Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
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Hybrid agreement as a conflict resolution strategy
Get PDFSituations in which conflicting constraints clash can potentially provide
linguists with insights into the architecture of grammar. This paper deals with
such a case. When predicative modifiers of morphologically rich languages head
relative clauses, they are involved in two, sometimes conflicting, agreement
relationships. Different languages adopt different strategies in order to
resolve situations of conflicting constraints. This paper focuses on Standard
Arabic and the hybrid agreement strategy which it employs. It argues that the
HPSG theory of agreement, which distinguishes between morphosyntactic and
semantic agreement, constitutes an appropriate framework for accounting for the
phenomenon. In addition, it shows that contrary to claims made by Doron and
Reintges (2005), a non-derivational framework such as HPSG is adequate for
accounting for this non-trivial agreement pattern. Moreover, with a
constructional approach, whereby constraints can target syntactic structures
above the lexical level, better empirical coverage is achieved
Number agreement in Russian predicates
Get PDFRussian shows the mixed agreement with the polite pronoun vy and pluralia
tantum nouns, both of which have plural number in form but either singular
or plural number in meaning. Two different forms of adjectives – short form
and long form – agree in different number with those number mismatch
nominals.
I adopted the idea of Siegel (1976) etc. that when a long-form adjective
appears in the predicate position, there is always a null head that it
modifies, with the HPSG\u27s agreement theory of Wechsler & Zlatic (2003). I
propose that all predicates – verbs, SF and LF adjectives – except
predicate nominals show CONCORD agreement. LF adjectives show CONC
agreement with the null anaphor \u27one\u27. The different number values of LF
adjectives results from index agreement between the null anaphor and the
subject of the sentence
Control, raising and case: From the perspective of passives
Get PDFSince Pollard and Sag (1994) it has been assumed that raising involves full
structure sharing, whereas a control verb merely shares the content of one of
the lower verb\u27s arguments. This has been considered a property of the
phenomena, despite the fact that Pollard and Sag (1994) present this syntactic
difference as a hypothesis confirmed for Icelandic only. In this paper we
discuss the difference between raising and control from the perspective of
Dutch and German passives. It has already been shown by Van Noord and Kordoni
(2005) that the secondary object passives in these languages are raising
structures, in which the case of the raised argument changes. In this paper we
provide additional evidence for the raising analysis, and we propose a new
analysis, which allows for a uniform account of Dutch and German passives as
raising structures. Przepiorkowski and Rosen (2004) show that control may
exhibit case transmission; the data presented in this paper shows that raising
may not. Therefore, we claim that the distinction between raising and control
is found in theta-role assignment. Syntactically they tend to behave
differently, but they may also behave in the exact same way
Braucht niemanden zu scheren: A survey of NPI licensing in German
Get PDFIn this contribution we will argue that negative polarity is a collocational
phenomenon that does not follow from other properties of the respective lexical
elements. With German data as evidence, we will follow a proposal by van der
Wouden and treat Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) as collocates which must be
licensed by abstract semantic properties of their contexts. Using a collocation
module for HPSG, which has been independently motivated for bound words and
idioms, we will show how to restrict the occurrence of NPIs to legitimate
environments, starting from the negativity hierarchy of licensing environments
by Zwarts. Besides a more fine-grained semantic licenser hierarchy, we will
establish syntactic licensing domains and general collocational restrictions of
NPIs
Unexpressed object alternations of Bulgarian verbs in HPSG
Get PDFThis paper proposes a projectionist account of the unexpressed object
alternations in HPSG. The approach is based on the two-level mapping mechanism,
developed in Manning and Sag (1998) and Sag et al (2003). The proposed analysis
keeps identical argument structure values in the lexeme description of both
valence alternatives, while different surface valence values are related by a
lexical rule.
The HPSG model is applied cross-linguistically to English and Bulgarian. Some
Bulgarian-specific traits, such as the limited alternation range and the
grammaticalized aspect, related to the formal characteristics of the
unexpressed object alternations, are discussed and interpreted within HPSG
Reinforcing negation: The case of Italian
Get PDFWe study the formal and pragmatic properties of the ˋreinforced negation
construction\u27 in Italian, which, unlike the regular negative sentence, contains
both non and an n-word in preverbal position. On the one hand, this
construction relies on a more general construction (positive or negative),
which is pragmatically associated with reprise assertion, on the other hand, it
uses non without the usual constraints attached to it. We propose that this
unfaithful recycling is a pattern for creating a form dedicated to
metalinguistic negation. Our analysis integrates both negative types of
negative forms with their formal and pragmatic properties
Floating affixes in Polish
Get PDFThe morphosyntactic status of Polish past tense agreement markers has
been a matter of considerable debate in recent years
(Spencer 1991, Borsley & Rivero 1994,
Borsley 1999, Bański 2000, Kupść 2000, Kupść & Tseng 2005). Past tense
agreement is expressed by a set of bound forms that either attach to
the past participle, or else float off to a host further to the
left. Despite this relative freedom of attachment, it is often noted
in the literature, e.g., Borsley 1999, Kupść & Tseng 2005, that
the combination of verbal host and agreement marker forms a word-like
unit.
In this paper I will argue that these agreement markers are best
analysed as affixes uniformly introduced on the verb whose
inflectional features they realise. Building on the
linearisation-based theory of morphology-syntax interaction proposed
in Crysmann 2003, syntactic mobility of morphologically
introduced material will be captured by mapping phonological
contributions to multiple lexically introduced domain objects. It will
be shown that this is sufficient to capture the relevant data, and
connect the placement of floating affixes to the general treatment
of Polish word order Kupść 2000
Modeling typological markedness in semantics: The case of negative concord
Get PDFWe will provide an analysis of negative concord in sentential negation
in three languages, French, Polish and German. The focus of the paper
is (1) the typological variation with respect to the realization of
negative concord in the three languages under investigation and (2)
the treatment of lexical exceptions within the different typological
classes. We will propose a unified theory of negative concord which
identifies a common core system and adds language-specific constraints
which can handle typological variation between languages and lexical
exceptions within a given language
The syntax of comparative correlatives in French and Spanish
Get PDFComparative correlative (CC) constructions have received much attention in
recent years. Major issues have been whether they involve special constructions
and whether they have symmetric or asymmetric structures. Evidence from Romance
suggests that they require special constructions and that they may be either
symmetric or asymmetric. French has a single construction which is asymmetric
for some speakers and symmetric for others. Spanish has two distinct
constructions, one asymmetric and the other symmetric with quite different
properties. The facts can be accommodated in a straightforward way within
construction-based HPSG
Noun ellipsis without empty categories
Get PDFIn this paper, we present an analysis of noun phrases with elided
nouns that dispenses with the positing of empty categories and
preserves the NP structure assumed for NPs with overt nouns, modulo
the absence of the head noun. On a par with existing traceless analyses of
long distance dependencies, this is proposed as a further step
towards a more lean theory of grammar, without phonetically null items