. Our proposed analysis accounts for all the patterns attested with subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic, including instances of control and no-control.
This paper investigates the structure and agreement of coordinated binominals in the form Det N1 et N2 in French. We provide corpus data and experimental data to show that different strategies exist, depending on their readings: singular Det for joint reading (mon collègue et ami, 'my.MSG colleague.MSG and friend.MSG'), plural Det agreement (mes frère et soeur 'my.PL brother.MSG and sister.FSG') or closest conjunct agreement (mon nom et prénom, 'my.MSG surname.MSG and first name.MSG') for split reading. These results challenge previous syntactic analyses of binominals (Le Bruyn and de Swart, 2014), stating that Det combines with N1, forming a DP and the later coordinates with N2. We then propose an HPSG analysis to account for French binominals.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has simple and complex comparatives, which look rather like their counterparts in many other languages. MSA simple comparatives are indeed like those of other languages, but MSA complex comparatives are quite different. They involve an adjective with a nominal complement, which may be an adjectival noun or an ordinary noun, and are rather like so-called 'adjectival constructs'. Simple comparatives, complex comparatives, and adjectival constructs can all be analysed with lexical rules within HPSG.
In this paper, it is demonstrated that there is a phenomenon that can be viewed as a mirror image of medial right-node raising and thus might be designated as medial left-node raising, and it is argued that the properties of this phenomenon are consistent with the predictions of the HPSG-based theory of non-constituent coordination first proposed in Yatabe (2001) and modified in later works such as Yatabe (2015).
Right-node raising is usually set apart from other elliptical constructions for imposing a strict identity condition between the omitted and the peripheral elements. Since Pullum & Zwicky (1986), it is assumed that only syncretic forms may resolve a feature conflict between the two conjuncts (I certainly will and you already have set the record straight.). We present an empirical study of RNR with final verb in English and French that shows that verb mismatch does occur in corpora with and without syncretic forms, i.e. that syncretism does not appear to play a role. We present an acceptability judgement task on French that confirms this hypothesis. We therefore propose a new HPSG analysis of RNR that is based on sharing LID features and not morphophonological forms.
We look at definite marking in Esperanto, Papiamentu, and Yiddish considering three semantically definite contexts: the referential use of proper names and unique nouns, as well as anaphoric definites. We argue for a three-dimensional analysis of definiteness: an individual denotation, an existence presupposition, and a uniqueness conventional implicature. We present an HPSG encoding of this system and model the central aspects of the definite marking systems of our three object languages.
This paper outlines a new analysis of the syntactic structure and discourse function of a ‘prominent internal possessor construction' (PIPC) in Chimane (unclassified, Bolivia) and compares it with an existing analysis of a different kind of PIPC found in Maithili (Indo- Aryan, India/Nepal). PIPCs in Chimane and Maithili involve an apparently non-local agreement relation between verbs and possessors which are internal to possessive NPs. In Chimane, it is argued that internal possessors are able to control object agreement via a clause-level 'proxy' of the internal possessor – see also Ritchie (under review). The paper goes on to compare this construction with PIPCs in Maithili, and shows that speakers use PIPCs in discourse to indicate the information structure role of the internal possessor. In the case of Chimane, it seems that internal possessors which bear the secondary topic role are more likely to control object agreement, while in Maithili, other semantic and information structural features of internal possessors are at play. The contributions of the various levels of sentence structure are modelled using the LFG architecture developed in Dalrymple & Nikolaeva (2005; 2011).
Early work on quantification in natural languages showed that sentences like 'Every ape picked different berries', on the reading that the sets of berries picked by any two apes are not the same, can be logically represented with a single polyadic quantifier for the two nominal phrases. However, since that quantifier cannot be decomposed into two quantifiers for the two nominal phrases, a compositional semantic analysis of this reading is not possible under standard assumptions about syntax and semantics. This paper shows how a constraint-based semantics with Lexical Resource Semantics can define a systematic syntax-semantics interface which captures the reading in question with a polyadic quantifier.
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.
The paper briefly reexamines arguments for the argument–adjunct dichotomy, commonly assumed in contemporary linguistics, showing that they do not stand up to scrutiny. It demonstrates that – perhaps surprisingly – LFG currently only assumes this dichotomy in its f-structure feature geometry, and does not rely on it in any crucial way. Building on this observation, the paper presents a way of getting rid of this dichotomy altogether.
The aim of this paper is to reexamine the rich repertoire of grammatical functions assumed in LFG and provide novel arguments for the claim, voiced earlier for example in Alsina et al. 2005, that most of them are redundant. We also demonstrate that a textbook LFG test for the sameness of grammatical functions of different predicates fails on closer scrutiny. Constructively, we propose a more constrained approach to grammatical functions, which, however, has the advantage of formalising the grammatical function hierarchy, assumed in LFG analyses of diverse phenomena but apparently not previously formalised.
This paper presents a new analysis of quirky subjects according to which quirky subjects bear multiple grammatical relations and hence differ syntactically from regular subjects. This contrasts with the standard analysis of quirky subjects according to which quirky subjects are regular subjects bearing lexical case and therefore differ only morphologically from regular subjects. Based on the behavior of quirky subjects in Faroese and German, I argue that the syntactic account is superior. Faroese shows that the case borne by a quirky subject is not lexical, whereas German shows that quirky subjects are not regular subjects to begin with. The behavior of quirky subjects in Icelandic, on which the standard analysis is based, is argued to be the result of a morphosyntactic peculiarity of Icelandic.
Quantifiers canonically attach to nouns or noun phrases as modifiers to specify the amount or number of the entity expressed by the noun. However, it has been observed that quantifiers can be positioned outside of the noun phrase. These so-called floating quantifiers (FQs) exhibit intriguing syntactic and semantic characteristics. On the one hand, they appear to have a closerelationship with a noun; semantically they quantify a noun in the same way as non-floating quantifiers, and quite often they exhibit agreement with the noun. On the other hand, their phrase structure distribution is very similar to that of VP-adverbs. In this paper, we argue that the distribution of FQs is constrained not purely by syntax, but also by information structure. We show that FQs play a focus role whereas modified nouns are reference-oriented topic expressions. Building upon Dalrymple and Nikolaeva's (2011) recent proposal, we formulate the interaction between syntactic, semantic and information structure features of FQs within LFG's projection architecture.
This paper discusses recent LFG proposals on resultative and benefactive constructions. I show that neither resultative nor benefactive constructions are fully fixed and that this flexibility requires traces or a stipulation of constructional templates at several unrelated places in the grammar, something that is not necessary in lexical approaches. A second part of the paper deals with the active/passive alternation and shows that language-internal generalizations are missed if constraints are assumed to be contributed by phrase structure rules. A third part examines the parallel constructions in German and shows that cross-linguistic generalizations are not captured by phrasal approaches.
We want to show how basic copula clauses in Indonesian can be dealt with within the framework of Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) (Pollard & Sag, 1994). We analyzed three types of basic copula clauses in Indonesian: copula clauses with noun phrase complements (NP) expressing the notions of 'proper inclusion' and 'equation', adjective phrases (AP) expressing 'attribution', and prepositional phrases (PP) expressing relationships such as 'location'. Our analysis is implemented in the Indonesian Resource Grammar (INDRA), a computational grammar for Indonesian (Moeljadi et al., 2015).
A singular countable noun in English normally requires a determiner and they should agree in number. However, there is a type of noun phrase, such as those thousand teachers, which does not conform to this generalisation. As a subtype of singular countable noun, thousand requires a determiner, but the determiner has number agreement with the head noun teachers. The standard HPSG treatment, in which the determiner requirement and the determiner-noun agreement are both represented in the SPR specifications of the head noun, cannot capture this special agreement pattern. Our analysis, in which the determiner requirement and the determiner-noun agreement are dissociated from each other, can provide a straightforward account of the data.
The phenomenon of so-called 'mixed' categories, whereby a word heads a phrase which appears to display some features of one lexical category, and some features of another, raises questions regarding the criteria used for distinguishing syntactic categories. In this paper I critically assess some recent work in LFG which provides 'mixed category' analyses. I show that three types of evidence are typically utilized in analyses of supposed mixed category phenomena, and I argue that two of these are not, in fact, crucial for determining category status. I show that two distinct phenomena have become conflated under the 'mixed category' heading, and argue that the term ‘mixed category’ should be reserved for only one of these.
Verbal present participles in Norwegian: Controlled complements or parts of complex predicates
(2016)
Norwegian has a limited option for verbal present participles. These participles only exist with a small number of verbs, and they are selected by a handful of predicates. The analysis of sentences with these participles raises some challenges. Taking the analysis of Thurén (2008) as my point of departure, I argue that verbal present participles have two possible analyses, as controlled complements, or as parts of complex predicates. The presentational focus construction gives important evidence for this analysis.
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.
This paper desribes four areas in which grammar engineers and theoretical linguists can interact. These include: using grammar engineering to confirm linguistic hypotheses; linguistic issues highlighted by grammar engineering; implementation capabilities guiding theoretical analyses; and insights into architecture issues. It is my hope that we will see more work in these areas in the future and more collaboration among grammar engineers and theoretical linguists. This is an area in which HPSG and LFG as a distinct advantage, given the strong communities and resources available.
The paper considers a phenomenon in Korean where ambiguity in the written language is resolved prosodically. An LFG analysis is provided which extends the proposals of Mycock and Lowe (2013) to Korean, based on experimental evidence on the prosodic expression of focus in Korean which challenges the phrase-boundary based account of Jun and Oh (1996), and suggests that considering expanded pitch range may give a more robust account of focus expression.
In this paper we discuss second position clitics in Ancient Greek, which show a remarkable ability to break up syntactic constituents. We argue against attempts to capture such data in terms of a mismatch between c-structure yield and surface string and instead propose to enrich c-structure by using a multiple context free grammar with explicit yield functions rather than an ordinary CFG.
In this paper we propose an LFG/XLE treatment of Exhaustive Object Control (EOC) constructions in Greek na clauses. We draw on data retrieved from the Hellenic National Corpus (HNC) in order to define the verbs that allow EOC. We treat EOC using anaphoric control. We take the subject of the subordinate na clause (controllee) to be a PRO marked with nominative case that is anaphorically related to the object of the matrix clause (controller). We implement this analysis in our LFG/XLE Grammar by adding the new feature ANAPH_C_BY.
The aim of this paper is to provide an adequate analysis in LFG of the prepositional passive, e.g. That problem has been dealt with, My pen has been written with. This construction has been examined in LFG before by Bresnan (1982), Lødrup (1991), and Alsina (2009), but empirical and theoretical problems, some well-documented, some new, mean that such proposals cannot be maintained. Instead, I offer an account couched in recent work on the mapping between grammatical functions and arguments (Asudeh et al., 2014; Findlay, 2014a) that treats the defining characteristic of the prepositional passive not as purely syntactic, but rather as being located at the interface between syntax and semantics.
The aim of this paper is to tease apart two available views of the VP in Persian. The prevailing view of the Persian VP initially suggested in generative studies assumes a hierarchical structure with two object positions, mainly motivated by the existence of differential object marking in Persian. Building on quantitative studies, we revisit this hierarchical view and show that it is not born out by the data. A flat structure view of the VP, on the contrary, is in line with the data.
Previous accounts of the perfect tense-aspect in the K'ichee'an languages have concluded that the category or part-of-speech of the perfect is a verb, or less often, a participle. We believe otherwise. Empirical support is presented for the hypothesis that the perfect is expressed using either a deverbal participial adjective or a deverbal possessed nominal in the form of a detransitivized non-verbal predicate. We show that the perfect always consists of a one-place intransitive but that it, nonetheless, retains the capacity to express two argument roles. Further, we argue that the perfect is, in fact, a perfect. We present the various semantic types of perfect, including the perfect of result and the experiential perfect, and also show the temporal restrictions that constrain the perfect. The analyses are implemented using the syntactic architecture of LFG.
Within recent work on the treatment of resumption in HPSG, there is growing consensus that resumptive unbounded dependency constructions (=UDCs) should be modelled on a par with gap-type UDCs (Alotaibi and Borsley, 2013; Borsley, 2010; Crysmann, 2012b; Taghvaipour, 2005), using a single feature for both types of dependencies, rather than separate features, as proposed by Vaillette (2001a,b). Yet, authors disagree as to where exactly in the grammar the resumptive function of pronominals should be established: while Crysmann (2012b, 2015) advances an ambiguity approach that has pronominal synsem objects being ambiguous between a resumptive and an ordinary pronoun use, Borsley (2010); Alotaibi and Borsley (2013), by contrast, treat all pronominals, resumptive or not, as ordinary pronouns and effect their resumptive use by means of tailoring the amalgamation principle to potentially include pronominal indices. While their decision provides a straightforward account of McCloskey’s generalisation that resumptives always look like the ordinary pronouns of the language, it fails to capture the difference in semantics between ordinary pronominal and resumptive uses. In this paper, I shall reexamine the evidence from Hausa and propose to synthesise the approaches put forth by Alotaibi and Borsley (2013) and Crysmann (2012b), and propose that the potential for pronominal and resumptive function (including their difference w.r.t. semantics and non-local features) is captured by means of underspecification, yet the decision as to canonical vs. non-canonical use is made at the level of the governing head (Borsley, 2010; Alotaibi and Borsley, 2013). I shall argue that this division of labour is sufficient to derive the correct gap-like semantics for resumptives, maintains standard deterministic amalgamation, and, finally, provides an answer to McCloskey’s generalisation.
The Free Linguistic Environment (FLE) project focuses on the development of an open and free library of natural language processing functions and a grammar engineering platform for Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) and related grammar frameworks. In its present state the code-base of FLE contains basic essential elements for LFG-parsing. It uses finite-state-based morphological analyzers and syntactic unification parsers to generate parse-trees and related functional representations for input sentences based on a grammar. It can process a variety of grammar formalisms, which can be used independently or serve as backbones for the LFG parser. Among the supported formalisms are Context-free Grammars (CFG), Probabilistic Contextfree Grammars (PCFG), and all formal grammar components of the XLEgrammar formalism. The current implementation of the LFG-parser includes the possibility to use a PCFG backbone to model probabilistic c-structures. It also includes f-structure representations that allow for the specification or calculation of probabilities for complete f-structure representations, as well as for sub-paths in f-structure trees. Given these design features, FLE enables various forms of probabilistic modeling of c-structures and f-structures for input or output sentences that go beyond the capabilities of other technologies based on the LFG framework.
We discuss agreeing adverbs in Urdu, Sindhi and Punjabi. We adduce crosslinguistic evidence that is based mainly on similar patterns in Romance and posit that there is a close connection between resultatives and so-called pseudo-resultatives, which the agreeing adverbs appear to instantiate. We propose a diachronic relationship by which the originally predicative part of a resultative is reinterpreted as an adjunct that modifies the overall event predication, not just the result.
In Libyan Arabic, the preposition fi 'in' has developed into a marker of continuous or habitual aspect. While structurally remaining a preposition which marks the objects of the non-tensed forms of dynamic transitive verbs, it serves to attribute an aspectual interpretation to the clause as a whole. We argue that this aspectual object marking is naturally modeled by an inside-out functional designator, and provide arguments that the aspectual value contributed by aspectual fi is best treated as an f-structure feature.
Dargwa languages have two types of agreement at clause level: gender and person agreement. In the general case, person agreement is hierarchical (speech act participants prefered to 3rd persons), while gender agreement is with the absolutive (S/P) argument. Two exceptions to this pattern have been observed in some dialects: first, some auxiliary verbs have a gender agreement slot which can be controlled by both ergative and absolutive arguments; second, adverbials agreeing in gender can agree with either ergative or absolutive if they are located at clause edges. A proposed explanation of this behaviour is through effectively splitting each clause into two layers, with the top layer having its own zero absolutive position, coreferential with either the subject or the direct object of the lower layer. In this way, the general rule that gender agreement is with the absolutive can be preserved. In this paper, I argue that the data of Ashti Dargwa do not support the Backward Control theory. Peripheral adverb agreement and auxiliary gender agreement are independent phenomena, while auxiliary agreement can be explained by splitting the 3rd person based on topicality, as in proximateobviative systems. This allows us to preserve the conventional account of clause structure while framing the data of Dargwa in a wider typological context.
Languages differ in how they employ finite and non-finite clauses. Welsh finite and non-finite clauses have a similar distribution to their counterparts in English. However, it doesn’t look like this because Welsh has certain finite clauses which look rather like non-finite clauses. We examine two types of pseudo-non-finite clauses: finite "bod" clauses and finite "i" clauses. We argue that both cases are instances of a mismatch between syntax and morphology, while the latter only involves periphrasis. We provide an HPSG analysis capturing similarities and differences between these two constructions and canonical finite and nonfinite clauses.
This paper discusses relative clauses (RCs) in Marori, showing that this language unusually has almost all of relative clause types, from headed/headless, externally/internally headed, single-/double-headed, to pre-/post-head, to attached/detached RCs. Special attention is given to internally headed relative clauses (IHRC). It is argued that Marori IHRCs are of the restrictive or non-maximalising type, which accounts for certain intriguing properties, such as their indefiniteness constraints and the possibility for RC stacking.
In this paper we investigate the status of control constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA has several embedded clause constructions, some of which resemble control in English (and other languages). However, these constructions exhibit some notable differences. Chief among them is the fact that the embedded verb carries agreement features that can indicate both coreference and disjoint reference between a matrix argument and the understood subject of the complement clause. We conducted a thorough corpus-based investigation of such constructions, with a special focus on a search for obligatory control in the language. We show that our findings contradict accepted generalizations (and predictions) proposed by state-of-the-art theories of control, as they indicate that there are no "real" control predicates in MSA. We outline an HPSG analysis that accounts for the MSA data.
The A-NOT-A structure is one way to express polar questions in Mandarin Chinese. The present study provides a constraint-based analysis of A-NOT-A questions in Mandarin Chinese within the framework of HPSG (Pollard & Sag, 1994) and MRS (Copestake et al., 2005). We propose two possible approaches to analysing the A-NOT-A structure — a morphological/lexical approach as well as a syntactic approach — and illustrate their implementation, as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses.
This paper provides an analysis of the Cantonese post-verbal particle "can1". We argue that can1 is a resultative particle encoding the meaning of 'a small degree'. It is only compatible with (i) verbs that entail a specific resulted state of the theme argument and (ii) verbs that encode a potential change of the theme argument (Beavers, 2011, 2013). Assuming that change of state verbs involve a property scale (Hay et al., 1999), we propose that "can1" makes the property scale bounded by providing an end-point. This endpoint, however, is not precise. It consists of a range of values on the lower end of the scale.
This paper addresses some Japanese constructions where the predicate heading a subordinate clause – specifically, a suspensive form of IU 'say', OMOU 'think' or SURU 'do' – appears to be elided. I will discuss that these elliptic constructions are subject to certain syntactic and interpretative constraints which do not apply to their non-elliptic counterparts, and develop an SBCG-analysis that aims to model these constraints without postulating a covert element in the place of the missing verb.
A singular countable noun in English normally needs a determiner and they should agree in number. However, there is a type of noun phrase, such as 'these sort of skills', which does not conform to this generalisation. As a singular countable common noun, the noun 'sort' requires a determiner, but there is an agreement mismat ch here: 'sort' is singular but the determiner is plural. Rather, the determiner agrees with the NP after the preposition 'of'. There are several po ssible analyses that might be proposed, but the best analysis is the one in which 'sort' and the preposition 'of' are 'functors', non-heads selecting heads.
This paper deals with the encoding of affectedness in Abui, a Papuan language of Indonesia. Abui is a head-marking language of the rare type where the verbs are marked for their undergoer arguments (So, O) formally split into several subtypes. This marking has been previously analyzed as a type of semantic alignment sensitive among others to affectedness. Affectedness is understood here as a scalar property delimiting the predicate (following Tenny 1987 and Beavers 2011). The paper explores the structure of the affectedness scale for Abui, comparing the functions and meaning of three types of person prefix paradigms. We show that verbs with similar meaning, encoding the same type of change (in Beavers’ terms) can differ in their entailments. We also show that there may be additional dimensions in which affectedness can be measured, such as affected agents, and that the interpretation of the degree on the affectedness scale interacts with instigator’s (source of force) status on the referential hierarchy. While human agents in some cases allow lower degrees of affectedness, the inanimate forces select the maximal degree reading. We conclude, that despite a considerable amount of fluidity of marking (Fedden et al. 2013, 2014), the shifts in degree of affectedness can be predicted as lowering of the degree stipulated for the predicate.
Function words like prepositions, adverbs, particles, and complementizers may be assigned more than one category due to the different functions they can have. In this paper I present an approach that assumes unique lexical entries for words that are assigned more than one category. I will focus on prepositions and how they may function as heads of modifying PPs, selected prepositions, or as particles.
Multi-word expressions (MWEs) are challenging for grammatical theories and grammar development since they blur the traditional distinction between the lexicon and the grammar, and vary in the degree of idiosyncrasy with respect to their semantic, syntactic, and morphological behavior. Nevertheless, the need to incorporate MWEs into grammars is unquestionable, especially in light of estimates claiming that MWEs account for approximately half of the entries in the lexicon. In this study we focus on verbal MWEs in Modern Hebrew: we consider different types of this class of MWEs, and propose an analysis in the framework of HPSG. Moreover, we incorporate this analysis into HeGram, a deep linguistic processing grammar of Modern Hebrew.
This paper describes some of our attempts in extending Zhong, a Chinese HPSG shared-grammar. New analyses for two Chinese specific phenomena, reduplication and the SUO-DE structure, are introduced. The analysis of reduplication uses lexical rules to capture both the syntactic and semantic properties (amplification in adjectives and diminishing in verbs). Words showing non-productive reduplication are entered in the lexicon, and the semantic relations will be captured in an external resource (the Chinese Open Wordnet). The SUO-DE structure constrains the meanings of relative clauses to a gapped-object interpretation.
Standard accounts of HPSG assume a distinction between morphology and syntax. However, despite decades of research, no cross-linguistically valid definition of 'word' has emerged (Haspelmath, 2010), suggesting that no sharp distinction is justified. Under such a view, the basic units are morphemes, rather than words, but it has been argued this raises problems when analysing phenomena such as zero inflection, syncretism, stem alternations, and extended exponence. We argue that with existing HPSG machinery, a morpheme-based approach can in fact deal with such issues. To illustrate this, we consider Slovene nominal declension and Georgian verb agreement, which have both been used to argue against constructive morpheme-based approaches. We overcome these concerns through use of a type hierarchy, and give a morpheme-based analysis which is simpler than the alternatives. Furthermore, we can recast notions from Word-and-Paradigm morphology, such as 'rule of referral' and 'stem space', in our framework. We conclude that using HPSG as a unified morphosyntactic theory is not only feasible, but also yields fruitful insights.
This paper describes an analysis for possessive idioms in English (e.g. 'I twiddle my thumbs' ''I am idle''). The analysis relies on matching at the semantic level, to allow for syntactic variation. It has been implemented in the English Resource Grammar, and tested by parsing a subset of the British National Corpus. In addition to the syntactic analysis, we have linked the idioms to entries in the Princeton Wordnet, to allow for further lexical semantic analysis.
This paper addresses the issue of phonologically null elements in HPSG by providing an analysis of the construction exemplified by NPs such as 'the rich', 'the beautiful', 'the unemployed', which lack an overt noun. The properties of this construction are explored in detail, and a number of approaches described: in particular approaches which posit a phonologically empty noun, and constructional approaches. It is shown that a constructional approach is empirically superior. This is interesting, theoretically, because empirical differences between such approaches have proved elusive hitherto.
This paper aims to propose an HPSG analysis for simple and construct-state noun phrases in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). To the best of my knowledge, there are no major HPSG analyses of MSA noun phrases (NPs). A parallel phenomenon in Hebrew has been discussed quite extensively in the same framework by Wintner (2000). Most of the discussion will be devoted for the construct-state noun phrase in which the order of the elements within it is NP AP PP. Three different analyses will be outlined within the HPSG framework: the extra complement analysis, the special complement analysis, and the head-adjunct-complement analysis. These analyses will be evaluated and it will be concluded that the last analysis seems to be the best and the most promising approach to Arabic NPs.