Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Not a member yet
468 research outputs found
Sort by
A functional typology of copular "be": Towards an HPSG formalisation
Get PDFAbstract: A functional typology of copular be in Russian allows us to
systematically relate variants of predication with and without copula. The
analysis sketched in this article does not need empty categories; neither does
it have to stipulate categories, category changes or constituents that are not
morphologically signalled. With regard to HPSG formalization, the presented
approach independently motivates the use of features and mechanisms that
are already available in this framework
Metrical phonology in HPSG
Get PDFThis paper proposes a new approach to the prosody-syntax interface in
HPSG. Previous approaches to prosody in HPSG (Klein, 2000; Haji-Abdolhosseini,
2003) represent prosodic information by constructing metrical constituent
structure in the tradition of (Selkirk, 1980; Liberman and Prince, 1977). One
drawback of this approach is that it does not allow for a direct representation
of purely metrical constraints, which are relegated to an unformalized
performance component. By contrast, so called \u27grid only\u27 approaches (Prince,
1983; Selkirk, 1984; Delais-Roussarie, 2000) use a single data structure, a
metrical grid, to encode prosodic constraints resulting from syntax and
constraints of a rhythmic nature.
We first review relevant data from French showing that prosodic constituency
is much less constrained by syntactic structure than is predicted by existing
approaches. In all but very short utterances, many different prosodic groupings
are possible for a given sentence with a determinate information structure, and
rhythmic factors determine a preference ordering on the possible groupings. We
then present an HPSG implementation of the metrical grid, and propose minimal
syntactic constraints on relative prominence, leaving room for noncategorical
rythmic constraints to choose between alternatives. We finish by discussing the
interaction of the metrical grid with the rest of the prosodic grammar
A computational treatment of V-V compounds in Japanese
Get PDFWe examine how a large-scale computational grammar can account for the
complex nature of Japanese verbal compounds. Previous computational
Japanese grammars have tried to avoid the problem by simple solutions
such as enumerating as many verbal compounds in the lexicon as
possible. In contrast, we develop the analysis that is linguistically
adequate and computationally tractable and thus meets the
requirement of a syntactically and semantically precise natural
language processing of Japanese like Bond et al. (2005). Our analysis
distinguishes between two kinds of verbal compounds: syntactic
compounds, which are fully productive; and lexical compounds, which
are of varying productivity
Toward a unified analysis of the scope interpretation of complex predicates in Japanese: Evidence from the light verb construction
Get PDFIn this paper, I first make an observation that there is a certain
parallelism in the scope interpretation possibilities of adverbs and
quantifiers with respect to different types complex predicates in
Japanese, drawing on a comparison of the light verb construction and
the causative construction. I will then argue that previous approaches
to complex predicates in Japanese in the lexicalist tradition
(Matsumoto 1996; Manning et al. 1999) fail to capture this
generalization successfully. Finally, building on a novel approach to
syntax/semantics interface in HPSG by Cipollone (2001), I develop an
analysis of the semantic structure of complex predicates that accounts
for the empirical observation straightforwardly
Georgian reflexives in subject function in special contexts
Get PDFGeorgian is a language allowing reflexives to be marked by ergative.
The subject use of the Georgian reflexive phrase was first
documented with causative verbs by Asatiani (1982). The later works
such as (Amiridze and Everaert, 2000), (Amiridze, 2003), (Amiridze,
2004) discuss the use with object-experiencer verbs and transitive
verbs on non-agentive reading. The present paper offers the first
hand data on subject uses of the Georgian reflexive phrase with
transitive verbs on their agentive reading in special contexts (such
as a twin context, Madame Tussaud context, etc.) which are
problematic for the Binding Theory of Chomsky (1981) as well as for
the Reflexivity Theory of Reinhart and Reuland (1993). The data
could be accounted for within the approach developed in (Reuland,
2001). However, the subject uses of the Georgian reciprocal
ertmanet- leave the issue of subject anaphors open
An HPSG account of closest conjunct agreement in NP coordination in Portuguese
Get PDFThis paper discusses the NP-internal agreement strategies observed in an
empirical (corpus based) study of Portuguese, and proposes an analysis
which is formalized in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure
Grammar (HPSG). The empirical study suggests that what were previously thought to
be rare or non-existent strategies occur with surprising frequency.
Capturing these strategies poses problems for many standard
approaches to agreement. The formalization shows how they can be captured
with a relatively conservative extension of the existing HPSG theory of agreement
Implementing Norwegian reflexives in an HPSG grammar
Get PDFThe paper reviews basic patterns of reflexive binding in Norwegian, and
explores a possible implementation of them in an HPSG grammar using the
LKB platform. Norwegian has two reflexive elements, with distinct
constraints and corresponding \u27anti-binding\u27 effects; they can cooccur
but also occur independently. As over-all strategy for resolving
reflexive binding we use one resembling the \u27slash\u27 procedure for
wh-dependencies. Binding constraints are imposed partly through lexical
specification, partly through phrasal combination rules. Challenges are
noted residing in the possibility for sentences to contain an unbounded
number of reflexives
Reflexives: Escaping exemption via domain reshuffling
Get PDFIn this paper we argue that at least for some languages, when
there are suitable o-commanders of its selectional domain, a
reflexive in the bottom of its obliqueness hierarchy escapes
exemption via a reshuffling of its local binding domain. The
outcome of such reshuffling is that the local domain extends to
include o-commanders of the reflexive in the subcategorization
domain immediately upstairs, that is in the domain whose head
predicator directly subcategorizes the domain headed by the
predicator directly subcategorizing the reflexive
Deriving inflectional irregularity
Get PDFConventional wisdom holds that productive morphology is regular
morphology. Drawing evidence from French, we argue that the description of many
lexeme formation processes is simplified if we hold that a productive rule may
give rise to inflectionally irregular lexemes. We argue that the notion of a
stem space allows for a straightforward description of this phenomenon:
each lexeme comes equipped with a vector of possibly distinct stems, which
serve as bases for inflectional form construction. The stem space is structured
by default relations which encode the regular pattern of inflection; (partial)
irregularities occur when a lexeme specifies a stem space violating the default
relations. Derived irregularity is then the effect of a productive lexeme
formation rule which specifies an irregular stem space for its output
Non-restrictive relative clauses in Construction Based HPSG
Get PDFThis paper presents an account of English non-restrictive (ˋappositive\u27) relative
clauses (NRCs) in the framework of ˋconstruction based\u27 HPSG.
Specifically, it shows how the account of restrictive relative clause
constructions presented in Sag (1997) can be extended to provide an account of the
syntax and semantics of NRCs
and of the main differences between NRCs and restrictive relatives.
The analysis reconciles the semantic intuition that
NRCs behave like independent clauses with their subordinate syntax. A significant
point is that, in contrast with many other approaches, it employs only existing,
independently motivated theoretical apparatus, and requires absolutely no new
structures, features, or types