Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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Focus case outside of Austronesian: An analysis of Kolyma Yukaghir
Get PDFCase is traditionally approached as a lexical phenomenon in HPSG. The LinGO Grammar Matrix customization system, an HPSG-based grammar engineering toolkit and also a typological meta-resource, includes several options for case assignment, and one of them, ˋfocus case\u27, assumes that case of the participants in basic clauses is handled via lexical rules rather than lexical entries. This phenomenon was previously only attributed to a group of Austronesian languages, and thus the focus case differed from all other case options in the Matrix which were attested for across language families. Our analysis of Kolyma Yukaghir, a nearly extinct language of North-Eastern Russia, shows that focus case can be successfully used outside of Austronesian family and therefore that the option is more universal than it was previously thought
Accessibility and word order: The case of ditransitive constructions in Persian
Get PDFIn a most recent corpus study on Persian, Faghiri & Samvelian (2014) found a significant effect of relative length in the ordering preferences between the direct and indirect objects in the preverbal domain corresponding to "long-before-short". They furthermore showed that the position of the direct object mainly depends on its degree of determination, and put into question the broadly accepted dual view based solely on differential object marking. In this paper, we provide experimental evidence in support of these corpus findings and further propose a unified account of ordering preferences between the two objects on the basis of conceptual accessibility
The comparative correlative construction in Modern Standard Arabic
Get PDFMuch discussion of the comparative correlative construction exemplified by The more I read, the more I understand has been concerned with how much cross–linguistic variation there is in this area. Culicover and Jackendoff (1999) suggest that there is considerable variation, but Den Dikken (2005) suggests with data from a variety of languages that the variation is quite limited. Modern Standard Arabic has a comparative correlative construction which is quite different from Engish and the other languages that Den Dikken considers, suggesting that there is more variation in this domain than he assumes. However, it is not difficult to provide an analysis of the construction and other related constructions within the HPSG framework
Word order variation in Khoekhoe
Get PDFKhoekhoe, a Central Khoisan language, has been claimed to have a clause-second position and
topological fields similar to German and Dutch. The position in front of the clause-second position
can be occupied by either the matrix verb or a dependent. We argue that monomoraic words are exempt
from the general head-final order of Khoekhoe and suggest that this can give rise to discontinuous
constituents, where second-position clitics intervene within the VP. We show that this idea provides
a simple account of Khoekhoe word order variation and formalize it within a linearization-based HPSG
analysis that has a wider scope than the previous Minimalist analyses of Khoekhoe and that is
compatible with evidence from tonology
Argument inheritance and left periphery in Hungarian infinitival constructions
Get PDFHungarian infinitival constructions have both mono-clausal
and bi-clausal properties at the same time. The arguments of the infinitive behave the same way as
the arguments of the finite verb do, but the non-finite verb has its own left periphery. After
discussing the general description of Hungarian sentence structure and presenting an HPSG analysis
for it – including a description of the connection between word order and scope order in the
Hungarian left periphery – this paper presents an analysis for Hungarian infinitival
constructions. The analysis lexically distinguishes the left peripheral arguments of the infinitive
from its complements, and allows the infinitive and its left peripheral arguments to form
constituents, while the complements of the infinitive are inherited to the finite verb
Nonverbal predicates in Modern Hebrew
Get PDFNonverbal predicates in Modern Hebrew have been the subject of investigation in a number of
studies. However, to our knowledge, none of them was corpus-based. Corpus searches reveal that the
nonverbal constructions which are most commonly addressed in the literature are not the most
commonly used ones. Once a broader range of data is considered additional issues are raised. Our
analysis addresses these issues, unifying the treatment of three types of copular constructions that
we identify in MH. The analysis is implemented as part of a larger-scale grammar, and is extensively
tested
Where is non-active morphology?
Get PDFThis paper shows how certain differences in the nature of Voice systems across languages are responsible
for the behavior of passives, dispositional middles and also regulate the distribution of deponency
Simpler Syntax and explanation
Get PDFSimpler Syntax is an approach to grammar that calls for very restrictive limits on the notion of
\u27grammatical competence\u27. Specifically, it does not account for unacceptability judgments for
sentences that are well-formed if they are fully licensed by the constructions of the language. SS
leads us to seek accounts for such judgments in terms other than grammar per se, e.g., processing
complexity, semantic or pragmatic well-formedness, discourse coherence, etc. I review several
examples that suggest that the line that SS draws between competence on the one hand and performance
and other mechanisms on the other is on the right track. Specifically, it does not account for
unacceptability judgments for sentences that are well-formed if they are fully licensed by the
constructions of the language. SS leads us to seek accounts for such judgments in terms other than
grammar per se, e.g., processing complexity, semantic or pragmatic well-formedness, discourse
coherence, etc. I review several examples that suggest that the line that SS draws between
competence on the one hand and performance and other mechanisms on the other is on the right track
Passive in Danish, English, and German
Get PDFWe show how the variation in the passive in Danish, English, and German can be accounted for. The dimensions in which the three languages differ are
the existence of a morphological passive in Danish
a subject requirement in Danish and English resulting in expletive insertion in impersonal
constructions in Danish and absence of impersonal passives in English
the possibility to promote the secondary object to subject in Danish
The differences are accounted for by differences in the structural/lexical case distinction and by
mapping processes that insert expletives in Danish. The passive in general is accounted for by
a lexical rule that is uniform across languages and hence captures the generalization regarding passive
Information structure constraints and complex NP islands in Chinese
Get PDFThis paper presents an analysis of the complex NP island effects in
Chinese. I follow Ginzburg & Sag (2000)\u27s analysis of in situ
wh-interrogative
construction and propose that feature percolation from the non-head clause
daughter to the head daughter is required for a proper treatment of in
situ wh-relative. A semantic analysis of the idiosyncrasy of
weishenme \u27why\u27 reveals that a definite reading is forced for a
wh-relative when weishenme stays in situ. This requirement causes
feature percolation into relative head to fail. In this way I show that
island effects in Chinese can be independently ruled out in the grammar as
a case of contradiction