525 research outputs found
Paracompositionality, MWEs and Argument Substitution
Multi-word expressions, verb-particle constructions, idiomatically combining
phrases, and phrasal idioms have something in common: not all of their elements
contribute to the argument structure of the predicate implicated by the
expression.
Radically lexicalized theories of grammar that avoid string-, term-, logical
form-, and tree-writing, and categorial grammars that avoid wrap operation,
make predictions about the categories involved in verb-particles and phrasal
idioms. They may require singleton types, which can only substitute for one
value, not just for one kind of value. These types are asymmetric: they can be
arguments only. They also narrowly constrain the kind of semantic value that
can correspond to such syntactic categories. Idiomatically combining phrases do
not subcategorize for singleton types, and they exploit another locally
computable and compositional property of a correspondence, that every syntactic
expression can project its head word. Such MWEs can be seen as empirically
realized categorial possibilities, rather than lacuna in a theory of
lexicalizable syntactic categories.Comment: accepted version (pre-final) for 23rd Formal Grammar Conference,
August 2018, Sofi
Type-driven semantic interpretation and feature dependencies in R-LFG
Once one has enriched LFG's formal machinery with the linear logic mechanisms
needed for semantic interpretation as proposed by Dalrymple et. al., it is
natural to ask whether these make any existing components of LFG redundant. As
Dalrymple and her colleagues note, LFG's f-structure completeness and coherence
constraints fall out as a by-product of the linear logic machinery they propose
for semantic interpretation, thus making those f-structure mechanisms
redundant. Given that linear logic machinery or something like it is
independently needed for semantic interpretation, it seems reasonable to
explore the extent to which it is capable of handling feature structure
constraints as well.
R-LFG represents the extreme position that all linguistically required
feature structure dependencies can be captured by the resource-accounting
machinery of a linear or similiar logic independently needed for semantic
interpretation, making LFG's unification machinery redundant. The goal is to
show that LFG linguistic analyses can be expressed as clearly and perspicuously
using the smaller set of mechanisms of R-LFG as they can using the much larger
set of unification-based mechanisms in LFG: if this is the case then we will
have shown that positing these extra f-structure mechanisms is not
linguistically warranted.Comment: 30 pages, to appear in the the ``Glue Language'' volume edited by
Dalrymple, uses tree-dvips, ipa, epic, eepic, fullnam
Comparing and evaluating extended Lambek calculi
Lambeks Syntactic Calculus, commonly referred to as the Lambek calculus, was
innovative in many ways, notably as a precursor of linear logic. But it also
showed that we could treat our grammatical framework as a logic (as opposed to
a logical theory). However, though it was successful in giving at least a basic
treatment of many linguistic phenomena, it was also clear that a slightly more
expressive logical calculus was needed for many other cases. Therefore, many
extensions and variants of the Lambek calculus have been proposed, since the
eighties and up until the present day. As a result, there is now a large class
of calculi, each with its own empirical successes and theoretical results, but
also each with its own logical primitives. This raises the question: how do we
compare and evaluate these different logical formalisms? To answer this
question, I present two unifying frameworks for these extended Lambek calculi.
Both are proof net calculi with graph contraction criteria. The first calculus
is a very general system: you specify the structure of your sequents and it
gives you the connectives and contractions which correspond to it. The calculus
can be extended with structural rules, which translate directly into graph
rewrite rules. The second calculus is first-order (multiplicative
intuitionistic) linear logic, which turns out to have several other,
independently proposed extensions of the Lambek calculus as fragments. I will
illustrate the use of each calculus in building bridges between analyses
proposed in different frameworks, in highlighting differences and in helping to
identify problems.Comment: Empirical advances in categorial grammars, Aug 2015, Barcelona,
Spain. 201
Two Types of Complex Predicate Formation: Japanese Passive and Potential Verbs
PACLIC 21 / Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea / November 1-3, 200
A Frobenius Algebraic Analysis for Parasitic Gaps
The interpretation of parasitic gaps is an ostensible case of non-linearity
in natural language composition. Existing categorial analyses, both in the
typelogical and in the combinatory traditions, rely on explicit forms of
syntactic copying. We identify two types of parasitic gapping where the
duplication of semantic content can be confined to the lexicon. Parasitic gaps
in adjuncts are analysed as forms of generalized coordination with a
polymorphic type schema for the head of the adjunct phrase. For parasitic gaps
affecting arguments of the same predicate, the polymorphism is associated with
the lexical item that introduces the primary gap. Our analysis is formulated in
terms of Lambek calculus extended with structural control modalities. A
compositional translation relates syntactic types and derivations to the
interpreting compact closed category of finite dimensional vector spaces and
linear maps with Frobenius algebras over it. When interpreted over the
necessary semantic spaces, the Frobenius algebras provide the tools to model
the proposed instances of lexical polymorphism.Comment: SemSpace 2019, to appear in Journal of Applied Logic
Interaction Grammars
Interaction Grammar (IG) is a grammatical formalism based on the notion of
polarity. Polarities express the resource sensitivity of natural languages by
modelling the distinction between saturated and unsaturated syntactic
structures. Syntactic composition is represented as a chemical reaction guided
by the saturation of polarities. It is expressed in a model-theoretic framework
where grammars are constraint systems using the notion of tree description and
parsing appears as a process of building tree description models satisfying
criteria of saturation and minimality
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