What participles are a mixture of

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Van Eynde
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Mixed Nature

Abstract It is commonly assumed that participles show a mixture of verbal and adjectival properties, but the issue of how this mixed nature can best be captured is anything but settled. Analyses range from the purely adjectival to the purely verbal with various shades in between. This lack of consensus is at least partly due to the fact that participles are used in a variety of ways and that an analysis which fits one of them is not necessarily equally plausible for the other. In an effort to overcome the resulting fragmentation this paper proposes an analysis that covers all uses of the participles, from the adnominal over the predicative to the free adjunct uses, including also the nominalized ones. To keep it feasible we focus on one language, namely Dutch. With the help of a treebank we first identify the uses of the Dutch participles and describe their properties in informal terms. In a second step we provide an analysis in terms of the notation of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. A key property of the analysis is the differentiation between core uses and grammaticalized uses. The treatment of the latter is influenced by insights from Grammaticalization Theory.

Raising, inversion and agreement in modern Hebrew

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-179
Author(s):  
NURIT MELNIK
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Long Distance Agreement ◽  
Subject Raising

This paper focuses on the interaction between raising, subject–verb inversion and agreement in Modern Hebrew. It identifies, alongside ‘standard’ (i.e., English-like) subject-to-subject raising, two additional patterns where the embedded subject appears post-verbally. In one, the raising predicate exhibits long-distance agreement with the embedded subject, while in the other, a colloquial variant, it is marked with impersonal (3sm) agreement. The choice between the three raising constructions in the language is shown to be solely dependent on properties of the embedded clause. The data are discussed and analyzed against a background of typological and theoretical work on raising. The analysis, cast in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), builds on research on raising, selectional locality, agreement, subjecthood and information structure, as well as verb-initial constructions in Modern Hebrew.

Sign-Based Construction Grammar: A guided tour

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-217
Author(s):  
FRANK VAN EYNDE
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
The Other ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Diachronic Syntax ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Guided Tour ◽  
Further Development

Sign-Based Construction Grammar (sbcg) is, on the one hand, a formalized version of Berkeley Construction Grammar (bcg), and, on the other hand, a further development of constructionist Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (hpsg). The volume edited by Hans Boas and Ivan Sag is the first book length presentation of the framework. Its centerpiece is a 130-page synopsis of the theory by Ivan Sag. The other contributions to the volume provide background, justification, case studies, an extension to diachronic syntax and a presentation of the FrameNet Constructicon. This review gives a guided tour of the framework, explaining its central notions and assumptions, as well as the notation in which they are cast. It also compares the sbcg framework with other types of Construction Grammar and with hpsg. The case studies are summarized and briefly evaluated.

Zwicky on heads

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Present Status ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Dependency Grammar ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Interesting Development

An interesting development in the last decade or so has been the increasing use that theoretical linguists have made of the notion ‘head’ – or rather, in order not to beg the question, of notions to which they have given the name ‘head’. The term has been around for a long time in linguistics, of course – for example Bloomfield uses it in relation to endocentric constructions (1933: 195), where the head is the daughter constituent which has the same distribution as the mother. Before that, Sweet had used ‘head-word’ to refer to any word to which another is subordinate (1891: 16, quoted in Matthews, 1981: 165). However, theoretical linguists made very little use of the term, or of the constellation of associated concepts, until quite recently. Its present status is due largely to work on X-bar syntax dating from Chomsky (1970), and especially to its recent manifestation in Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (Gazdar & Pullum, 1981; Gazdar et al., 1985)–and even more so in the ‘head-driven’ variant of this (Pollard, 1985). But the improved status of ‘head’ is also due to some extent to the renewed interest in dependency grammar (Anderson, 1971, 1977; Matthews, 1981; Atkinson, et al, 1982; Hudson, 1984; Nichols, 1986). All these treatments agree not only in using the term ‘head’, but also in using it to refer to the element in some construction to which all the other parts of that construction are (in some sense) subordinate.

scholarly journals Towards an analysis of the adverbial use of German interrogative was(ˋwhat')

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anke Holler
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Information ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
The Other ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Construction Type ◽  
The One

The paper discusses the so-called adverbial use of the wh-pronoun was (ˋwhat'), which establishes a non-standard interrogative construction type in German. It argues that the adverbial use of was (ˋwhat') is based on the lexical properties of a categorically deficient pronoun was (ˋwhat'), which bears a causal meaning. In addition, adverbial was (ˋwhat') differs from canonical argument was (ˋwhat') as it is analyzed as a functor which is generated in clause-initial position. By means of empirical facts mainly provided by d'Avis (2001) it is shown that was (ˋwhat') behaves ambivalently regarding the wh-property: On the one hand, was (ˋwhat') can introduce an interrogative clause, but on the other hand it cannot license wh-phrases in situ. While formally analyzing the data against the background of existing accounts on wh-interrogatives couched in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, an analysis is developed that separates two pieces of information to keep track of the wh-information percolating in an interrogative clause. Whereas the WH-value models wh-fronting and pied-piping phenomena, the QUE value links syntactic and semantic information and thus keeps track of wh-phrases in-situ.

On Phrase Structure and Brain Responses: A Comment on Bahlmann, Gunter, and Friederici (2006)

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1581-1583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Corballis
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
General Issue ◽  
Brain Responses

Bahlmann et al. (2006) reported an experiment on event-related brain potentials of sequences of syllables obeying two rules, one defined by AnBn and the other by (AB)n, where the As and Bs are different classes of syllables. They interpreted their findings on the assumption that AnBn are parsed according a center-embedded phrase-structure grammar. In fact, such sequences are much more likely to be parsed in terms of the repetition of element types, without reference to phrase structure. This raises a general issue about attempting to study syntactic processing independently of semantics.

Adjectives as roots of nominal groups: the big mess construction in dependency grammar

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-263
Author(s):  
Timothy Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Normal Position ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Dependency Grammar ◽  
Attributive Adjective ◽  
Nominal Groups

Abstract The so-called ‘Big Mess Construction’ (BMC) frustrates standard assumptions about the structure of nominal groups. The normal position of an attributive adjective is after the determiner and before the noun, but in the BMC, the adjective precedes the determiner, e.g. that strange a sound, so big a scandal, too lame an excuse. Previous accounts of the BMC are couched in ‘Phrase Structure Grammar’ (PSG) and view the noun or the determiner (or the preposition of) as the root/head of the BMC phrase. In contrast, the current approach, which is couched in a ‘Dependency Grammar’ (DG) model, argues that the adjective is in fact the root/head of the phrase. A number of insights point to the adjective as the root/head, the most important of which is the optional appearance of the preposition of, e.g. that strange of a sound, so big of a scandal, too lame of an excuse.

How Antisymmetric Is Syntax?

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 516-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuji Takano
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
The Right

Since the emergence of Kayne's (1994) stimulating proposal for an antisymmetric theory of phrase structure and linear order, much work has been devoted to arguing for or against his theory as well as discussing its empirical predictions. As a result, for a number of phenomena involving rightward positioning, such as rightward adjuncts, heavy NP shift, extraposition, postverbal subjects, and postverbal constituents in OV languages, there now exist both an approach consistent with Kayne's theory (the antisymmetric approach) and another not consistent with it (the symmetric approach). In such a situation, it is often difficult to show on empirical grounds that one approach is superior to the other (see Rochemont and Culicover 1997). In what follows, I describe this situation with respect to two well-known phenomena in English: rightward positioning of adjuncts and heavy NP shift. For each of these phenomena, the symmetric and antisymmetric approaches have been proposed, and both approaches can correctly account for the data discussed in previous studies. Here, I examine the approaches from a novel point of view, showing that data involving the licensing of negative polarity items allow us to differentiate them and to decide which is the right one for each of the two empirical domains. Interestingly, the relevant facts lead to different conclusions for the two phenomena. The results have important implications for the antisymmetric view of syntax.

NPs, not DPs: The NP vs. DP debate in the context of dependency grammar

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Frequent Occurrence ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Dependency Grammar ◽  
Nominal Groups

AbstractThis paper considers the NP vs. DP debate from the perspective of dependency grammar (DG). The message is delivered that given DG assumptions about sentence structure, the traditional NP-analysis of nominal groups is preferable over the DP-analysis. The debate is also considered from the perspective of phrase structure grammar (PSG). While many of the issues discussed here do not directly support NP over DP given PSG assumptions, some do. More importantly, one has to accept the widespread presence of null determiner heads for the DP analysis to be plausible on PSG assumptions. The argument developed at length here is that the traditional NP-analysis of nominal groups is both more accurate and simpler than the DP-analysis, in part because it does not rely on the frequent occurrence of null determiners.

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