An HPSG approach to Welsh unbounded dependencies

Welsh is a language in which unbounded dependency constructions involve both gaps and resumptive pronouns (RPs). Gaps and RPs appear in disjoint sets of environments. Otherwise, however, they are quite similar. This suggests that they involve the same mechanism, and in HPSG that they involve the SLASH feature. It is possible to provide an analysis in which RPs are associated with the SLASH feature but are also the ordinary pronouns which they appear to be

An HPSG Approach to Negation in Libyan Arabic

Negation in Libyan Arabic, more precisely in the Arabic of Western Libya, including the Western mountains and the Tripoli area, involves a variety of complexities. It is marked on a number of different elements, it interacts in an important way with n-words and negative polarity items, and the copula has special present tense negative forms. In this paper we will set out the facts and then show how they can be accommodated within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we look at negation on verbs and distinguish between a strong form and a weak form. In section 3, we consider negative forms of the copula, and in section 4, we look at other negative-marked words. Then, in section 5, we outline an analysis, providing relevant lexical descriptions, syntactic structures, and an account of weak negation. In section 6, we introduce a further restriction and show how it can be accounted for. Finally, in section 7, we summarize the paper

Non-restrictive Relative Clauses, Ellipsis and Anaphora

Non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRCs) can modify constituents which undergo `pragmatic enrichment' when they appear in answers to questions. For example, in an interchange like: `A: What did Jo think? B: That you should say nothing, which is surprising.' What B says is surprising is that `Jo thinks ...' On the face of it, this might seem problematic for approaches to NRRCs which assume `syntactic integration' and to support an `orphan' analysis, where NRRCs are combined with purely conceptual representations. In this paper we examine a range of elliptical and anaphoric phenomena, and show that this conclusion is misplaced. In fact, the phenomena argue strongly in favour of a syntactically integrated analysis

Auxiliary-Stranding Relative Clauses

A little discussed feature of English are non-restrictive relative clauses in which the antecedent is normally not an NP and the gap follows an auxiliary, as in Kim will sing, which Lee won?t. These relative clauses resemble clauses with auxiliary complement ellipsis or fronting. There are a variety of analyses that might be proposed, but there are reasons for thinking that the best analysis is one where which is a nominal filler associated with a gap which is generally non-nominal: a filler-gap mismatch analysis in other words

An Approach to English Comparative Correlatives

Recent syntactic theory has highlighted the importance of peripheral constructions such as the comparative correlative construction. This construction involves a pair of filler-gap constructions with unusual properties, where the first is a subordinate clause and the second a main clause. The construction has a number of related constructions. A version of HPSG, which assumes hierarchies of phrase types, can provide satisfactory analyses both for the comparative correlative construction and for the related constructions. The two clauses in the construction can be analysed as non standard head-filler phrases differing from standard head-filler phrases in certain respects. The construction as a whole can be analyzed as a non-standard head-adjunct phrase, in which the head and the phrase have different categories