Polyadic quantification in hybrid coordination

The aim of this paper is to provide a syntactico-semantic analysis of hybrid coordination, in which what is coordinated are phrases bearing different grammatical functions and different semantic roles. The proposed account improves on previous HPSG analyses by giving up the assumption that all conjuncts are dependents of the same head and, more importantly, by taking into account the syntax–semantics interface and providing semantic representations. This aspect of the analysis builds on and generalizes previous HPSG work on polyadic quantification.

Negative concord in Romanian as polyadic quantification

In this paper we develop an HPSG syntax-semantics of negative concord in Romanian. We show that n-words in Romanian can best be treated as negative quantifiers which may combine by resumption to form polyadic negative quantifiers. Optionality of resumption explains the existence of simple sentential negation readings alongside double negation readings. We solve the well-known problem of defining general semantic composition rules for translations of natural language expressions in a logical language with polyadic quantifiers by integrating our higher-order logic in Lexical Resource Semantics, whose constraint-based composition mechanisms directly support a systematic syntax-semantics for negative concord with polyadic quantification.