bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A-subjects and control in Halkomelem
Authors: Gerdts Donna B. , Hukari Thomas E.
Published: December 2021

We discuss evidence in Halkomelem, a Coast Salish language of British Columbia, which supports the hypothesis put forward by Manning and Sag (1999) that a universal passive argument structure (ARG-ST) is complex and has two a-subjects. We argue that morphological and syntactic control phenomena in Halkomelem are best described by saying that an a-subject is accessible, where an a-subject is the first argument on an argument structure list.

ARG-ST <bi >

The Halkomelem passive data show that two notions of subject are essential for capturing control phenomena. One set of constructions-motion auxiliaries, desideratives, and reflexive causatives-involve linking to the internal a-subject. One construction-the control construction–links to either the highest a-subject or the internal a-subject. Similar conclusions have been drawn for data from Russian (Perlmutter 1984), Philippine languages (Schachter 1984), and other languages of the world. As Manning and Sag (1998) point out, one does not have to draw the conclusion that passive must be given a multilevel syntactic analysis from such data. Rather, their analysis of passive, which posits a complex argument structure, easily accounts for Halkomelem. Control facts in Halkomelem, with examples drawn from both morphological and syntactic constructions, can be added to the catalog of phenomenon that support this view of the passive.
was-w construction in German
Authors: Hinrichs Erhard W. , Nakazwa Tsuneko
Published: December 2021

The so-called was-w-construction in German has received a fair amount of attention in recent syntactic theorizing. Most of the discussion has focused on the properties of was.

One line of research maintains that was is a scope marker that indicates the semantic scope of the wh-phrase in the embedded interrogative clause. The alternative view, usually referred to as the indirect analysis, was first developed with respect to Hindi (Dayal 1994) and then generalized to German (Dayal 1996). It holds that the was of the was-w-construction is associated not with the embedded wh-phrase, but rather with the embedded clause as a whole.

Hinrichs and Nakazawa present some novel evidence in favor of an indirect analysis of the was-w construction. However, the main focus of their research is on two questions that by comparison have received little attention, namely:

what is the set of matrix predicates that can enter into this construction, and

how can one account for the curious fact that predicates that ordinarily do not license wh-complements allow such complements in the was-w-construction?

On the basis of Ginzburg and Sag's verb classification (Ginzburg and Sag, in preparation) Hinrichs and Nakazawa identify a natural class of predicates that license this construction and utilize the notion of type coercion to account for the apparent mismatch between the syntactic form of the embedded interrogative and its semantic function.
Without an index
Authors: Branco António
Published: December 2021

Departing from the exhaustive indexation, syntax-driven approach to binding, we argued for an alternative, semantics-oriented rationale for binding principles.  Under this new understanding of the nature of grammatical constraints on anaphoric binding, these principles are viewed as contributing to circumscribe the contextually determined semantic value of  anaphoric nominals. This conceptual shift helps to find a fully fledged formal specification of binding principles with the HPSG lean description formalism where these constraints are entered in the grammar as part of the information kept at the lexical entries of anaphoric expressions.
Mixed functional properties in English stylistic inversion
Authors: Chung Chan
Published: December 2021

One of the controversial issues in English stylistic inversion (SI) construction (e.g., Into the room walked a woman) is the functional status of preverbal PP and postverbal NP. Based on the distributional parallels among the PP, NP, ordinary subject and topic, this paper proposes that the PP in SI has a dual function as a subject and topic, while the NP also has some subject properties that the PP does not have. These mixed functional properties of the PP and the 'double' subject properties of SI are analyzed in the theory of HPSG, especially with the versions recently developed by Sag 1997, Manning and Sag 1999 and Ginzburg and Sag 2001, which posit the notions of the multiple type inheritance hierarchy and dissociation between the argument and valence structures. This analysis claims that the SI construction needs to simultaneously satisfy two general, independent constraints, head-subject-phrase and head-filler-phrase, as well as the construction specific lexeme-level constraint. This view suggests that the English SI construction is an instance of peripheral phenomena whose construction specific constraints are inherited from more general core constraints.
Out of control
Authors: Oshima David Y.
Published: December 2021

In this paper I develop a unified analysis of the Japanese passive, which provides a uniform syntactic/semantic representation of the alleged varieties of passives (direct, indirect, possessive) as a complex predicate that encodes the triadic relation of "lack of control" among an agent, undergoer and event. Various differences among the direct, possessive, and indirect passives (the adversative effect implicature, the possibility of reflexive binding, the animacy constraint on the subject, etc.) are explained as cooperative effects of the core syntactic/sematic properties of the passive morpheme -(r)are and functional/pragmatic factors like conversational implicature and empathy constraints.
When a head is not a head
Authors: Wright Abby , Kathol Andreas
Published: December 2021

As the name of the framework suggests, one of the driving forces behind traditional HPSG analyses is the notion of head. With the exception of a few non-headed constructions (i.e., mostly coordination), constructions are typically seen as being headed by a particular word or phrase with the nonhead constituting a complement, specifier or adjunct. The head determines the internal composition of a phrase and is responsible for its external distribution. Moreover, syntactic headedness, as determined by morphosyntactic criteria, is typically assumed to coincide with semantic headness. In the case of NPs, for instance, this means that the semantic contribution (including the index) of the entire phrase is provided by the element that is the head by morphosyntactic criteria (typically the noun). 

In this paper, we intend to challenge this view of heads on the basis of two constructions from English. In both instances, we will argue that the constituents that are responsible for the internal combinatorial make-up of the phrase do not constitute heads because they fail both to determine the external distribution of the phrase and to contribute the semantic index of the projected phrase. At the same time, however, we will show that it is possible to view these cases not as random departures from more well-behaved headed constructions, but instead as particular instantiations of more general construction types which do not impose strict conditions on external headedness.
Valence alternations in Modern Greek
Authors: Kordoni Valia
Published: December 2021

The aim of this paper is to provide a semantic account of valence alternations in Modern Greek of the following general form:

            (1) NPk V NPi [P NPj] —> NPk V NPj [P NPi]

In other words, the valence alternations in Modern Greek we focus on in this paper are the ones involving direct internal arguments (i.e., objects) and indirect prepositional complements. Such alternation patterns in Modern Greek characterize mainly the behaviour of verbal predicates which participate in the so-called Locative Alternation phenomena.
A compositional and constraint-based approach to non-sentential utterances
Authors: Schlangen David , Lascarides Alex
Published: December 2021

We present an approach to the interpretation of non-sentential
utterances like B's utterance in the following mini-dialogue:

A: ˋˋWho came to the party?''
B: ˋˋPeter.´´

Such utterances pose several puzzles: they convey
ˋsentence-type' messages (propositions, questions or request)
while being of non-sentential form; and they are constrained
both semantically and syntactically by the context. We address
these puzzles in our approach which is compositional, since we
provide a formal semantics for such fragments independent of
their context, and constraint-based because resolution is
based on collecting contextual constraints.
Propositional relative clauses in German
Authors: Sailer Manfred
Published: December 2021

This paper discusses a special kind of syntax-semantics mismatch: a
noun with a relative clause is interpreted as if it were a complement
clause. An analysis in terms of Lexical Resource Semantics is
developed which provides a uniform account for ˋˋnormal'' relative
clauses and for the discussed type of relative clause.
Head-initial constructions in Japanese
Authors: Siegel Melanie , Bender Emily M.
Published: December 2021

Japanese is often taken to be strictly head-final in its syntax. In our work on
a broad-coverage, precision implemented HPSG for Japanese, we have found that
while this is generally true, there are nonetheless a few minor exceptions to
the broad trend. In this paper, we describe the grammar engineering project,
present the exceptions we have found, and conclude that this kind of phenomenon
motivates on the one hand the HPSG type hierarchical approach which allows for
the statement of both broad generalizations and exceptions to those
generalizations and on the other hand the usefulness of grammar engineering as
a means of testing linguistic hypotheses.
Towards licensing of adverbial noun phrases in HPSG
Authors: Trawinski Beata
Published: December 2021

This paper focuses on aspects of the licensing of adverbial noun phrases
(AdvNPs) in the HPSG grammar framework. In the first part, empirical issues
will be discussed. A number of AdvNPs will be examined with respect to various
linguistic phenomena in order to find out to what extent AdvNPs share syntactic
and semantic properties with non-adverbial NPs.Based on empirical
generalizations, a lexical constraint for licensing both AdvNPs and
non-adverbial NPs will be provided. Further on, problems of structural
licensing of phrases containing AdvNPs that arise within the standard HPSG
framework of Pollard and Sag (1994) will be pointed out, and a possible
solution will be proposed. The objective is to provide a constraint-based
treatment of NPs which describes non-redundantly both their adverbial and
non-adverbial usages. The analysis proposed in this paper applies lexical and
phrasal implicational constraints and does not require any radical
modifications or extensions of the standard HPSG geometry of Pollard and Sag
(1994).
Raising doubts about Russian impersonals
Authors: Koenig Jean-Pierre , Davis Anthony R.
Published: December 2021

The Russian data presented in Perlmutter and Moore (2002) seem to
call into question the standard analysis of raising within Head-driven Phrase
Structure Grammar (HPSG): In Russian, the case marking of the raising target
and raising pivot does not seem to be shared. In this paper, we show that
the phenomena described by Perlmutter and Moore can receive another analysis,
fully compatible with HPSG's theory of raising. We argue in addition
that our account leads to a slightly simpler model of the Russian data than
Perlmutter and Moore's. Crucially, our analysis is only available if we avail
ourselves of a rich network of language-specific constructional schemata, a
stance recently advocated within HPSG, following the lead of Construction
Grammar.
Between shifts and alternations: Ditransitive constructions
Authors: Kordoni Valia
Published: December 2021

In this paper I present two classes of double object constructions in Modern
Greek, i.e., the genitive, as well as the double accusative, ditransitive
constructions. I show that these two classes differ from one another in that
not both of them permit derivational processes such as the formation of
adjectival passives. I also look at the case properties associated with the
verbs which head Modern Greek genitive and double accusative ditransitive
constructions. Finally, the analysis I propose for these constructions in
Modern Greek are formalized using the Minimal Recursion Semantics (MRS)
framework of Copestake et al. (2001) and Copestake et al. (2003).
Selectional restrictions in HPSG: I'll eat my hat!
Authors: Soehn Jan-Philipp
Published: December 2021

This contribution is concerned with integrating the phenomenon of selectional
restrictions in HPSG. Firstly, the question of treating selectional
restrictions purely in the semantic module is tackled, as there are some
contextual (or pragmatic) influences, which can repair the ill-formedness of
violated selectional restrictions. Secondly, we present existing approaches to
selectional restrictions within the framework and, lastly, make our own
proposal which describes the subject as part of the semantics-pragmatics
interface. In particular, we show how a semantic ontology can be integrated.
A raising analysis of the Dutch passive
Authors: Van Noord Gertjan , Kordoni Valia
Published: December 2021

This paper focuses on passive constructions in Dutch. Specifically, we focus on
worden, as well as krijgen passives in Dutch, for which we
propose a uniform, raising analysis in HPSG. We also show that such an analysis
can be carried over to account for passives cross-linguistically. Specifically,
we look at corresponding structures in German and show that there is no need
for a dual raising and control analysis for the German ˋˋagentive''
(werden) and the German ˋˋdative'' (kriegen) passives,
respectively, as has been proposed in Müller (2002)
and Müller (2003).
Integrating pragmatic information in grammar: An analysis of intersentential ellipsis
Authors: Bertomeu Núria , Kordoni Valia
Published: December 2021

In this paper we present a proposal to integrate pragmatic
information, both from the preceding discourse and the
extra-linguistic context, in the grammar. We provide an analysis of
elliptical fragments according to how they are anchored to the
context and the kind of resolution they require. We also present an
alternative view about the syntax of fragments.
A proposed lexicalised linearisation grammar: A monostratal alternative
Authors: Sato Yo
Published: December 2021

This paper presents an overview of a proposed linearisation grammar, which
relies solely upon information residing in lexical heads to constrain word
order. Word order information, which encompasses discontinuity as well as
linear precedence conditions, is explicitly encoded as part of the feature
structure of lexical heads, thus dispensing with a separate LP specification or
ˋphenogrammatical' layer standardly posited for linearisation. Instead, such
lexicon-originated word order constraints are enforced in projections,
propagated upwards and accumulated in the compound PHON feature, which
represents phonological yields in an underspecified manner. Though limited
somewhat in generative capacity, this approach covers the key phenomena that
motivated linearisation grammars and offers a simpler alternative to the
standard DOM-oriented theory.
Uncovering regularities: On bare and evaluated controllers in Tigrinya
Authors: Brindle Jonathan Allen
Published: December 2021

The "flexibility" of gender in Tigrinya is uncovered by (i) setting a value
for gender for each noun at the lexical level (i.e. bare controllers) and (ii)
analysing gender shifts as signals for evaluations (i.e. evaluated
controllers). The analysis is formalized as lexical rules which change the
value of gend and add an elementary predication in the rels list.
Metrical phonology in HPSG
Authors: Bonami Olivier , Delais-Roussarie Elisabeth
Published: December 2021

This 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 'grid only' 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.
Coordination of unlikes without unlike categories
Authors: Chaves Rui P.
Published: December 2021

Several analysis of Coordination of Unlikes have been proposed within the HPSG framework.
In some of these approaches the possible combinations of 'unlike categories' are encoded in
the grammar, while other accounts resort to an independently motivated ellipsis analysis.
In this paper we provide further arguments in favor of the latter. However, some problematic
cases of Coordination of Unlikes in certain S-adjoining constructions are left unaccounted for.
We propose a general analysis of these S-adjoining constructions, and in doing so,
the problematic coordination cases are predicted without the need for further assumptions.
A lexical account of Sorani Kurdish prepositions
Authors: Samvelian Pollet
Published: December 2021

In Sorani Kurdish dialects, the complement of a preposition can generally be realized either as a
syntactic item (NP, independent pronoun or PP) or a bound personal morpheme (clitic/affix). However,
the affixal realization of the complement gives rise to a range of specific phenomena. First, some
prepositions display two different phonological forms depending on the realization of their
complement: the variant combining with a syntactic item is referred to as ˋsimple', while the
variant combining with an affixal complement is called ˋabsolute'. Furthermore, unlike syntactic
complements, which are always realized locally, the affixal complement of an absolute preposition
can have a non-local realization, attaching to a host with which it has no morphosyntactic
relations. In order to deal with these facts, this paper proposes a classification of Sorani
prepositions along two lines: the affixal versus non-affixal realization of the complement on the
one hand and its local versus non-local realization on the other hand. All cases of non-local
realization receive a lexical account, either in terms of argument composition or in terms of
linearization constraints on domain objects.
On the Russian hybrid coordination construction
Authors: Chaves Rui P. , Paperno Denis
Published: December 2021

This paper discusses a non-constituent coordination construction that occurs
in Russian in which constituents with different syntactic functions
and different thematic roles are conjoined.
These conjuncts are co-arguments of the same head and are subject
to a number of idiosyncrasies.

We consider several alternative analysis of the phenomena, and conclude
that these are unable to account for the full range of the facts. Thus,
even though these conjuncts do not form a semantic unit, there
is evidence that they do form a kind of coordination structure.
The phenomena are challenging for any theory of grammar,
but the syntax-semantics account that we provide involves
minimal changes to standard HPSG architecture.
Radical non-configurationality without shuffle operators: An analysis of Wambaya
Authors: Bender Emily M.
Published: December 2021

The word order facts of radically non-configurational languages pose a challenge to HPSG
approaches which assume both that the surface order of words is the yield of the (tectogrammatical)
tree and standard HPSG-style cancellation of valence lists. These languages allow discontinuous noun
phrases, in which modifiers appear separated from their head nouns by arbitrarily many other words
from the same clause. In this paper, I explore an analysis which preserves
tectogrammatical-phenogrammatical equivalence, and accounts for the word order facts of Wambaya with
an analysis based on non-cancellation. This analysis is contrasted with other approaches to
discontinuous constituents and analyses of other phenomena based on non-cancellation. Finally, I
explore the implications for current models of semantic compositionality.
An analysis of pseudopartitives and measure phrases that say no to extra rules
Authors: Tam Wai Lok , Sato Yo
Published: December 2021

Our analysis of pseudopartitives and measure phrases draws on the idea of ˋof' as a copula in a
pseudopartitive. The copular analysis allows us to avoid the complications caused by treating either
the numeral-noun combination before the of-phrase or the of-object as the head of a pseudopartitive
on agreement, and hence to account for all the agreement patterns without creating any extra
rule. We also outline how we can extend our analysis to handle measure phrases that do not co-occur
with of-phrases by treating these measure phrases as anaphoric, an analysis that can adapt to the
anaphoric constructions in classifier languages. Such an analysis does not only come closer to the
intuition of native speakers but also have an appeal from the perspective of the universality of
languages.
Clitic left dislocation and focus projection in Spanish
Authors: Bildhauer Felix
Published: December 2021

The information-structural status of clitic left dislocated arguments in
Spanish has been argued to depend crucially on their thematic role.
Earlier HPSG analyses of related phenomena in other languages do not
take into account this sort of information. A formalization will be
presented which can handle differences in information-structure arising
from different thematic roles of clitic left dislocated phrases.
The exclamative clause type in French
Authors: Marandin Jean-Marie
Published: December 2021

My objective in this paper is to integrate scalar exclamatives into an HPSG grammar of
French. First, a procedure to sort out scalar exclamatives from declaratives and interrogatives is
proposed. Then, the main semantic and dialogical properties of exclamatives are presented:
veridicity, ego-evidentiality, illocutionary double life and scalarity. Finally, assuming Ginzburg &
Sag 2000, the exclamative clause type is defined.
There-constructions with transitive verbs
Authors: Bjerre Anne , Bjerre Tavs
Published: December 2021

In this paper we address the question of which transitive verbs
allow there-insertion in Danish. We propose that two constraints
have to be met in order for verbs to appear in Danish
there-constructions. Firstly, as have been noted by others, an empty
direct object position must be available. This constraint is not
sufficient for restricting the set of verbs in there-constructions.
We further propose a locative constraint. The transitive verbs allowing
there-insertion will be shown to coincide with verbs that allow a
locative analysis.
A construction-based analysis of verbless relative adjuncts in French and Romanian
Authors: Bîlbîie Gabriela , Laurens Frédéric
Published: December 2021

French and Romanian verbless relative adjuncts are incidental adjuncts which
have been described as elliptical relative clauses. We show that this analysis
is not empirically adequate and propose an alternative non-elliptical analysis.
We analyze verbless relative adjuncts as sentential fragments whose head can be
a cluster of phrases. They are marked by a functor phrase which displays
selection properties with respect to the head phrase and makes an essential
contribution to the semantics of the adjunct. The analysis relies on the
interaction of grammatical constraints introduced by various linguistic objects,
as well as on a constructional analysis of verbless relative adjuncts
distinguishing several subtypes.
On predication
Authors: Müller Stefan
Published: December 2021

This paper discusses copula constructions in English, German, and Danish and argues that a uniform
analysis of all copula constructions is inappropriate. I provide evidence from German that there
should be a raising variant of the copula in addition to an identificational copula. A unary schema
is provided that maps referential NPs that can be used as arguments onto predicational NPs. Data
from Danish shows that predicational NPs can be subjects in specificational structures. An account
for such specificational structures is provided and the different behaviour of predicational and
specificational structures with regard to question tags is explained. A similar contrast can be
found in German left dislocation structures, which follows from the assumptions made in this paper.

A modified treatment of complex predicate formation allows for a reduction of selectional features
(that is abolishing of xcomp or vcomp) and for a uniform treatment of predicational
phrases in copula constructions and resultative secondary predicates. This yields an account for
constituent order variants that remained unexplained by earlier analyses.
Phraseological clauses in Constructional HPSG
Authors: Richter Frank , Sailer Manfred
Published: December 2021

In this paper we investigate German idioms which contain phraseologically
fixed clauses (PCl). To provide a comprehensive HPSG theory of PCls we
extend the idiom theory of Soehn 2006 in such a way that it can
distinguish different degrees of regularity in idiomatic expressions. An
in-depth analysis of two characteristic PCls shows how our two-dimensional
theory of idiomatic expressions can be applied and illustrates the scope
of the theory.
On the copula: From a Fregean to a Montagovian treatment
Authors: Van Eynde Frank
Published: December 2021

The analysis of the copula as a semantically vacuous word in mainstream
HPSG is appropriate for some of its uses, such as the progressive and
the passive, but not for its use in clauses with a predicative complement.
In such clauses the copula denotes a relation
of coreference between the indices of the subject and the predicative
complement.
Construction-based cumulation and adjunct extraction
Authors: Chaves Rui P.
Published: December 2021

Previous HPSG accounts of extraction blur the distinction between
valents and adjuncts by allowing verbs to lexically control the
modifiers that combine with their phrasal projections. However,
assuming that adjuncts are valents runs into various difficulties.
This paper argues that the distinction between complements and
adjuncts can be maintained, and that certain semantic
phenomena that challenge traceless theories of extraction can be seen
as an instance of a more general process. Finally, this paper also
discusses a uniform mechanism for case assignment to valents and
adverbial nominals.
Deriving superficial ergativity in Nias
Authors: Crysmann Berthold
Published: December 2021

In this paper, I discuss the case and agreement system of Nias, a
language that has been described as a marked-absolutive system by
various authors (Donohue and Brown, 1999; Corbett, 2006; Cysouw, 2005;
Handschuh, 2008; Wichmann, 2005). I shall argue in particular that the
ergativity of this language is highly superficial in nature, showing
that hypothesised marked-absolutive arguments fail to display typical
subject properties. Extending the linking theory of ergativity by
Manning (1994) and Manning and Sag (1999), which assumes an inverse
linking pattern for transitive, I shall suggest that Nias
transitives are best analysed as a Nominative-Accusative system,
attributing the ergative split in Nias to an inverse linking of
intransitives instead. Under this perspective, case, agreement, and word
order will receive a natural explanation.
Towards an analysis of the adverbial use of German interrogative was (ˋwhat')
Authors: Holler Anke
Published: December 2021

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.
The family of English cognate object constructions
Authors: Sailer Manfred
Published: December 2021

In the Cognate Object Construction (COC) a typically intransitive verb
combines with a postverbal noun phrase whose head noun is morphologically
or semantically cognate to the verb. I will argue that English has a
family of COCs which consists of four different types. The COCs
share common core properties but differ with respect to some of their
syntactic and semantic properties. I will capture the ˋˋcognateness''
between the verb and the noun in all COCs by token identities at the level
of their lexical semantic contribution. I will use an inheritance
hierarchy on lexical rule sorts to model the family relations among the
different COC types.
How many conversions from verb to noun are there in French?
Authors: Tribout Delphine
Published: December 2021

In this paper, I discuss verb to noun conversion in French. The properties of
the input verb and the output noun are presented and a formal representation is
proposed using the SBCG framework. The use of such a formalism based on
constraints and multiple inheritance highlights the difficulties in defining
what exactly is a conversion rule. I propose that the different properties of
the input verb and the output noun can be thought of as different dimensions of
classification, which characterize the verb to noun conversion rule.
Does chain hybridization in Irish support movement-based approaches to long-distance dependencies?
Authors: Assmann Anke , Heck Fabian , Hein Johannes , Keine Stefan , Müller Gereon
Published: December 2021

Huybregts (2009) makes the claim that hybrid A'-chains in Irish favor
derivational theories of syntax over representational ones such as HPSG. In
this paper, we subject this assertion to closer scrutiny. Based on a new technical proposal, we will reach the conclusion that, in principle, both derivational
and representational accounts can accomodate hybrid dependencies. Thus, no
argument against either approach can be made on the basis of the Irish data,
disconfirming Huybregts's (2009) claim.
Usage-based preferences in written sentence production: The role of local and global statistics
Authors: Hemforth Barbara , Fayol Michel , Pacton Sébastien
Published: December 2021

In this paper, we will discuss the role of different levels of frequency distributions in sentence
processing and in written production, looking at French homophones. A comparison of experimental
data and corpus statistics will demonstrate that lexical frequencies as well as local and global
coherences have to be taken into account to fully explain the empirically established patterns.
Arabic nominals in HPSG: A verbal noun perspective
Authors: Islam Md. Sadiqul , Masum Mahmudul Hasan , Bhuyan Md. Shariful Islam , Ahmed Reaz
Published: December 2021

Semitic languages exhibit rich nonconcatenative morphological operations, which can generate a myriad of
derived lexemes. Especially, the feature rich, root-driven morphology in the Arabic language demonstrates the
construction of several verb-derived nominals (verbal nouns) such as gerunds, active participles, passive
participles, locative participles, etc. Although HPSG is a successful syntactic theory, it lacks the
representation of complex nonconcatenative morphology. In this paper, we propose a novel HPSG representation for
Arabic nominals and various verb-derived nouns. We also present the lexical type hierarchy and derivational rules
for generating these verb-derived nominals using the HPSG framework.
Case suffixes and postpositions in Hungarian
Authors: Thuilier Juliette
Published: December 2021

This paper examines the morpho-syntactic puzzle of case suffixes and postpositions that Hungarian
displays. Although these two categories show distributional similarities, they are distinguishable
from a morphological and a syntactic point of view. Moreover, this language has defective
postpositions which are in complementary distribution with case suffixes. I argue that there is no
real argument for lumping case suffixes together with postpositions into the same syntactic
category, as has been suggested in recent linguistics studies (Trommer, 2008; Asbury, 2007). I
rather propose to treat case suffixes and postpositions as two different objects: case suffixes are
inflectional material on nominal heads and postpositions as well as defective postpositions are
independent words subcategorizing an NP. This distinction straightforwardly accounts for
morphological and syntactic differences. Finally, the shared distributional properties between case
suffixes, postpositions and defective postpositions are captured by means of the use of the MARKING
feature.
Analyzing interacting phenomena: Word order and negation in Basque
Authors: Crowgey Joshua , Bender Emily M.
Published: December 2021

We explore the interaction of sentential negation and word order in Basque using a small
experimental implemented grammar based on the Grammar Matrix (Bender et al., 2002, 2010) to test the
analyses. We find that the analysis of free word order (Fokkens, 2010) provided by the Grammar
Matrix customization system can be adapted to handle the Basque facts, and that the constructional
approach taken in that analysis supports the integration of negation.
The adverb argument intersection field in a left-branching grammar of Norwegian
Authors: Haugereid Petter
Published: December 2021

This paper presents an account of the position of sentence adverbials
in Norwegian within a left-branching HPSG-like grammar design. The
assumed left-branching structures open for a treatment of Object Shift
in Norwegian as part of a wider phenomenon referred to as the Adverb
Argument Intersection Field. The approach is compared to the standard
P&P analysis of Object Shift and it is shown that the two approaches
make similar predictions regarding basic clause structures with full
NP arguments. However, while one in P&P is forced to assume a
secondary phonological movement in order to account for the position
of unstressed pronoun objects with regard to sentence adverbials, no
extra assumptions need to be made in the proposed account.
The direct evidential -te in Korean: Its interaction with person and experiencer predicates
Authors: Lee Juwon
Published: December 2021

This paper discusses the complex relations among the direct evidential -te, person, and experiencer
predicates in Korean. The questions of the paper are: (i) how the three components are related with
each other in the evidential sentences, and (ii) how the interactions of the three components can be
formally analyzed to correctly license only the well-formed evidential sentences. I show that in
direct evidential construction with a non-private predicate (e.g. pwutulep- ‘soft’), the
asserter/epistemic authority (i.e. the speaker na ‘I’ in declarative or the addressee ne ‘you’ in
question) must be the experiencer of the predicate, but there is no such constraint in direct
evidential construction with a private predicate (e.g. aphu- ‘sick’). I also show that the direct
evidential construction with a non-private predicate is an instance of self-ascription. Then I
propose an analysis of the experiencer predicates and associated lexical rules in the Minimal
Recursion Semantics (MRS) (Copestake, et al., 2005) of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
(Pollard and Sag, 1994; Sag, et al., 2003).
Sentential specifiers in the Korean clause structure
Authors: Choi Incheol
Published: December 2021

The Korean double nominative construction exhibits various properties distinguished not only from
ordinary subject-object clauses but also from nominative complement constructions. Particularly, the
second NP, not the initial NP, triggers the honorific agreement with the verb. I argue that the
first NP of the construction is identified as a sentential specifier which exists in addition to the
subject (cf. Major subject in Yoon 2004). The sentential specifier can be justified as the
characteristic of the topic-prominent language in the sense of Li and Thompson (1976). Specifically
I claim that any elements that satisfy the aboutness condition can be the sentential
specifier. Finally, I show that HPSG's valence value and an optional lexical rule provides an
elegant treatment of the construction; SPR list in a sentence level can be utilized for the
sentential specifier (cf. Kim et al. 2007).
Establishing order in type-based realisational morphology
Authors: Crysmann Berthold , Bonami Olivier
Published: December 2021

Recent years have witnessed a renewal of interest in variable morph ordering, the situation where
the position of a morph in the word is not constant. These situations present a challenge to extant
inferential-realisational approaches to morphology (Stump, 2001), insofar as these adopt implicitly
or explicitly an a-morphous approach to morphological composition (Anderson, 1992). In this paper we
will first review the typology of known variable morph ordering phenomena in inflection. We then
argue that the challenges can be met by making a distinction between paradigmatic opposition classes
and syntagmatic position classes, and show that this distinction can readily be implemented in HPSG
while keeping the amorphous assumption.
The syntax of distance distributivity in Polish: Preserving generalisations with weak heads
Authors: Przepiórkowski Adam
Published: December 2021

This paper presents a syntactic HPSG analysis of distance distributivity in Polish, where the challenge is to uniformly analyse a number of function lexemes PO 'each' which share their form and semantic contribution, but differ in their syntactic behaviour. To this end, the HPSG notion of weak head is employed in a novel way.
Accessibility and word order: The case of ditransitive constructions in Persian
Authors: Faghiri Pegah , Samvelian Pollet , Hemforth Barbara
Published: December 2021

In a most recent corpus study on Persian, Faghiri & Samvelian (2014) found a significant effect of relative length in the ordering preferences between the direct and indirect objects in the preverbal domain corresponding to "long-before-short". They furthermore showed that the position of the direct object mainly depends on its degree of determination, and put into question the broadly accepted dual view based solely on differential object marking. In this paper, we provide experimental evidence in support of these corpus findings and further propose a unified account of ordering preferences between the two objects on the basis of conceptual accessibility.
Focus feature percolation: Evidence from Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir
Authors: Matić Dejan , Nikolaeva Irina
Published: December 2021

Two Siberian languages, Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir, do not
obey strong island constraints in questioning: any sub-constituent of a
relative or adverbial clause can be questioned. We argue that this has to
do with how focusing works in these languages. The focused sub-constituent
remains in situ, but there is abundant morphosyntactic evidence that the
focus feature is passed up to the head of the clause. The result is the
formation of a complex focus structure in which both the head and non head
daughter are overtly marked as focus, and they are interpreted as a
pairwise list such that the focus background is applicable to this list,
but not to other alternative lists.
Two types of serial verb constructions in Korean: Subject-sharing and index-sharing
Authors: Lee Juwon
Published: December 2021

In this paper I present an account for the lexical passive Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Korean. Regarding the issue of how the arguments of an SVC are realized, I propose two hypotheses: i) Korean SVCs are broadly classified into two types, subject-sharing SVCs where the subject is structure-shared by the verbs and index-sharing SVCs where only indices of semantic arguments are structure-shared by the verbs, and ii) a semantic argument sharing is a general requirement of SVCs in Korean. I also argue that an argument composition analysis can accommodate such the new data as the lexical passive SVCs in a simple manner compared to other alternative derivational analyses.
Refining the semantics of lexical rules in HPSG
Authors: Lahm David
Published: December 2021

This paper points out
certain flaws in the semantics for lexical rule specifications
developed in Meurers (2001). Under certain circumstances, certain
words may not be licit inputs to a rule according to this semantics
while one would expect them to be from inspecting the specification of
the rule. The reasons for this are shown to be that whether properties
of paths should be transferred from the input of a rule to its output
is decided considering only the respective paths and their properties
in isolation, ignoring the ‘non-local’ effects that transferring their
properties can have. Furthermore, the semantics is insensitive to the
possible shapes of inputs to the rule, which also makes it possible
that inputs of certain shapes are unexpectedly not accepted. An
alternative semantics is developed that does not suffer from these
deficits.
Seminumerals, determiners and nouns in English
Authors: Maekawa Takafumi
Published: December 2021

A singular countable noun in
English normally requires a determiner and they should agree in
number. However, there is a type of noun phrase, such as those
thousand teachers, which does not conform to this generalisation. As
a subtype of singular countable noun, thousand requires a
determiner, but the determiner has number agreement with the head
noun teachers. The standard HPSG treatment, in which the determiner
requirement and the determiner-noun agreement are both represented in
the SPR specifications of the head noun, cannot capture this special
agreement pattern. Our analysis, in which the determiner requirement
and the determiner-noun agreement are dissociated from each other,
can provide a straightforward account of the data.
One of those constructions that really needs a proper analysis
Authors: Arnold Doug , Lucas Christopher
Published: December 2021

We describe, and provide an
HPSG account of, a hitherto little studied English construction (of
which the title of the paper is an instance) involving an agreement
mismatch: a partitive construction in which a plural nominal is
apparently modified by a singular relative clause.
Ergative gender agreement in Dargwa ˋˋbackward control'' or feature sharing?
Authors: Belyaev Oleg
Published: December 2021

Dargwa languages have two types of agreement at clause
level: gender and person agreement. In the general case, person
agreement is hierarchical (speech act participants prefered to 3rd
persons), while gender agreement is with the absolutive (S/P)
argument. Two exceptions to this pattern have been observed in some
dialects: first, some auxiliary verbs have a gender agreement slot
which can be controlled by both ergative and absolutive arguments;
second, adverbials agreeing in gender can agree with either ergative
or absolutive if they are located at clause edges. A proposed
explanation of this behaviour is through effectively splitting each
clause into two layers, with the top layer having its own zero
absolutive position, coreferential with either the subject or the
direct object of the lower layer. In this way, the general rule that
gender agreement is with the absolutive can be preserved. In this
paper, I argue that the data of Ashti Dargwa do not support the
Backward Control theory. Peripheral adverb agreement and auxiliary
gender agreement are independent phenomena, while auxiliary agreement
can be explained by splitting the 3rd person based on topicality, as
in proximateobviative systems. This allows us to preserve the
conventional account of clause structure while framing the data of
Dargwa in a wider typological context.
The syntax of the not only ... but also ... construction
Authors: Lee Sarah Hye-yeon
Published: December 2021

This paper investigates the syntax of the English not only ... but also ... construction, focusing on the linearization possibilities of not only. Based on novel corpus data, I argue that the not only ... but also ... construction exhibits different properties from the not ... but ... construction or the adverbial only. I propose that a linearization-based account, along with coordinate ellipsis, can explain the various linearization possibilities of not only. I also propose that the construction as a whole is a subtype of the type correlative-coord-ph, which is a novel subtype of coord-ph. Finally, I argue that subject-auxiliary inversion triggered by the clause-initial not only is a new subtype of the type negative-inversion-ph.
English prepositional numeral constructions
Authors: Maekawa Takafumi
Published: December 2021

This paper discusses the syntactic
properties of 'prepositional numeral constructions (PNCs)' in English,
which is exemplified by ‘about 250 babies’ and ‘over 16,000 animals’. In
PNCs a preposition is followed by a numeral. Previous analyses have
claimed that the preposition and the numeral make a prepositional phrase
in PNCs, but we argue that this is not a satisfactory approach. In HPSG
there are some possible analyses that might be proposed, but there are
reasons for supposing that the best analysis is one in which the
preposition is a functor, a non-head selecting a numeral head.
Backward control in Modern Standard Arabic
Authors: Arad Greshler Tali , Melnik Nurit
Published: December 2021

This paper is the third in a series of papers dedicated to the investigation of subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic. It began with Arad Greshler et al.'s (2016) search for obligatory control predicates in the language and continued with Arad Greshler et al.'s (2017) empirical and theoretical investigation of the backward control construction. In this paper we show that Arad Greshler et al.'s (2017) findings and ultimate analysis, which is cast in a transformational framework, can be straightforwardly formalized using the existing principles and tools of HPSG. Our proposed analysis accounts for all the patterns attested with subjunctive complement clauses in Modern Standard Arabic, including instances of control and no-control.