Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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Two types of NP preposing in French
Get PDFWe contrast two types of sentences with a preposed NP in French in a construction
based HPSG grammar. They differ with respect to different grammatical aspects
(syntax, semantics, pragmatics and phonology), which cluster uniquely into
constructions. Both are colloquial, a reason why they have been recognized only
recently (see Zribi-Hertz 1986, 1996, Sabio 1995, 2006). Accordingly, we rely for
the data on spoken corpora (Corpaix, CFRP) as well as on our intuitions. Both
constructions involve a partitioned semantics but this mode of composition is
associated with different effects. One construction is characterized semantically: the
preposed NP is the theme of a categorical proposition. The other construction is
characterized pragmatically: it is associated with an independent declarative clause, a
typical use of which is to signal a break in the interaction
Towards a unified account of adjuncts
Get PDFWe present an analysis of adjuncts which, while based on the
traditional binary adjunction schema, accommodates the phenomena that
motivate the alternative Adjunct-as-Complement approach, such as
adjunct extraction and case marking. The key idea is to enable the
syntactic head (modifiee) to select for its modifier (adjunct) via the
new valence feature dedicated for adjuncts, while leaving its values
underspecified. Thus the selectional property of the modifiee
percolates as well as that of the modifier, dispensing with the need
to endow adjuncts a complement-like status
Automatic construction of Korean verbal type hierarchy using Treebank
Get PDFThe lexical information of verbal lexemes, such as verbs and adjectives, plays an important role in
syntactic parsing, because the structure of a sentence mainly hinges on the type of verbal lexemes.
The question we address in this research is how to acquire the argument structure (henceforth
ARG-ST) of verbal lexemes in Korean. It is well known that manual build-up of type hierarchy
usually cost too much time and resources, so an alternative method, namely automatic collection of
relevant information is much more preferred. This paper proposes a procedure to automatically
collect ARG-ST of Korean verbal lexemes from a Korean Treebank. Specifically, the system we develop
in this paper first extracts lexical information of ARG-ST of verbal lexemes from a 0.8 million
graphic word Korean Treebank in an unsupervised way, checks the hierarchical relationship among
them, and builds up the type hierarchy automatically. The result is written in an HPSG-style
annotation, thus making it possible to readily implement the result in an HPSG-based parser for
Korean. Finally, the result is evaluated with reference to two Korean dictionaries and also with
respect to a manually constructed type hierarchy
Non-restrictive relative clauses, ellipsis and anaphora
Get PDFNon-restrictive relative clauses (NRRCs) can modify constituents which undergo
ˋpragmatic enrichment\u27 when they appear in answers to questions. For example,
in an interchange like: ˋA: What did Jo think? B: That you should say nothing,
which is surprising.\u27 What B says is surprising is that ˋJo thinks ...\u27 On the
face of it, this might seem problematic for approaches to NRRCs which assume
ˋsyntactic integration\u27 and to support an ˋorphan\u27 analysis, where NRRCs are
combined with purely conceptual representations. In this paper we examine a
range of elliptical and anaphoric phenomena, and show that this conclusion is
misplaced. In fact, the phenomena argue strongly in favour of a syntactically
integrated analysis
Verb form alternations in Mauritian
Get PDFThis paper presents a constraint-based account of verb form alternations (Short and Long Forms)
in Mauritian which, basically, is syntactically driven: Short Forms appear with Canonical
complements while Long Forms are expected with no realized complements. However, in
specific contexts, Long Forms are unexpectedly authorized in declaratives with canonical
complements and expresses Verum Focus
Apparent non-constituent coordination in Japanese
Get PDFCoordination in Japanese poses various puzzles which defy the standard notion of syntactic
category. On the one hand, one can conjoin structures which one usually would not expect to form any
constituent, and on the other hand, there are various conjunction particles that are sensitive to
the kind of conjuncts that they combine with. In this paper we argue against abandoning the usual
notion of constituency, and redefining the entire grammar of Japanese. We provide a novel
construction-based account of the data in which the phenomena result from the interaction of the
coordination construction, ellipsis, and allomorphy of the conjunction particle
Pseudocoordination in Danish
Get PDFIn this paper we propose an analysis of Danish pseudocoordination constructions. The analysis is
based on a hybrid phrase hierarchy where phrase types are assumed to be subtypes of types that cut
across the traditional division of phrasal types, allowing the phrase type of pseudocoordinations to
be a subtype of both coordinate phrases and headed phrases, and consequently inherit properties from
both types. The analysis is linearization-based. We further develop a set of constraints on the
phrasal types in the hierarchy.
The hybrid phrase hierarchy and the set of constraints on the various types in the hierarchy explain
why, on the one hand, pseudocoordinations contain conjunctions and the conjuncts must have the same
form and tense, and on the other, have a fixed order, allow extraction out of the second conjunct,
do not allow overt subjects in the second conjunct and allow transitive verbs to appear in
there-constructions
Extending partial pro-drop in Modern Hebrew: A comprehensive analysis
Get PDFModern Hebrew is considered to be a \u27partial pro-drop language\u27. Traditionally, the distinction
between cases where pro-drop is licensed and those in which it is prohibited, was based on the
person and tense features of the verb: 1st and 2nd person pronominal subjects may be omitted in
past and future tense. This generalization, however, was found to be false in a number of papers,
each discussing a subset of the data. Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, dropped 3rd person
pronouns subjects do occur in the language in particular contexts.
Identifying these contexts by way of a corpus-based survey is the initial step taken in this study.
Subsequently, a careful syntactic analysis of the data reveals broad generalizations which have not
been made to date. Thus, what was initially assumed to be a uniform phenomenon of 3rd person
pro-drop turns out to be manifested in three distinct types of constructions. Finally, the proposed
HPSG-based analysis incorporates insights concerning locality, correlations between finite and non-finite
control, non-canonical elements, and binding
NPI licensing, intervention and discourse representation structures in HPSG
Get PDFNegative Polarity Items (NPI) are expressions such as English \u27ever\u27
and \u27lift a finger\u27 that only occur in sentences that are somehow
negative. NPIs have puzzled linguists working in syntax,
semantics and pragmatics, but no final conclusion as to which module
of the grammar should be responsible for the licensing has been
reached. Within HPSG interest in NPI has developed only relatively
recently and is mainly inspired by the entailment-based approach of
Ladusaw 1980 and Zwarts 1997. Since HPSG\u27s CONTENT value is a
semantic representation, the integration of such a denotational theory
cannot be done directly. Adopting Discourse Representation Theory
(DRT, Kamp and Reyle 1993, von Genabith et al. 2004) I show that it is
possible to formulate a theory of NPI licensing that uses purely
representational notions. In contrast to most other frameworks in
semantics, DRT attributes theoretical significance to the
representation of meaning, i.e. to a logical form, and not only to
the denotation itself. This makes DRT particularly well-suited to my
purpose
A description of Chinese NPs using Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Get PDFThis paper aims at making a general description of Chinese NPs using Head-Driven Phrase Structure
Grammar. The paper introduces the basic and complex structures of Chinese NPs and then shed light on
the noun-classifier matching problem when implemented in HPSG. To solve this problem, the paper
tries to establish a basic grammar of Chinese NPs in the framework of HPSG, which is implemented in
the LKB system. The implementation shows, although the matching problem between noun and classifier
can be described in HPSG, especially by the MRS, it is still difficult to efficiently represent the
semantic constrains in the LKB system