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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.