Exceptive constructions: A Dependency-based Analysis

International audienceThe goal of this paper is to provide a description of the syntax of exceptive constructions within a dependency framework. These constructions are introduced in English by the markers except, but, except for, apart from, other than, etc. Examining their syntactic properties across a variety of languages shows that they imply two main types of constructions: The paradigmatic-EC and the hypotactic-EC. The first type shares many properties with coordination, and it can be integrated into the paradigmatic lists/piles phenomena in which two segments of the utterance pile up on the same syntactic position and whose most famous case is coordination

Les constructions exceptives vues comme des listes paradigmatiques : à propos de la syntaxe de sauf, excepté, hormis… en français

International audienceExceptive constructions considered as paradigmatic lists: on the syntax of sauf, excepté, hormis… in French. We propose in this article a syntactic description of exceptive constructions (EC) in French which takes into consideration the phenomenological diversity in this construction resulting from the variations of the markers involved. We suggest a classification of ECs into two major categories with dissimilar syntactic behaviors: the paradigmatic-ECs, which are syntactically related to coordination and the hypotactic-ECs, which are contrarily related to subordination. We will focus our analysis on the markers sauf, excepté, hormis, etc. and analyze them as particular case of paradigmatic lists/piles, in which two segments of the utterance pile up on the same syntactic position and whose most famous case is coordination. This analysis is different from the one generally associated with these markers in French grammars and dictionaries which consider them as prepositions.Nous proposons dans cet article une description syntaxique des constructions exceptives (CE) en français qui tient compte de la diversité phénoménologique de ces constructions découlant de la diversité des marqueurs mis en jeu. Nous proposons une classification des CE en deux classes majeures à comportements syntaxiques distincts : les CE-paradigmatiques qui s'apparentent, du point de vue syntaxique, à la coordination et les CE-hypotactiques qui relèvent au contraire de la subordination. Nous situerons notre analyse des marqueurs sauf, excepté, hormis, etc. dans le cadre des listes/entassements paradigmatiques, constructions dans lesquelles deux éléments occupent la même position syntaxique et dont le cas le plus connu est la coordination. Cette analyse s'éloigne de celle généralement associée à ces marqueurs dans les grammaires et les dictionnaires français qui les traitent comme des prépositions

The syntax of exceptives and exclamatives in Arabic

This thesis examines the syntax of exceptive constructions and exclamative constructions in Arabic. The study of both types of constructions is significant as it raises questions for case theory, word order, agreement, negation, and the syntax-semantics interface. However, contra previous studies, this thesis argues that both exceptives and exclamatives are nonsentential phrases (i.e., ExP ‘Exceptive Phrases’ and ExclP ‘Exclamative Phrases’), and there is no evidence to analyze them as TPs or CPs; in fact, there is compelling counter-evidence. The morphosyntactic complexities in Arabic exceptives cast doubts on the adequacy of previous proposals in the literature and lead the thesis to argue for more principled accounts in which exceptive particles are the lexicalization of the functional head Ex which exists in two distinct environments. The first involves the full-fledged exP in which there are two different sources for theta-role and case assignment, and the second includes the functionally impoverished ExP in which one single source is available for both theta-role and case assignment. The thesis explains that the Ex-complement is assigned the accusative case only when the ExP is projected as a full-fledged exP. In the functionally impoverished ExP, a particular case is assigned on both the ExP-associate and the ExP-complement by PF-concord mechanism (i.e., Morphological Feature Copying). Furthermore, the thesis shows that free exceptives cannot include any maximal projection and cannot have greater distributional freedom than connected exceptives, contra previous studies. In brief, the thesis argues against an analysis in the light of coordination and ellipsis and maintains that Arabic exceptives are nonsententials. In a similar vein, the thesis argues that Arabic exclamatives (Excls) are also nonsententials; they are largely temporally deictic to the here and now, and they are anchored by the context rather than Tense (i.e., they lack the TP layer). Based on this assumption, the thesis argues that Excls are asymmetrical small clauses projected as ExclPs. This analysis accounts for the peculiarities and intricacies of the three types of Arabic Excls (i.e., Wh-Excls, vocative Excls, and verbal Excls) such as their inflexible word order, case alternation on the referent, and the presence of some particles and affixes although not semantically required. The analysis of Excls as nonsententials is argued to be more adequate as it is more closely associated with the defining properties of Excls (i.e., evaluation and referentiality), and also to be more convincing since even the presence of the copula kān ‘was’ cannot be considered as counterevidence. The thesis argues that it is the realization of the Excl head, rather than an auxiliary verb in V or T, as evidenced by its distinctive semantic and distributional properties

Phrasal and Clausal Exceptive-Additive Constructions Crosslinguistically

This work focuses on the syntax and semantics of exceptive and exceptive-additive constructions across different languages. Exceptive-additive constructions are constructions that can be interpreted as ‘except for’ and ‘in addition to’ depending on the context they are used in. The meaning an exceptive-additive construction gets depends on the other functional elements in a sentence. Those constructions get the exceptive meaning when they are put together with universal quantifiers and they get the additive meaning with existentials, wh-words and focus associates. In each context only one of the meanings is available. This work is the first systematic study of the syntactic and semantic properties of such constructions across serval languages: English, Russian, Turkish, Hindi, Persian, Bulgarian. This works offers a formal theory that explains how exceptive-additive constructions can mean two different things and why are the two readings distributed the way they are. According to this proposal, the meaning of an exceptive-additive construction is contributed by two operators that can take scope with respect to each other. Their scope determines the resulting meaning. In every case both the additive and the exceptive meaning are generated. However, an attempt to generate the additive meaning with a universal quantifier or the exceptive meaning with a wh-question results in a meaning that is ill-formed and for that reason is not available. This work also adds novel observations supporting the claim that the syntactic structure the standard semantic theory of exceptives assumes is incorrect for some exceptive constructions. In many languages what follows the word except is a reduced clause and not a DP. This work proposes the first compositional semantic treatment of clausal exceptives. According to this proposal a clausal exceptive contributes quantification over possible situations and provides the restriction for this quantification. The proposed account captures the known inferences exceptives contribute and the restrictions on their use. This work also describes clausal exceptive-additive constructions in Persian and Bulgarian and extends the account of the exceptive-additive ambiguity to clausal cases. Key words: exceptive constructions, clausal exceptives, phrasal exceptives, exceptive-additive ambiguit

Vector Semantics

This open access book introduces Vector semantics, which links the formal theory of word vectors to the cognitive theory of linguistics. The computational linguists and deep learning researchers who developed word vectors have relied primarily on the ever-increasing availability of large corpora and of computers with highly parallel GPU and TPU compute engines, and their focus is with endowing computers with natural language capabilities for practical applications such as machine translation or question answering. Cognitive linguists investigate natural language from the perspective of human cognition, the relation between language and thought, and questions about conceptual universals, relying primarily on in-depth investigation of language in use. In spite of the fact that these two schools both have ‘linguistics’ in their name, so far there has been very limited communication between them, as their historical origins, data collection methods, and conceptual apparatuses are quite different. Vector semantics bridges the gap by presenting a formal theory, cast in terms of linear polytopes, that generalizes both word vectors and conceptual structures, by treating each dictionary definition as an equation, and the entire lexicon as a set of equations mutually constraining all meanings

An information-based theory of topics and grammatical relations.

This dissertation proposes a formal semantic characterization of topichood and an account of the relationship between Topic and core Grammatical Relations. The theoretical framework employed is a form of HPSG (Pollard & Sag (1994)). The notion of Topic has been widely invoked in descriptions both of sentence structure and of intersentential discourse relations. Despite this a formal characterization of this notion is lacking in the literature. It is proposed here that Topics should be seen as predication targets at an underlying semantic level, and that the Topic-Comment relation is analogous to that between possible worlds (situations) and the propositional contents which they support. A Topic is interpreted as a point whose location has to be fixed in some conceptual space formed by the Comments, and this metaphor is extended to the overall Topic of a discourse sequence. Formally, it is suggested that Topics and Comments can be treated as the points and open sets respectively of a topological space. It is claimed that this captures well-known semantic restrictions on which NPs can be made Topics of a sentence. The proposed treatment is also extended to intersentential Topic relations. This account of Topics is made the basis of a revision to the relational hierarchy, which underlies many relational theories of grammar. It is proposed that basic predicates in language are maximally binary and sensitive to topichood, their initial Subject being the default predication target or Topic. Predicates of greater valency are treated as composite, and the effects of the relational hierarchy are derived from rules governing the process of composition. A number of cross-linguistic phenomena are examined which bear on the relationship between Topics and core Grammatical Relations, including the double Subject constructions characteristic of Japanese and other East Asian languages, the clitic doubling of Objects which is an areal phenomenon of the Balkans, and the so called "Object agreement" of Amharic. Finally a chapter is devoted to the nature of Indirect Objects, which are argued (against standard views) to rank above Direct Objects. It is claimed that with this approach an important part of the relational basis of syntax can be derived, without losing descriptive accuracy, from the proposed treatment of predication

Vector Semantics

This open access book introduces Vector semantics, which links the formal theory of word vectors to the cognitive theory of linguistics. The computational linguists and deep learning researchers who developed word vectors have relied primarily on the ever-increasing availability of large corpora and of computers with highly parallel GPU and TPU compute engines, and their focus is with endowing computers with natural language capabilities for practical applications such as machine translation or question answering. Cognitive linguists investigate natural language from the perspective of human cognition, the relation between language and thought, and questions about conceptual universals, relying primarily on in-depth investigation of language in use. In spite of the fact that these two schools both have ‘linguistics’ in their name, so far there has been very limited communication between them, as their historical origins, data collection methods, and conceptual apparatuses are quite different. Vector semantics bridges the gap by presenting a formal theory, cast in terms of linear polytopes, that generalizes both word vectors and conceptual structures, by treating each dictionary definition as an equation, and the entire lexicon as a set of equations mutually constraining all meanings