Grammatical Theory: Session 11: Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
Channel: Stefan Müller
Date: 2020-12-10

This video introduces Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). I explain how tree structure is encoded in AVMs, how inheritance hierarchies work and how principles like the head feature principle can be formulated with feature value pairs. Then these formal tools are applied to the analysis of German. The difference between SVO order (English) and SOV languages (German) is explained. We deal with the analysis of the passive using a lexical rule suppressing the first argument. Case alternations are explained using a Case Principle that assigns structural case. The session also explains how local constituent order variation (Scrambling) can be accounted for by different orders of combinations of heads with their lexically selected arguments. Verb placement is accounted for by a lexical rule and nonlocal dependencies are modelled in the GPSG-way by a series of local dependencies.