Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar

by Edited by Robert D. Levine , Georgia M. Green

• ISBN13: 9780521651073
• ISBN10: 0521651077
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book, originally published in 1999, explores a wide variety of theoretically central issues in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), a major theory of syntactic representation, particularly in the domain of natural language computation. HPSG is a strongly lexicon-driven theory, like several others on the scene, but unlike the others it also relies heavily on an explicit assignment of linguistic objects to membership in a hierarchically organised network of types, where constraints associated with any given type are inherited by all of its subtypes. This theoretical architecture allows HPSG considerable flexibility within the confines of a highly restrictive, mathematically explicit formalism, requiring no derivational machinery and invoking only a single level of syntactic representation. The separate chapters consider a variety of problematic phenomena in German, Japanese and English and suggest important extensions of, and revisions to, the picture of HPSG.

Table of Contents

Introduction Georgia M. Green and Robert D. Levine

1. The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives Christopher Manning, Ivan Sag and Masayo Iida

2. A syntax and semantics for purposive adjuncts in HPSG Michael Johnston

3. On lexicalist treatments of Japanese causatives Takao Gunji

4. 'Modal flip' and partial Verb Phrase fronting in German Kathryn L. Baker

5. A lexical comment on a syntactic topic Kazuhiko Fukushima

6. Agreement and the Syntax-Morphology Interface in HPSG Andreas Kathol

7. Partial VP and split NP topicalization in German: an HPSG analysisErhard W. Hinrichs and Tsuneko Nakazawa.