Syntax inside the grammar

This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions on the relation of syntax to other aspects of grammar and linguistics more generally, including studies on language acquisition, variation and change, and syntactic interfaces. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax ranging from the core verbal domain to higher, propositional domains

Syntactic architecture and its consequences I

This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions on the relation of syntax to other aspects of grammar and linguistics more generally, including studies on language acquisition, variation and change, and syntactic interfaces. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax ranging from the core verbal domain to higher, propositional domains. This book is complemented by volume II available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/276 and volume III available at https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/277

Treebank-based acquisition of Chinese LFG resources for parsing and generation

This thesis describes a treebank-based approach to automatically acquire robust,wide-coverage Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) resources for Chinese parsing and generation, which is part of a larger project on the rapid construction of deep, large-scale, constraint-based, multilingual grammatical resources. I present an application-oriented LFG analysis for Chinese core linguistic phenomena and (in cooperation with PARC) develop a gold-standard dependency-bank of Chinese f-structures for evaluation. Based on the Penn Chinese Treebank, I design and implement two architectures for inducing Chinese LFG resources, one annotation-based and the other dependency conversion-based. I then apply the f-structure acquisition algorithm together with external, state-of-the-art parsers to parsing new text into "proto" f-structures. In order to convert "proto" f-structures into "proper" f-structures or deep dependencies, I present a novel Non-Local Dependency (NLD) recovery algorithm using subcategorisation frames and f-structure paths linking antecedents and traces in NLDs extracted from the automatically-built LFG f-structure treebank. Based on the grammars extracted from the f-structure annotated treebank, I develop a PCFG-based chart generator and a new n-gram based pure dependency generator to realise Chinese sentences from LFG f-structures. The work reported in this thesis is the first effort to scale treebank-based, probabilistic Chinese LFG resources from proof-of-concept research to unrestricted, real text. Although this thesis concentrates on Chinese and LFG, many of the methodologies, e.g. the acquisition of predicate-argument structures, NLD resolution and the PCFG- and dependency n-gram-based generation models, are largely language and formalism independent and should generalise to diverse languages as well as to labelled bilexical dependency representations other than LFG

First-person singular pronouns in Japanese: How do they work in conversation?

Subjectivity-- expression of our thoughts and emotions-- is the essence of everyday conversation (e.g., Benveniste, 1971; Scheibman, 2002). Previous studies have found that subjectivity is expressed in a variety of linguistic items in a wide range of languages. First-person singular (1SG) pronouns may be one of the most fundamental linguistic items for expressing subjectivity because they directly reflect the speaker, who is the owner of subjective point of view. This dissertation explores the use of 1SG pronouns in Japanese utilizing the analysis of naturally occurring conversational data. In Japanese, personal pronouns including first person are used infrequently, especially in spoken language, and the first-person reference is often unexpressed (what is known as pronoun ellipsis). Although they may look odd or ill-formed from the perspective of languages that have rigid syntactic structures such as English, utterances with unexpressed elements can be considered to be the default\u27 in Japanese conversation. Because of the variability of expression of 1SG pronouns, it is assumed that they add some pragmatic functions when they are explicitly expressed. Data analyses of 1SG pronouns taken from naturally occurring conversation revealed that the use is often motivated by various discourse-pragmatic functions such as expressing subjectivity, introducing a topic, and holding the floor rather than referential necessity. The speaker decides to use 1SG pronouns or not to use them in order to achieve his or her particular communicative goals. First-person singular pronouns in Japanese are a versatile linguistic item beyond so-called pronouns that simply replace nouns. This strongly suggests that 1SG pronouns are essentially different from English I, and will lead us to reconsider the categorization of 1SG pronouns in Japanese. Furthermore, the use and nonuse of 1SG pronouns in Japanese has important educational implications. In order to teach linguistic items that are not syntactically required but are used by pragmatic motivations, I suggest that educators seek more effective teaching methods based on authentic language use.\u2

Logical Form in the Second Language: An Investigation into Quantification in Interlanguage

In coping with variability in morphological production in L2 acquisition, which represents a challenge for the parameter (re-)setting theories, Lardiere (2008) proposed the feature reassembly hypothesis in which sequential difficulty in L2 acquisition of morpho-syntactic features is captured by the processes of (re-)assembly and mapping of features onto their morphological realizations. Slabakova (2009, 2013) incorporated Lardiere’s proposal in establishing a scale of difficulty in learning semantic properties (e.g. definiteness) which is based on whether reassembly is needed and whether the universal meaning is obtained by overt morphology or context (See also Ramchand & Svenonius, 2008). In considering the truth-conditional aspect of meaning, the feature-based framework is not powerful enough to account for the variability of interpretations that L2 learners come to learn. Take as an example the acquisition of English comparatives by Japanese L2 learners. We discuss the L2 acquisition of a special type of syntaxsemantics mismatch in which in which a certain meaningprimitive (i.e., comparative and tense) is expressed using different truth conditions in the native and target language

On some aspects of the syntax of object Experiencers in Polish and English

Główny problem badawczy rozważany w niniejszej monografii stanowi opis składniowy argumentu czasownikowego w postaci tzw. Eksperiencera, który cechuje predykaty psychologiczne. Istotne dla pracy są zwłaszcza te predykaty psychologiczne, które jako dopełnienia wymagają użycia argumentu typu Eksperiencer oznaczonego przypadkiem gramatycznym Biernika (aczkolwiek w dalszej części pracy autor odwołuje się również do argumentów typu Eksperiencer oznaczonych przypadkiem Celownika). Choć w literaturze przedmiotu dość często przyjmuje się, że argument typu Eksperiencer różni się swym statusem składniowym od typowego dopełnienia, to analizując zachowanie Eksperiencerów w języku polskim (oraz angielskim), okazuje się, że brak wystarczających dowodów na to, by zaakceptować szczególny status tych argumentów. Celem pracy jest wykazanie, że Eksperiencer generowany w pozycji dopełnienia wykazuje te same właściwości co argumenty innego typu generowane w tej pozycji

Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar

Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is a nontransformational theory of linguistic structure, first developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan, which assumes that language is best described and modeled by parallel structures representing different facets of linguistic organization and information, related by means of functional correspondences. This volume has five parts. Part I, Overview and Introduction, provides an introduction to core syntactic concepts and representations. Part II, Grammatical Phenomena, reviews LFG work on a range of grammatical phenomena or constructions. Part III, Grammatical modules and interfaces, provides an overview of LFG work on semantics, argument structure, prosody, information structure, and morphology. Part IV, Linguistic disciplines, reviews LFG work in the disciplines of historical linguistics, learnability, psycholinguistics, and second language learning. Part V, Formal and computational issues and applications, provides an overview of computational and formal properties of the theory, implementations, and computational work on parsing, translation, grammar induction, and treebanks. Part VI, Language families and regions, reviews LFG work on languages spoken in particular geographical areas or in particular language families. The final section, Comparing LFG with other linguistic theories, discusses LFG work in relation to other theoretical approaches