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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.
Our analysis of pseudopartitives and measure phrases draws on the idea of 'of' as a copula in a pseudopartitive. The copular analysis allows us to avoid the complications caused by treating either the numeral-noun combination before the of-phrase or the of-object as the head of a pseudopartitive on agreement, and hence to account for all the agreement patterns without creating any extra rule. We also outline how we can extend our analysis to handle measure phrases that do not co-occur with of-phrases by treating these measure phrases as anaphoric, an analysis that can adapt to the anaphoric constructions in classifier languages. Such an analysis does not only come closer to the intuition of native speakers but also have an appeal from the perspective of the universality of languages.
In Japanese, as in other classifier languages like Chinese and Malay, numerals do not directly quantize nouns, but first combine with a classifier to form a measure phrase (MP; cf. Aikhenvald 2000). From the perspective of constraint-based approaches to syntax/semantics, the mutual selective restriction between classifiers and nouns can be stated in terms of information-sharing and featural identity, to some extent parallel to the treatment of gender/number agreement (between determiner and noun, for instance) (cf. Pollard and Sag 1994; Kathol 1999). There are, however, data that challenge this line of approach to noun-classifier matching. We demonstrate in this paper that it is possible that a single noun is associated with different types of classifier, and show why they are problematic for unification-based approaches, similar to the situation with case syncretism in European languages (Ingria 1990 and others). Later in the paper, we argue that information-sharing between noun, predicate and classifier is not completely transitive, and present a formal analysis which models multiple selectional requirements with sets.
In this paper we present an analysis of English measure noun phrases. Measure noun phrases exhibit both distributional idiosyncrasy, in that they appear in positions normally filled by degree adverbs: "a ten inch long string"; and agreement discord: "ten inches is enough", "it is ten inch/*inches long". The analysis introduces one idiosyncratic construction, the Measure Phrase Rule, which links together syntax and inflectional morphology. Combined with existing rules, in particular the Noun-noun Compound Rule, the new rule accounts for the both the distributional and agreement idiosyncrasies. The rule has been implemented and tested in the ERG, a broad-coverage grammar of English. Our analysis supports the position that broad-coverage grammars will necessarily contain both highly schematic and highly idiosyncratic rules.
As the name of the framework suggests, one of the driving forces behind traditional HPSG analyses is the notion of head. With the exception of a few non-headed constructions (i.e., mostly coordination), constructions are typically seen as being headed by a particular word or phrase with the nonhead constituting a complement, specifier or adjunct. The head determines the internal composition of a phrase and is responsible for its external distribution. Moreover, syntactic headedness, as determined by morphosyntactic criteria, is typically assumed to coincide with semantic headness. In the case of NPs, for instance, this means that the semantic contribution (including the index) of the entire phrase is provided by the element that is the head by morphosyntactic criteria (typically the noun).
In this paper, we intend to challenge this view of heads on the basis of two constructions from English. In both instances, we will argue that the constituents that are responsible for the internal combinatorial make-up of the phrase do not constitute heads because they fail both to determine the external distribution of the phrase and to contribute the semantic index of the projected phrase. At the same time, however, we will show that it is possible to view these cases not as random departures from more well-behaved headed constructions, but instead as particular instantiations of more general construction types which do not impose strict conditions on external headedness.
Proportional determiner quantifiers in German allow interpretations that violate the conservativity universal of Keenan and Stavi (1986). I argue for an analysis that distinguishes between surface syntax and the logical form of sentences. I show that in surface syntax, German non-conservative quantifiers are determiners that form a constituent with a noun phrase and share case and agreement properties with the noun phrase. But I propose that at logical form the non-conservative determiners undergo an adverbialization movement and are interpreted by a mechanism that generalizes focus-a ected quantification of Herburger (2000). This result refines the understanding of conservativity as a constraint on interpretation.
This paper discusses a semantic analysis of three syntactic types of English each, namely, floated each, binominal each, and prenominal each. It is argued that floated each consists of two parts, a quantifier and an inaudible element which functions as its restrictor, which together form a tripartite quantificational structure when they compose with the predicate. Binominal each and an associated NP such as two topics (which is generally called the 'distributive share') are syntactically analyzed as forming a subject-predicate relation within a DP in which the NP undergoes so-called 'predicate inversion'. Semantically, binominal each is analyzed as having the same semantic value as floated each, while prenominal each is shown to have a different logical type from floated and binominal each. As can be seen from analogous constructions in some Romance languages, it does not lexically contain its restrictor.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der nominalen Katetorie MASS/COUNT im Bairischen. Die "traditionellen" Distinktionskriterien der sog. MASS/COUNT-Kategorie werden mitsamt der mit ihnen verbundenen Probleme dargestellt, und anhand einer empirischen Untersuchung am Bairischen die Schwierigkeiten ihrer Anwendbarkeit verdeutlicht. Bei der phänomenologischen Beschreibung der Verhältnisse im Bairischen wird auf die Begrifflichkeit eines Ansatzes aus dem Bereich der "Lexikalischen Typologie" zurückgegriffen, der die semantischen Dimensionen auseinanderdividiert, die m Zusammenhang mit der MASS/COUNT-Kategorisierung eine Rolle spielen (vgl. Behrens 1995, Behrens/Sasse 1998).