Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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Sentential specifiers in the Korean clause structure
Get PDFThe Korean double nominative construction exhibits various properties distinguished not only from
ordinary subject-object clauses but also from nominative complement constructions. Particularly, the
second NP, not the initial NP, triggers the honorific agreement with the verb. I argue that the
first NP of the construction is identified as a sentential specifier which exists in addition to the
subject (cf. Major subject in Yoon 2004). The sentential specifier can be justified as the
characteristic of the topic-prominent language in the sense of Li and Thompson (1976). Specifically
I claim that any elements that satisfy the aboutness condition can be the sentential
specifier. Finally, I show that HPSG\u27s valence value and an optional lexical rule provides an
elegant treatment of the construction; SPR list in a sentence level can be utilized for the
sentential specifier (cf. Kim et al. 2007)
An a priori typology of sentential negation from an HPSG perspective
Get PDFIn this paper I explore the logical range of sentential negation types predicted by the theory of
HPSG. I find that typological surveys confirm that attested simple negation strategies neatly line
up with the types of lexical material given by assuming Lexical Integrity and standard Phrase
Structure Grammar dependencies. I then extend the methodology to bipartite negation and derive a
space of predicted sentential negation types. I present details of the analysis for each type and
relevant examples where possible
The direct evidential -te in Korean: Its interaction with person and experiencer predicates
Get PDFThis paper discusses the complex relations among the direct evidential -te, person, and experiencer
predicates in Korean. The questions of the paper are: (i) how the three components are related with
each other in the evidential sentences, and (ii) how the interactions of the three components can be
formally analyzed to correctly license only the well-formed evidential sentences. I show that in
direct evidential construction with a non-private predicate (e.g. pwutulep- ‘soft’), the
asserter/epistemic authority (i.e. the speaker na ‘I’ in declarative or the addressee ne ‘you’ in
question) must be the experiencer of the predicate, but there is no such constraint in direct
evidential construction with a private predicate (e.g. aphu- ‘sick’). I also show that the direct
evidential construction with a non-private predicate is an instance of self-ascription. Then I
propose an analysis of the experiencer predicates and associated lexical rules in the Minimal
Recursion Semantics (MRS) (Copestake, et al., 2005) of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
(Pollard and Sag, 1994; Sag, et al., 2003)
On the semantics of the Japanese infinitive/gerund-clause constructions: Polysemy and temporal constraints
Get PDFThe Japanese infinitive-clause construction (InfCx) and gerund-clause construction (GerCx), which
are the most basic subordination structures (considered as coordination structures by some) in the
language, may convey a wide range of interclausal semantic relations, including ‘temporal sequence’,
‘cause’, and ‘manner’, largely due to pragmatic enrichment. This work addresses the question of what
the core meaning(s) of the two constructions is (are), and demonstrates (i) that the InfCx and GerCx
indicate either that the first-clause eventuality precedes or temporally subsumes the second-clause
eventuality or that the two clauses stand in the rhetorical relation of contrast, and (ii)
that the GerCx has a distinct sense that the InfCx lacks, which gives rise to the ‘resulting state’ interpretation
Non-canonical word order and subject-object asymmetry in Korean case ellipsis
Get PDFThe dispreference for subject case ellipsis in OSV sentences has been analyzed as resulting from a
violation of a structural requirement on the position of bare subject NPs (Ahn and Cho 2006a, 2006b,
2007). In this study, we present evidence from an acceptability rating experiment demonstrating that
OSV sentences containing a case-ellipsed subject exhibit acceptability patterns different from
ungrammatical sentences violating a core syntactic principle on case assignment and that these
sentences are judged acceptable when the subject refers to expected, predictable information in
context. This evidence supports the conclusion that the dispreference for subject case ellipsis in
OSV sentences is due to violations of probabilistic constraints that favor case marking for rare
types of subjects and such violations can be remedied by non-syntactic information
The adverb argument intersection field in a left-branching grammar of Norwegian
Get PDFThis paper presents an account of the position of sentence adverbials
in Norwegian within a left-branching HPSG-like grammar design. The
assumed left-branching structures open for a treatment of Object Shift
in Norwegian as part of a wider phenomenon referred to as the Adverb
Argument Intersection Field. The approach is compared to the standard
P&P analysis of Object Shift and it is shown that the two approaches
make similar predictions regarding basic clause structures with full
NP arguments. However, while one in P&P is forced to assume a
secondary phonological movement in order to account for the position
of unstressed pronoun objects with regard to sentence adverbials, no
extra assumptions need to be made in the proposed account
Arabic relative clauses in HPSG
Get PDFIn HPSG relative clauses have been analyzed in terms of phonologically empty heads in Pollard and
Sag (1994) and in terms of a complex system of phrase types in Sag (1997). Modern Standard Arabic
has a distinction between relative clauses with a definite antecedent, which are introduced by a
special complementizer, and relative clauses with an indefinite antecedent, which are ‘bare’
clauses. Analyses eschewing empty heads and assuming a complex system of phrase types face a number
of problems. An analysis in which relatives with an indefinite antecedent are headed by a
phonologically empty complementizer is more satisfactory. Thus, in the case of Arabic, the approach
of Pollard and Sag (1994) seems preferable to the approach of Sag (1997)
On the agreement between predicative complements and their target
Get PDFPredicative complements canonically show number and/or gender agreement with their target. The most
detailed proposal on how to model it in HPSG is provided in Kathol (1999). This proposal, though,
chiefly deals with the predicative adjectives of the Romance languages, and turns out to be
inappropriate for dealing with predicate nominals. There is an obvious way to repair it, but it
cannot be fitted in the canonical HPSG treatment of clauses with a predicative complement. It can be
fitted, though, in a treatment of such clauses that was proposed in Van Eynde (2009). Adopting that
treatment, the agreement is modeled in terms of a constraint on the lexemes which select a
predicative complement
A hybrid type of ellipsis in Romanian
Get PDFThe paper presents a type of ellipsis similar to stripping and split conjuncts, yet irreducible to
either of them. One aim of the analysis is to document the existence of this distinct ellipsis type
within the class of constructions where the elided constituent is a verb or a verb phrase. It is
argued that the main generative strategies, namely, deletion and null anaphora cannot be applied to
this ellipsis type in order to account for it. Instead, the study shows that an approach which takes
the asymmetry syntax-semantics of this construction as basic is much more successful in explaining
the nature of this type of ellipsis. This alternative approach is the one offered by the HPSG
framework
An HPSG approach to English comparative inversion
Get PDFIt has been analyzed that the word order of English comparative inversion is analogous to that of
other subject-auxiliary inversions in that only a finite auxiliary verb can be followed by the
subject. However, English comparative inversion should be distinguished from other inversions
because the subject can be located between a cluster of auxiliary verbs and the non-auxiliary verb
phrase in English comparative inversion. Existing analyses on subject-auxiliary inversion cannot
account for this special kind of inversion. This paper proposes a new phrase type for English
comparative inversion within the construction-based HPSG. In addition, I suggest that constraints on
properties of lexemes participating in the new phrase type are governed by the construction-based
approach, while the word order of English comparative inversion is determined by rules that the word
order domain approach adopts. Also, it will be shown that these proposals can capture the word order
of nor-inversion, as-inversion, and so-inversion as well as that of comparative inversion