Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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Lexical relatedness and the lexical entry: A formal unification
Get PDFBased on the notion of a lexicon with default inheritance, I address the problem of how to provide a
template for lexical representations that allows us to capture the relatedness between inflected
word forms and canonically derived lexemes within a broadly realizational-inferential model of
morphology. To achieve this we need to be able to represent a whole host of intermediate types of
lexical relatedness that are much less frequently discussed in the literature. These include
transpositions such as deverbal participles, in which a word\u27s morphosyntactic class changes
(e.g. verb ⇒ adjective) but no semantic predicate is added to the semantic representation and the
derived word remains, in an important sense, a "form" of the base lexeme (e.g. the \u27present
participle form of the verb\u27). I propose a model in which morphological properties are inherited by
default from syntactic properties and syntactic properties are inherited from semantic properties,
such as ontological category (the Default Cascade). Relatedness is defined in terms of a Generalized
Paradigm Function (perhaps in reality a relation), a generalization of the Paradigm Function of
Paradigm Function Morphology (Stump 2001). The GPF has four components which deliver respectively
specifications of a morphological form, syntactic properties, semantic representation and a lexemic
index (LI) unique to each individuated lexeme in the lexicon. In principle, therefore, the same
function delivers derived lexemes as inflected forms. In order to ensure that a newly derived lexeme
of a distinct word class can be inflected I assume two additional principles. First, I assume an
Inflectional Specifiability Principle, which states that the form component of the GPF (which
defines inflected word forms of a lexeme) is dependent on the specification of the lexeme\u27s
morpholexical signature, a declaration of the properties that the lexeme is obliged to inflect for
(defined by default on the basis of morpholexical class). I then propose a Category Erasure
Principle, which states that \u27lower\u27 attributes are erased when the GPF introduces a non-trivial
change to a \u27higher\u27 attribute (e.g. a change to the semantic representation entails erasure of
syntactic and morphological information). The required information is then provided by the Default
Cascade, unless overridden by specific declarations in the GPF. I show how this model can account
for a variety of intermediate types of relatedness which cannot easily be treated as either
inflection or derivation, and conclude with a detailed illustration of how the system applies to a
particularly interesting type of transposition in the Samoyedic language Sel\u27kup, in which a noun is
transposed to a similitudinal adjective whose form is in paradigmatic opposition to case-marked noun
forms, and which is therefore a kind of inflection
Inflectional defaults and principal parts: An empirical investigation
Get PDFWe describe an empirical method to explore and contrast the roles of default and principal part
information in the differentiation of inflectional classes. We use an unsupervised machine learning
method to classify Russian nouns into inflectional classes, first with full paradigm information,
and then with particular types of information removed. When we remove default information, shared
across classes, we expect there to be little effect on the classification. In contrast when we
remove principal part information we expect there to be a more detrimental effect on classification
performance. Our data set consists of paradigm listings of the 80 most frequent Russian nouns,
generated from a formal theory which allows us to distinguish default and principal part
information. Our results show that removal of forms classified as principal parts has a more
detrimental effect on the classification than removal of default information. However, we also find
that there are differences within the defaults and principal parts, and we suggest that these may in
part be attributable to stress patterns
Does chain hybridization in Irish support movement-based approaches to long-distance dependencies?
Get PDFHuybregts (2009) makes the claim that hybrid A\u27-chains in Irish favor
derivational theories of syntax over representational ones such as HPSG. In
this paper, we subject this assertion to closer scrutiny. Based on a new technical proposal, we will reach the conclusion that, in principle, both derivational
and representational accounts can accomodate hybrid dependencies. Thus, no
argument against either approach can be made on the basis of the Irish data,
disconfirming Huybregts\u27s (2009) claim
Deriving superficial ergativity in Nias
Get PDFIn this paper, I discuss the case and agreement system of Nias, a
language that has been described as a marked-absolutive system by
various authors (Donohue and Brown, 1999; Corbett, 2006; Cysouw, 2005;
Handschuh, 2008; Wichmann, 2005). I shall argue in particular that the
ergativity of this language is highly superficial in nature, showing
that hypothesised marked-absolutive arguments fail to display typical
subject properties. Extending the linking theory of ergativity by
Manning (1994) and Manning and Sag (1999), which assumes an inverse
linking pattern for transitive, I shall suggest that Nias
transitives are best analysed as a Nominative-Accusative system,
attributing the ergative split in Nias to an inverse linking of
intransitives instead. Under this perspective, case, agreement, and word
order will receive a natural explanation
Inflectional morphology in Turkish VP coordination
Get PDFWe address three properties of Turkish morphology and
VP coordination: the identification of tense and aspect values
across conjuncts, the optional omission of affixes on non-final
conjuncts coordinated with the word ve and the obligatory
sharing of scopal modals across conjuncts in coordination structures
with the affix -ip. For the modals in an -ip
structure, we propose an analysis that uses syntactic features to
trigger the application of a construction at the level of the
coordinated VP introducing the scopal predications. Our analysis is
implemented in a small HPSG grammar and tested against datasets
confirming the functionality and consistency of the analysis
A construction-based analysis of verbless relative adjuncts in French and Romanian
Get PDFFrench and Romanian verbless relative adjuncts are incidental adjuncts which
have been described as elliptical relative clauses. We show that this analysis
is not empirically adequate and propose an alternative non-elliptical analysis.
We analyze verbless relative adjuncts as sentential fragments whose head can be
a cluster of phrases. They are marked by a functor phrase which displays
selection properties with respect to the head phrase and makes an essential
contribution to the semantics of the adjunct. The analysis relies on the
interaction of grammatical constraints introduced by various linguistic objects,
as well as on a constructional analysis of verbless relative adjuncts
distinguishing several subtypes
An alternative to the HPSG Raising Principle on the description-level
Get PDFI reconsider the HPSG Raising Principle which is introduced in Pollard & Sag (1994) to constrain the
way in which lexical entries describe the SUBCAT lists of the words they license. On the basis of
whether a complement is assigned a semantic role in a lexical entry or not, this entry may not or
must describe this complement as structure-shared with the unrealised subject of some other
(non-subject) complement. The formal status of this principle is still unclear, as it is formulated
as a \u27meta principle\u27 that does not talk about linguistic objects directly but rather about the
lexical entries that license them. I show that, although its meaning cannot be expressed faithfully
by the usual kind of constraints employed in HPSG, the Raising Principle can nevertheless be
replaced by two such constraints which make largely the same predictions. Most importantly, these
constraints interact with the output values of description-level lexical rules in the style of
Meurers (2001) in a way that makes predictions available that Pollard & Sag (1994) intended the
Raising Principle to make but that it cannot possibly make if description-level lexical rules are
employed
Hindi aspectual complex predicates
Get PDFThis paper discusses ergative case assignment in Hindi and its interaction with aspectual verb
complexes or complex predicate constructions. It is shown that ergative case is assigned by the last
head in the aspectual verb complex and that ergative case on the subject of intransitive verbs
denoting bodily-functions is associated with a counter-to-expectation meaning. It is then shown that
aspect complex predicates in Hindi involve two distinct syntactic structures, which have similar
semantics. While one syntactic structure involves argument composition, the other involves a
head-modifier structure. It is argued that the existence of two structures favor approaches to the
interface between syntax and semantics which do not require a uniform isomorphism between the
semantics and syntax of aspect
Construction-based cumulation and adjunct extraction
Get PDFPrevious HPSG accounts of extraction blur the distinction between
valents and adjuncts by allowing verbs to lexically control the
modifiers that combine with their phrasal projections. However,
assuming that adjuncts are valents runs into various difficulties.
This paper argues that the distinction between complements and
adjuncts can be maintained, and that certain semantic
phenomena that challenge traceless theories of extraction can be seen
as an instance of a more general process. Finally, this paper also
discusses a uniform mechanism for case assignment to valents and
adverbial nominals
How hard a problem would this be to solve?
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the interrelation
of two understudied phenomena of English:
discontinuous modifier phenomenon (so willing to help
out that they called early; more ready for
what was coming than I was) and the complex
pre-determination phenomenon (this delicious a lasagna;
How hard a problem (was it)?). Despite
their independence, they frequently occur
intertwined, as in too heavy {a trunk} (for me)
to lift and so lovely a melody that some
people cried. This paper presents a declarative analysis of
these and related facts that avoids syntactic movement in favor
of monotonic constraint satisfaction. It demonstrates how
an explicit, sign-based, constructional approach to grammatical
structure captures linguistic generalizations, while at the same time
accounting for idiosyncratic facts in this seemingly
complex grammatical domain