Constituency and left-sharing in coordination

A long-standing assumption in the syntactic literature is that coordination can only target constituents. This assumption has been a subject of much debate, with many authors questioning its validity. This article enters this debate by reconsidering a constraint on left-sharing in coordination which Osborne & Gross (2017) have recently introduced, namely left node blocking. To account for this constraint, Osborne & Gross propose the Principle of Full Clusivity which states that coordination cannot cut into a constituent. They couch their analysis in a Dependency Grammar, assuming that coordination does not have to conjoin constituents and that syntactic structures should be construed as flat. Given that the empirical ground on which the LNB is based is not firm, I seek to experimentally investigate it by conducting a large-scale experiment. The results of the investigation reveal that LNB is wrong; left-sharing is as permissive as right-sharing. The results of the investigation have the immediate consequence that the assumptions on which LNB is based are wrong as well, namely that syntactic structures should be construed as flat. I spell out an analysis couched in terms of left-to-right syntax to account for major cases of left-sharing in coordination.

Improving fake news classification using dependency grammar

Fake news is a complex problem that leads to different approaches used to identify them. In our paper, we focus on identifying fake news using its content. The used dataset containing fake and real news was pre-processed using syntactic analysis. Dependency grammar methods were used for the sentences of the dataset and based on them the importance of each word within the sentence was determined. This information about the importance of words in sentences was utilized to create the input vectors for classifications. The paper aims to find out whether it is possible to use the dependency grammar to improve the classification of fake news. We compared these methods with the TfIdf method. The results show that it is possible to use the dependency grammar information with acceptable accuracy for the classification of fake news. An important finding is that the dependency grammar can improve existing techniques. We have improved the traditional TfIdf technique in our experiment.

Bracketing paradoxes: A dependency grammar analysis in terms of morph catenae

This manuscript examines various types of bracketing paradoxes: classical “personal noun” constructions, parasynthetic compounds, agentive deverbal nouns, compound denominal adjectives, plural nouns with lexicalized modifiers, multiple auxiliary constructions, and German particle verb constructions. We argue that given a dependency-based view of both sentence and word structure, these bracketing puzzles become non-paradoxical. The morph catena is taken to be the fundamental unit of morphosyntax. A morph catena is A MORPH OR A COMBINATION OF MORPHS THAT ARE CONTINUOUS WITH RESPECT TO DOMINANCE. This notion is derived from its syntactic equivalent, the catena, which is defined as a word or a combination of words that are continuous with respect to dominance. Given an understanding of morphosyntax that acknowledges morph catenae, bracketing paradoxes are resolved by the ability of morph catenae to reach across words to include parts of words.

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

This 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.

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

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.

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

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.

A quantitative investigation of the ellipsis of English relativizers

Object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) can occur in English either with a lexical complementizer or with no complementizer. This paper seeks to investigate constraints on when the complementizer is lexicalized in ORCs, within the theoretical framework of dependency grammar. In an analysis of one hundred ORCs, we find that: (a) the mean dependency distance (MDD) of lexicalized ORCs is longer significantly than that of non-lexicalized ORCs; (b) there is no significant difference in mean hierarchical distance (MHD) for lexicalized versus non-lexicalized ORCs; and (c) hierarchical number (HN) influences mean hierarchical distance significantly, and when HN is 1, the MHD of lexicalized ORCs is significantly longer than that of non-lexicalized ORCs. However, there are no significant difference when HN is 2–5, indicating that HN = 1 may be a key point in the ellipsis of relativizers.

On Perspectives and Limitations of Application of Dependency Grammar and Valency Theory in Serbian Studies

Review of: Milivoj Alanović (2019), O dopunama i dopunjavanju u srpskom jeziku, Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet.