Overtly anaphoric control in type logical grammar

In this paper we analyse anaphoric pronouns in control sentences and we investigate the implications of these kinds of sentences in relation to the Propositional Theory versus Property Theory question. For these purposes, we invoke the categorial calculus with limited contraction, a conservative extension of Lambek calculus that builds contraction into the logical rules for a customized slash type-constructor.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Copy raising and perception

We examine copy raising in two closely related Germanic languages, English and Swedish, and offer a formal analysis of its syntax and semantics. We develop a new event semantics analysis of copy raising. In addition to augmenting the body of empirical data on copy raising, we show that copy raising yields novel insights into a number of key theoretical issues, in particular: language and perception, the theory of arguments and thematic roles, and the broader semantics of control and raising. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Response to David Adger's 'Remarks on minimalist feature theory and move"

David Adger raises some interesting issues and makes several valuable points in his 'Remarks on Minimalist feature theory and Move' (henceforth MFTM), a response to our review article 'Symptomatic imperfections' (henceforth SI) in this journal (Asudeh and Toivonen 2006), which was in part a review of his Core syntax (Adger 2003). In this response, we address some of the points in MFTM. We would also like to set the record straight about some points in SI which we feel have been misrepresented. In several instances, MFTM argues against claims that were not made in SI. Whatever the independent merit of these arguments, we do not wish to defend viewpoints we did not propose in the first place. © 2006 Cambridge University Press

A modular approach to evidentiality

Evidentiality is a well-established morphosyntactic category that has also received a lot of attention in the semantics literature over the last 15+ years. However, it has received scant attention in Lexical-Functional Grammar, despite the fact that LFG’s modular Correspondence Architecture is particularly well-suited to illuminating the phenomenon. In particular, the theory makes possible an account of evidentiality that does not merely conflate the semantic category of evidentiality with its morphosyntactic realization, but which also does not create false equivalences between languages that mark evidentiality morphosyntactically and those that do not. In other words, it enables an account in which we can differentiate languages that morphosyntactically mark evidentiality from those that do not. Yet at the same time it also allows us to capture semantic commonalities between morphosyntactically marked evidentials and expression of evidentiality in languages, like English, that do demonstrate semantic evidentiality, but which do not have a dedicated morphosyntactic paradigm of evidentials. In this paper, we will first consider languages with obligatory, fully grammaticalized evidentiality. We then turn to English as an example of a languages that has the means to express evidentiality, but without fully grammaticalized or obligatory marking

Constructions with lexical integrity: Templates as the lexicon-syntax interface

LFG differs from Construction Grammar (CG) in assuming a strict separation between the lexicon and the syntax. The LFG architecture and the principle of Lexical Integrity dictate that fully inflected words are ‘inserted’ one by one into the c-structure, which does not seem to permit the blurring of the boundary between words and larger syntactic units that CG advocates. This paper addresses the question of how the intuitions behind constructions (in the CG sense) can be formalized within LFG, without rejection of the foundational assumptions behind the LFG framework. The key insight in our approach is the use of LFG templates (Dalrymple et al. 2004, Crouch et al. 2008) to factor out grammatical information in such a way that it can be invoked either by lexical items or by specific c-structure rules. C-structure rules that invoke specific templates are thus the equivalent of constructions in our approach, but Lexical Integrity and the separation of lexicon and syntax are preserved

Constructions with Lexical Integrity

Construction Grammar holds that unpredictable form-meaning combinations are not restricted in size. In particular, there may be phrases that have particular meanings that are not predictable from the words that they contain, but which are nonetheless not purely idiosyncratic. In addressing this observation, some construction grammarians have not only weakened the word/phrase distinction, but also denied the lexicon/grammar distinction. In this paper, we consider the word/phrase and lexicon/grammar distinction in light of Lexical-Functional Grammar and its Lexical Integrity Principle. We show that it is not necessary to remove the word/phrase distinction or the lexicon/grammar distinction to capture constructional effects, although we agree that there are important generalizations involving constructions of all sizes that must be captured at both syntactic and semantic levels. We use LFG’s templates, bundles of grammatical descriptions, to factor out grammatical information in such a way that it can be invoked either by words or by construction-specific phrase structure rules. Phrase structure rules that invoke specific templates are thus the equivalent of phrasal constructions in our approach, but Lexical Integrity and the separation of word and phrase are preserved. Constructional effects are captured by systematically allowing words and phrases to contribute comparable information to LFG’s level of functional structure; this is just a generalization of LFG’s usual assumption that “morphology competes with syntax” (Bresnan, 2001)

With lexical integrity

Müller and Wechsler (MW) contrast lexical (lexicalist) and phrasal (constructional) approaches and conclude that a lexical approach is to be preferred. They present a careful review of the arguments that have been presented for both positions, and they also introduce several new arguments for the lexicalist position. The target article is commendable in many respects, including its thoroughness. However, their representation of our position on Lexical Integrity and constructions is not accurate (Asudeh, Dalrymple, and Toivonen 2008, 2013),1 and they use too broad a brush in painting their picture of Germanic motion constructions; sections 2 and 3 below deal respectively with these issues

Lexical-Functional Grammar

Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) is a theory of generative grammar. The goal is to explain the native speaker's knowledge of language by specifying a grammar that models the speaker's knowledge explicitly and which is distinct from the computational mechanisms that constitute the language processor. This chapter is organized as follows. Section 15.2 discusses the two syntactic structures posited by LFG: constituent structure (c-structure) and functional structure (f-structure). LFG distinguishes between formal structures and structural descriptions that wellformed structures must satisfy. The structural descriptions are sets of constraints. A constraint is a statement that is either true or false of a structure. Section 15.3 provides an overview of the most important sorts of constraints. Section 17.4 explains how c-structure and f-structure are related by str