Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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The syntax of copular constructions in Mauritian
Get PDFThis paper examines the syntactic behavior of the Mauritian copula in predicative
and extracted sentences. As it is the case in many languages, the Mauritian
copula ete is absent in certain constructions: It only appears in extraction contexts.
Our aim is to show that the postulation of a null copula, which has been proposed
in various analyses, is inadequate for the Mauritian data. The phenomenon, as
it is argued, rather lends itself to a strictly construction-based analysis within the
framework of HPSG and is based on the distribution of weak pronouns and TAM
markers
The role of default constructions in the processing of mismatch: The case of possessive free relatives
Get PDFTownsend and Bever (2001) and Ferreira (2003) argue that simple
templates representing the most commonly used orderings of arguments
within a clause (e.g., NP-V-NP = Agent-Action-Patient) are used early
in sentence comprehension to derive a preliminary interpretation before
a full parse is completed. Sentences which match these templates (e.g.,
active sentences, subject clefts) are understood quickly and accurately,
while sentences which deviate from the templates (e.g. passive sentences,
object clefts) require additional processing to arrive at the correct interpretation.
The present study extends the idea of canonical templates to the domain of noun phrases.
I report on two experiments showing that possessive free relative clauses in English, which
involve a non-canonical ordering of the head noun, are more difficult to understand than
canonically headed noun phrases. I propose two reasons for this finding: (1) possessive free
relatives deviate from the canonical template for interpreting noun phrases; and (2) the formal
cues for interpreting possessive free relatives are relatively subtle. More generally I suggest
that canonical templates help constrain mismatch in language by making certain kinds of mismatches
costly for language users. Finally, I argue that evidence for canonical templates fits best within a
parallel-architecture, constructionist theory of grammar
The Big Mess Construction
Get PDFThere is a construction in English, exemplified by \u27how long a bridge\u27,
which is so irregular that it has been named the Big Mess Construction
(Berman 1974). This paper first sketches its main characteristics
and a treatment of the internal structure of the
noun phrase which serves as a background for the analysis. It
then presents three ways in which the Big Mess Construction
can be analysed; two of them are lexicalist and are shown
to be implausible; the third is constructivist and is argued to be
superior. In a next step, the discussion is extended to
two other types of constructions. The first concerns the
English adnominal reflexives, as in \u27the children themselves\u27,
and is shown to require a constructivist analysis which is similar but not
identical to the one for the Big Mess Construction.
The second concerns the combination of \u27such\u27 and \u27what\u27 with the indefinite
article, as in \u27such a pleasure\u27. In spite of its obvious resemblance
with the Big Mess Construction this combination does not require a
constructivist analysis; instead, it fits the lexicalist mould of most of
the rest of HPSG
On the Russian hybrid coordination construction
Get PDFThis paper discusses a non-constituent coordination construction that occurs
in Russian in which constituents with different syntactic functions
and different thematic roles are conjoined.
These conjuncts are co-arguments of the same head and are subject
to a number of idiosyncrasies.
We consider several alternative analysis of the phenomena, and conclude
that these are unable to account for the full range of the facts. Thus,
even though these conjuncts do not form a semantic unit, there
is evidence that they do form a kind of coordination structure.
The phenomena are challenging for any theory of grammar,
but the syntax-semantics account that we provide involves
minimal changes to standard HPSG architecture
Applying licenser rules to a grammar with continuous constituents
Get PDFLicenser rules have originally been introduced in Müller (1999) as
a part of a grammar based on discontinuous constituents. We propose
licenser rules as a means to avoid underspecified empty elements in
grammars with continuous constituents. We applied them to a verb
movement analysis of the German main clause with right sentence
bracket and to complement extraposition. To reduce the number of
unnecessary hypotheses, we extended the licenser rule concept with a
licenser binding technique. We compared the licenser rule approach to
an approach based on underspecified traces with respect to processing
performance. In our experiment, the use of licenser rules reduced the
parse time by a factor of 13.5
Verb sequencing constraints in Ga: Serial verb constructions and the extended verb complex
Get PDFThe paper examines two verb sequencing constructions in Ga: the Serial
Verb Construction (SVC) and the Extended Verb Complex (EVC). The former
is an instance of a commonly recognized construction, the latter is
typically found in the Volta Basin area of West Africa. EVCs are
sequences of verbs functioning as single verb units relative to the
syntax, but with an internal structure much like syntactic
complementation. Both constructions show agreement of aspect and mood
marking throughout the sequence, but with differences in exponence: in
an SVC all Vs expose such marking, in an EVC only a limited (down to
one) number of verbs, depending on the inflectional category. The paper
presents the basic facts, based on works by Dakubu (2002, 2004, to
appear), and gives an HPSG account of their morphology, syntax and
semantics. The analysis is sustained by a grammar of the phenomena
implemented with the \u27Linguistic Knowledge Builder\u27 (LKB), an
engineering platform for natural language processing
English prepositional passive constructions
Get PDFAn empirical overview of the properties of English prepositional
passives is presented, followed by a discussion of formal approaches
to the analysis of the various types of prepositional passives in
HPSG. While a lexical treatment is available, the significant number
of technical and conceptual difficulties encountered point to an
alternative approach relying on constructional constraints. The
constructional approach is argued to be the best option for
prepositional passives involving adjunct PPs, and this analysis can be
extended to create a hierarchy of constructions accommodating all
types of prepositional passives in English, and the ordinary NP
passive
Complex topic-comment structures in HPSG
Get PDFBased on Krifka (1992) and de Kuthy (2000), this paper develops an
architecture for complex topic-comment structures in HPSG and applies it to
predicate fronting in English with the goal of capturing the insights of Ward
(1988) on this construction. We argue that predicate fronting is a distributed
constructional form consisting of an auxiliary occurring in a predicate preposing
phrase. The use of predicate preposing is a function of a combination of
simultaneous constraints on its theme structure, its background-focus distribution,
and its presuppositional structure. It is shown that these constraints
can be made explicit within the HPSG architecture developed here
Using an HPSG grammar for the generation of prosody
Get PDFIn this paper, we report on an experiment showing how
the introduction of prosodic information from detailed syntactic
structures into synthetic speech leads to better disambiguation of
structurally ambiguous sentences. Using modifier attachment (MA)
ambiguities and subject/object fronting (OF) in German as test cases,
we show that prosody which is automatically generated from deep
syntactic information provided by an HPSG generator can lead to
considerable disambiguation effects, and can even override a strong
semantics-driven bias. The architecture used in the experiment,
consisting of the LKB generator running a large-scale grammar for
German, a syntax-prosody interface module, and the speech synthesis
system MARY is shown to be a valuable platform for testing hypotheses
in intonation studies
A semantic interpretation of modality in counterfactual conditionals
Get PDFThis paper provides a background on the role of world knowledge in disambiguating modals and
proposes treating the disambiguation of counterfactuals as a slightly more tractable sub-case of the
general problem. Using a model theoretic possible worlds approach, counterfactuals are disambiguated
with respect to a world of evaluation resembling classic Formal Semantic treatments (e.g., Kratzer
1977, 1981, 1989; Lewis 1973; Veltman 2005). The world, which provides a context of evaluation, is
located through the interaction of the antecedent and consequent propositions with world knowledge
axioms. This approach to modal disambiguation provides a connection between a grammar and the type
of inferences typically handled in Knowledge Representation Systems (e.g., Hobbs et al. 1990) in a
limited domain. The model theoretic semantics are linked with typed feature structures in an HPSG
syntax (Pollard and Sag 1994). This grammar is implemented in TRALE, Penn\u27s (2004) Prolog-based
framework for typed feature structure grammar development. The compositional semantics in TRALE is
specified in Penn and Richters\u27 (2004, 2005) Constraint Language for Lexical Resource Semantics
(CLLRS). This semantic component provides a semantic parse in which heads and arguments are combined
systematically and the scope of negation or quantification can be accurately reflected. In the case
of counterfactuals, the CLLRS semantic parse is passed to a model-theoretic interpreter. The mapping
between the CLLRS semantic parse and the well-formed formulas of the model is defined by checking
the parseability of the formula in the compositional semantics. Sets of possible worlds interact
with constraints on world knowledge and constraints defining counterfactual validity. The truth
value for a counterfactual is returned to the grammar relative to a context of evaluation. The
results of counterfactual evaluation are returned in a form consistent with the grammar\u27s internal
compositional semantics. By the method described above, the interpreter provides a grammar-external
component in which inferences involving world knowledge have the potential to be more efficiently
evaluated. Through the development of model-checking techniques, for instance, it could be shown
whether or not well-formed formulas and constraints hold in larger models and move towards capturing
more fine-grained modal inferences in a larger domain