Phrase Structure And The Lexicon

V, ThemelPatients to the lowest specifier of V', and Agents to a position outside the minimal VP. Again, thematic information is encoded in terms of configurational properties. Addressing the issue of phrase structure in another domain, Margaret Speas investigates the status of null pronominal objects in Navajo. Following Rizzi (1986), she assumes that null pronouns must meet both a licensing and an identification condition. More specifically, she demonstrates that distributional restrictions on null pronominal objects in Navajo can be explained if it is assumed that null objects obey the identification condition expressed by the Generalized Control Rule of Huang (1984). Distinguishing three types of null objects, she argues that relevant licensing condition on two subtypes of null objects involves rich agreement. However, it appears that there are languages lacking rich agreement but with pro in object position. Speas accounts for these phenomena by a rule of economy of projection. A second series of papers is concerned with the way in which functional categories derive aspects of sentential interpretation. Three issues in this research program are investigated here: external arguments as arguments of functional projections (Kratzer), the specificity interpretation of clitics (Sportiche), and the interpretation of tense (Stowell). In all three cases, phrase structure is put to use to derive interpretive effects. Angelika Kratzer proposes that external arguments are not part of the verb.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism).

One of the few scholarly attempts to reconcile a generatively-based approach to the structure of the lexicon with the cognitive approach of Cognitive Grammar

This book explores licensing theory and its implications for a theory of syntax. It brings together a series of new papers which focus on developing a constrained set of licensing mechanisms relating elements in a syntactic representation, and on the different properties of lexical and functional heads as licenses of complements and specifiers. Directed toward an audience of syntacticians and those interested in the applications of syntactic theory, it demonstrates the expanding explanatory parts of this approach to syntax.Key Features* Principles of phrase structure, focusing on X-bar theory and category projection* Licensing of syntactic elements, including adjuncts* Properties of functional and lexical categories* Thematic relations and argument structure

The book presents a new perspective on clausal syntax and its interactions with lexical and discourse function information by analysing Hungarian sentences. It also demonstrates ways in which grammar engineering implementations can provide insights into how complex linguistic processes interact. It analyses the most important phenomena in the preverbal domain of Hungarian finite declarative and wh-clauses: sentence structure, operators, verbal modifiers, negation and copula constructions. Based on the results of earlier generative linguistic research, it presents the fundamental empirical generalisations and offers a comparative critical assessment of the most salient analyses in a variety of generative linguistic models from its own perspective. It argues for a lexical approach to the relevant phenomena and develops the first comprehensive analysis in the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. It also reports the successful implementation of crucial aspects of this analysis in the computational linguistic platform of the theory, Xerox Linguistic Environment.

This book focuses on the linguistic representation of temporality in the verbal domain and its interaction with the syntax and semantics of verbs, arguments, and modifiers. Leading scholars explore the division of labour between syntax, compositional semantics, and lexical semantics in the encoding of event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with events. They examine the interface between event structure and the systems with which it interacts, including the interface between event structure and the syntactic realization of arguments and modifiers. Deploying a variety of frameworks and theoretical perspectives they consider central issues and questions in the field, among them whether argument-structure is specified in the lexical entries of verbs or syntactically constructed so that syntactic position determines thematic status; whether the hierarchical structure evidenced in argument structure find parallels in sign language; should the relation between members of an alternation pair, such as the causative-inchoative alternation, be understood lexically or derivationally; and the role of syntactic category in determining the configuration of argument structure.