DOCSLIB.ORG

Treatment of Multiword Expressions and Compounds in Bulgarian

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Treatment of Multiword Expressions and Compounds in Bulgarian Petya Osenova and Kiril Simov Linguistic Modelling Deparment, IICT-BAS Acad. G. Bonchev 25A, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria [email protected] and [email protected] Abstract 2012)), we will adopt the Multiword Expressions The paper shows that catena represen- classification, presented in (Sag et al., 2001). They tation together with valence information divide them into two groups: lexicalized phrases can provide a good way of encoding and institutionalized phrases. The former are fur- Multiword Expressions (beyond idioms). ther subdivided into fixed-expressions, semi-fixed It also discusses a strategy for mapping expressions and syntactically-flexible expressions. noun/verb compounds with their counter- Fixed expressions are said to be fully lexicalized part syntactic phrases. The data on Mul- and undergoing neither morphosyntactic variation tiword Expression comes from BulTree- nor internal modification. Semi-fixed expressions Bank, while the data on compounds comes have a fixed word order, but “undergo some degree from a morphological dictionary of Bul- of lexical variation, e.g. in the form of inflection, garian. variation in reflexive form, and determiner selec- tion” (non-decomposable idioms, proper names). 1 Introduction Syntactically-flexible expressions show more vari- Our work is based on the annotation of Multi- ation in their word order (light verb constructions, word Expressions (MWE) in the Bulgarian tree- decomposable idioms). We follow the understand- bank — BulTreeBank (Simov et al., 2004). We ing of (O’Grady, 1998) that MWEs have their in- use this representation for parsing and analysis of ternal syntactic structure which needs to be rep- compounds. BulTreeBank exists in two formats: resented in the lexicon as well as in the sentence HPSG-based (original - constituent-based with analysis. Such a mapping would provide a mech- head annotation and grammatical relations) and anism for accessing the literal meaning of MWE Dependency-based (converted from the HPSG- when necessary. The inclusion of the compounds based format). In both of them the representations into the MWE classification raises additional chal- of the various kinds of Multiword Expressions is lenges. As it was mentioned, an important ques- an important problem. We need a mechanism for tion is the prediction of the compound semantics connecting the MWE in the lexicon with their ac- formed on the basis of the related phrases contain- tual usages within the sentences. As an interesting ing verb + dependents. case of MWE at the interface of morphology and In this paper we discuss the usage of the same syntax we consider Compounds. They are usually formal instrument - catena - for their representa- derived from several lexical units, have an internal tion and analysis. Catena is a path in the syntac- structure with a specified derivation model and se- tic or morphemic analysis that is continuous in the mantics. In the paper we are especially interested vertical dimension. Its potential is discussed fur- in the mapping among deverbal compounds and ther in the text. The paper is structured as follows: their counterpart syntactic phrases. In the next section a brief review of previous works Since there is no broadly accepted standard on catena is presented. In Section 3 a typology of for Multiword Expressions (see about the vari- the Miltiword Expressions in BulTreeBank is out- ous classifications in (Villavicencio and Kordoni, lined. Section 4 considers possible approaches for consistent analyses of MWE. Section 5 introduces In this paper we consider catena as a unit of the relation of syntax with compound morphology. syntax and morphology1. In a syntactic or mor- Section 6 concludes the paper. phological tree (constituent or dependency) catena is: Any element (word) or any combination of ele- 2 Related works on catena ments that are continuous in the vertical dimen- sion (y-axis). In syntax it is applied to the id- The notion of catena (chain) was introduced in iosyncratic meaning of all sorts, to the syntax of (O’Grady, 1998) as a mechanism for represent- ellipsis mechanisms (e.g. gapping, stripping, VP- ing the syntactic structure of idioms. He showed ellipsis, pseudogapping, sluicing, answer ellipsis, that for this task there is a need for a definition of comparative deletion), to the syntax of predicate- syntactic patterns that do not coincide with con- argument structures, and to the syntax of discon- stituents. He defines the catena in the following tinuities (topicalization, wh-fronting, scrambling, way: The words A, B, and C (order irrelevant) extraposition, etc.). In morphology it is applied form a chain if and only if A immediately dom- to the bracketing paradox problem. It provides inates B and C, or if and only if A immediately a mechanism for a (partial) set of interconnected dominates B and B immediately dominates C. In syntactic or morphological relations. The set is recent years the notion of catena revived again and partial in cases when the elements of the catena it was applied also to dependency representations. can be extended with additional syntactic or mor- Catena is used successfully for modelling of prob- phological relations to elements outside of the lematic language phenomena. catena. The relations within the catena cannot be (Gross, 2010) presents the problems in syntax changed. and morphology that have led to the introduction These characteristics of catena make it a good of the subconstituent catena level. Constituency- candidate for representing the various types of based analysis faces non-constituent structures in Multiword Expressions in lexicons and treebanks. ellipsis, idioms, verb complexes. In morphol- In the lexicons each MWE represented as a catena ogy the constituent-oriented bracketing paradoxes might specify the potential extension of each ele- have been also introduced ([moral] [philosoph - ment of the catena. As part of the morphemic anal- er] vs. [moral philosoph]-er). Catena is viewed ysis of compounds, catena is also a good candidate as a dependency grammar unit. At the mor- for mapping the elements of the syntactic para- phological level morphemes (affixes) receive their phrase of the compound to its morphemic analy- own nodes forming chains with the roots (such sis. as tenses: has...-(be)en; be...(be)ing, etc.). In (Gross, 2011) the author again advocated his ap- 3 Multiword Expressions in proach on providing a surface-based account of BulTreeBank the non-constituent phenomena via the contribu- In its inception and development phase, the tion of catena. Here the author introduces a no- HPSG-based Treebank adopted the following tion at the morphological level — morph catena. principles: When the MWE is fixed, which Also, he presents the morphological analysis in the is inseparable, with fixed order and can be Meaning-Text Theory framework, where (due to viewed as a part-of-speech, it receives lexical its strata) there is no problem like the one present treatment. This group concerns the multiword in constituency. closed class parts-of-speech: multiword prepo- Apart from linguistic modeling of language sitions, conjunctions, pronouns, adverbs. There phenomena, catena was used in a number of NLP are 1081 occurrences of such multiword closed applications. (Maxwell et al., 2013) presents an class parts-of-speech in the treebank, which makes approach to Information retrieval based on cate- around 1.9% of the token occurrences in the text. nae. The authors consider catena as a mecha- Thus, this group is not problematic. Of course, nism for semantic encoding which overcomes the there are also exceptions. For example, one problems of long-distance paths and elliptical sen- of the multiword indefinite pronouns in Bulgar- tences. The employment of catena in NLP appli- ian shows variation in its ending part: êàêâè- cations is additional motivation for us to use it in òî è äà å/ñà/áèëî (whatever). The varying the modeling of an interface between the valence lexicon, treebank and syntax. 1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catena (linguistics) part is a 3-person-singular-present-tense-auxiliary, as ïîðòôåéë (wallet) or ðîäíèíà (relative), the 3-person-plural-present-tense-auxiliary or its 3- verb takes canonical complements. In the latter person-neuter-singular-past-participle. The semi- cases, verbs like - îáðúùàì ‘to turn’ pay - take fixed expressions (mainly proper names) have only noun - âíèìàíèå ‘attention’ attention - for been interpreted as Multiword Expressions. How- making an idiom - îáðúùàì âíèìàíèå íà íÿ- ever, all the idioms, light verb constructions, etc. êîãî ‘to turn attention to somebody’ pay attention have been treated syntactically. This means that in to somebody. Another example is the verb - âçå- the annotations there is no difference between the ìàì ‘to take’, which combines in such cases with literal and idiomatic meaning of the expression: äóìà ‘word’ - âçåìàì äóìàòà ‘to take the word’ kick the bucket (= kick some object) and kick the take the floor. However, light expressions with bucket (= die). In both cases we indicated that the desemantisized verbs, such as èìàì have or ñòà- verb kick takes its nominal complement. âà happens (èìàì äóìàòà ‘I have the word’ to After some exploration of the treebank, such have the floor or ñòàâà äóìà çà íåùî ‘it happens as the extraction of the valency frames and train- word’ something refers to something)can take nu- ing of statistical parsers, we discovered that the merous semantic classes as dependants. In this present annotations of Multiword Expressions are case we mark the information only on the head of not the most useful ones. In both applications the these Multiword Expressions. In this approach the corresponding generalizations are overloaded with assumption is that the verb posits its requirements specific cases which are not easy to incorporate on its dependants. However, a very detailed va- in more consistent classifications. The group of lency lexicon is required. One problem with this lexically treated POS remained stable. However, approach is when the dependant elements allow the other two groups were reconsidered.
Recommended publications
  • Syncom.Sluicing

    Syncom.Sluicing

    SynCom Case 98 Sluicing Jason Merchant University of Chicago August 2003 Contents 1. Introduction 2. Movement vs. non-movement approaches 3. Theoretical consequences 3.1. Non-movement approaches 3.2. Movement approaches 4. Puzzles and prospects 4.1. Sluicing-COMP generalization puzzles 4.2. Sluicing in non-wh-in-specCP languages 4.3. Multiple sluicing 4.4. Swiping 5. Conclusion References Glossary 1. Introduction Sluicing is the ellipsis phenomenon illustrated in (1), in which the sentential portion of a constituent question is elided, leaving only a wh-phrase remnant. (1) a. Jack bought something, but I don’t know what. b. A: Someone called. B: Really? Who? c. Beth was there, but you’ll never guess who else. d. Jack called, but I don’t know {when/how/why/where from}. e. Sally’s out hunting — guess what! f. A car is parked on the lawn — find out whose. The sluices in (1) should be compared to their non-elliptical counterparts in (2), with which they are synonymous. (2) a. Jack bought something, but I don’t know what he bought. b. A: Someone called. B: Really? Who called? c. Beth was there, but you’ll never guess who else was there. d. Jack called, but I don’t know {when/how/why} he called. e. Sally’s out hunting — guess what she’s out hunting! f. A car is parked on the lawn — find out whose is parked on the lawn. Sluicing appears to be widespread cross-linguistically (unlike VP-ellipsis), and may in fact be found in some form or another in every language (like nominal ellipses, 1 gapping, stripping, and fragment answers).
  • Gapping: in Defense of Deletion

    Gapping: in Defense of Deletion

    Gapping: In Defense of Deletion Elizabeth Coppock Northwestern University 1 Introduction Gapping refers to the following type of construction: (1) [α John likes caviar] and [γ Mary beans]. Typically, Gapping involves two such conjoined clauses, where the second clause contains no pronounced verbal material, as in (1). Following usual terminology, I call the missing material the Gap, the first clause (e.g. α) the antecedent clause, the second clause (e.g. γ) the gapped clause, and the pronounced elements of the gapped clause remnants. Assuming that the Gap is present somehow in the syntax, we have three potential analyses, depending on the nature of the Gap. We may interpret it as (i) a null pro-form, (ii) a deleted element, or (iii) a trace of movement. I immediately rule out possibility (i), following Hankamer and Sag (1976), who argue that Gaps are Surface Anaphors as opposed to Deep Anaphors (i.e. null pro-forms), based on their Island sensitivity and the fact that they require a linguistic antecedent. The second idea (deletion) is as old as the term Gapping. The first detailed investigation of the phenomenon was in Rosss 1967 dissertation, where he coined its name, and gave a deletion analysis. In 1976, Sag suggested that the remnants A'-move out of the gapped clause before deletion, preserving the hypothesis that operations (such as deletion) affect entire constituents. My proposal is essentially Sags, differing significantly only in the assumption that remnants adjoin to VP, rather than at the sentence level, as in (2).1 (2) John likes caviar, and [VP Mary1 [VP beans2 [VP t1 likes t2 ] ] ]].
  • Scrambling As Case-Driven Obligatory Movement

    Scrambling As Case-Driven Obligatory Movement

    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons IRCS Technical Reports Series Institute for Research in Cognitive Science April 1993 Scrambling as Case-Driven Obligatory Movement Young-Suk Lee University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports Lee, Young-Suk, "Scrambling as Case-Driven Obligatory Movement" (1993). IRCS Technical Reports Series. 15. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/15 University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-93-06 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/15 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Scrambling as Case-Driven Obligatory Movement Abstract In this thesis I explore the nature and properties of scrambling in Korean. Contrary to the widely accepted view that scrambling is truly optional, I propose that scrambling is a consequence of case-driven obligatory movement, a proposal consistent with the "last resort" condition on movement in [Chomsky 1991] and [Chomsky 1992]. I assume that scrambling is adjunction and defend this view in Ch. 5. In Ch. 2 and Ch. 3 based on binding facts and scope reconstruction, I claim that scrambling is best analyzed as A-movement. Scrambling either creates a binding relation which does not obtain in the base order, or destroys a binding relation which obtains in the base order. A scrambled element undergoes optional reconstruction for scope interpretation. All these properites are consistent with those of standard A-movement. In Ch. 4, I propose that scrambling is a consequence of case-driven movement. On the basis of case and word order possibilities in event nominal clauses, I first establish that in orK ean nominative case is licensed by INFL, and accusative case by a complex category formed by the head raising of VERB-to-INFL.
  • Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – a Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1

    Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – a Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1

    Thomas Groß Some Observations on the Hebrew Desiderative Construction – A Dependency-Based Account in Terms of Catenae1 Abstract The Modern Hebrew (MH) desiderative construction must obey four conditions: 1. A subordinate clause headed by the clitic še= ‘that’ must be present. 2. The verb in the subordinate clause must be marked with future tense. 3. The grammatical properties genus, number, and person tend to be specified, i.e. if the future tense affix is underspecified, material tends to appear that aids specification, if contextual recovery is unavailable. 4. The units of form that make up the constructional meaning of the desiderative must qualify as a catena. A catena is a dependency-based unit of form, the parts of which are immediately continuous in the vertical dimension. The description of the individual parts of the desiderative must address trans-, pre-, and suffixes, and cliticization. Catena-based morphology is representational, monostratal, dependency-, construction-, and piece-based. 1. Purpose, means and claims The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the Hebrew desiderative construction. This construction is linguistically interesting and challenging for a number of reasons. 1. It is a periphrastic construction, with fairly transparent compositionality. 2. It is transclausal, i.e. some parts of the construction reside in the main clause, and others in the subordinated clause. The complementizer is also part of the construction. 3. The construction consists of more than one word, but it does not qualify as a constituent. Rather the construction cuts into words. 4. Two theoretically 1 I want to thank Outi Bat-El (Tel Aviv University) and three anonymous reviewers for their help and advice.
  • Malagasy Extraposition: Evidence for PF Movement

    Malagasy Extraposition: Evidence for PF Movement

    Nat Lang Linguist Theory https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09505-2 Malagasy extraposition Evidence for PF movement Eric Potsdam1 Received: 28 August 2018 / Accepted: 23 January 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract Extraposition is the non-canonical placement of dependents in a right- peripheral position in a clause. The Austronesian language Malagasy has basic VOXS word order, however, extraposition leads to VOSX. Extraposed constituents behave syntactically as though they were in their undisplaced position inside the predicate at both LF and Spell Out. This paper argues that extraposition is achieved via movement at Phonological Form (PF). I argue against alternatives that would derive extraposi- tion with syntactic A’ movement or stranding analyses. Within a Minimalist model of grammar, movement operations take place on the branch from Spell Out to PF and have only phonological consequences. Keywords Malagasy · Extraposition · Movement · Phonological Form · Word order 1 Introduction Extraposition—the non-canonical placement of certain constituents in a right- peripheral position—has been investigated in detail in only a small number of lan- guages. There is a considerable literature for English, SOV Germanic languages Ger- man and Dutch, and the SOV language Hindi-Urdu. The construction has not been widely explored in other, typologically distinct languages. This lacuna means that we have probably not seen the full range of options and have also not tested pro- posed analyses in the widest possible way. The goal of this paper is to investigate in some detail extraposition in Malagasy, an Austronesian language with basic VOXS word order spoken by approximately 17 million people on the island of Madagascar.
  • An Asymmetry in Voice Mismatches in VP-Ellipsis and Pseudogapping

    An Asymmetry in Voice Mismatches in VP-Ellipsis and Pseudogapping

    An asymmetry in voice mismatches in VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping Jason Merchant University of Chicago [email protected] Final revision for Linguistic Inquiry, March 29, 2007 VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping in English show a previously unnoticed asymmetry in their tolerance for voice mismatch: while VP-ellipsis allows mismatches in voice between the elided VP and its antecedent, pseudogap- ping does not. This difference is unexpected under current analyses of pseu- dogapping, which posit that pseudogapping is a kind of VP-ellipsis. I show that this difference falls out naturally if the target of deletion in the two cases differs slightly: in VP-ellipsis, a node lower than Voice is deleted, while in pseudogapping a node containing Voice is deleted. This analysis further- more accounts for a new observation concerning the distribution of floated quantifiers in these two constructions as well.1 1Thanks to Kirsten Gengel, Kyle Johnson, and the two LI reviewers for very helpful comments. 1 1 Voice mismatches It is well known that VP-ellipsis in English tolerates mismatches between the voice of the elided constituent and that of its antecedent, in both directions. Typical examples are those in (1) and (2) (the (a) examples from Kehler 2002:53; see also Sag 1976:17, 75, Dalrymple et al. 1991, Hardt 1993, Johnson 2001, and Arregui et al. to appear for further examples, discussion, and qualifications). (1) Passive antecedent, active ellipsis a. This problem was to have been looked into, but obviously nobody did. <look into this problem> b. The system can be used by anyone who wants to.
  • 1 Scrambling Eljko Boškovi£ It Is Uncontroversial That Slavic

    1 Scrambling Eljko Boškovi£ It Is Uncontroversial That Slavic

    Scrambling ¢ eljko Boškovi £ It is uncontroversial that Slavic languages have topicalization and focalization. It is less clear whether they also have the scrambling operation of the kind found in languages like Japanese and Korean. The goal of this chapter is to address the issue of whether Slavic languages have Japanese-style scrambling (JSS) in addition to topicalization/focalization. I will confine my attention to Russian and Serbo-Croatian (SC), focusing on three properties of JSS which differentiate it from topicalization/focalization, namely the undoing effect (i.e. semantic vacuity of long-distance scrambling), the impossibility of adjunct scrambling, and the absence of relativized minimality effects with scrambling.1 As discussed by a number of authors, long-distance scrambling in Japanese is semantically vacuous (see, e.g., Saito1992, Boškovi £ and Takahashi 1998, Saito and Fukui 1998, Tada 1993), which has led the above-mentioned authors to conclude that Japanese long-distance scrambling is completely undone in LF. Consider (1), involving long-distance scrambling of the embedded object daremo-ni.2 ¥ ¥ ¦ (1) Daremo-ni dareka-ga [Mary-ga e atta to] omotteiru. ¤ > ; * > DAT NOM NOM everyone- someone- Mary- met that thinks ‘Everyone, someone thinks that Mary met.’ (Boškovi § and Takahashi 1998) Daremo-ni in (1) must have narrow scope, i.e. it cannot scope over the matrix clause subject. This fact illustrates semantic vacuity of long-distance scrambling Japanese. In this respect, JSS clearly differs from topicalization and focalization, which do affect scope (see (5) below).3 Another property of Japanese scrambling that differentiates it from topicalization/focalization concerns inability of adjuncts to undergo scrambling, illustrated by Saito’s (1985) examples in (2).4 1A word of caution is in order regarding the term “scrambling”, one of the most abused items in the linguistic vocabulary.
  • Some Notes on Scrambling and Object Shift*

    Some Notes on Scrambling and Object Shift*

    Some Notes on Scrambling and Object Shift* Roland Hinterholz1 1 Introduction Though object shift in Scandinavian and one type of scrambling in West Ger- manic have the same information-structural trigger — discourse-given objects move across adverbs taken to mark the boundary of vP — they differ in a number of re- spects: First, object shift typically applies to weak pronouns and is widely taken to be obligatory (for an opposing view see Josefsson 2003), while scrambling in West Germanic can apply to pronominal DPs, nominai DPs and PP complements alike and is taken to be optional. Second, object shift in Scandinavian, including the shift of nominai DPs in Icelandic, is subject to a minimality condition, while scrambling of German DPs applies freely, thus allowing for any kind of order be- tween the arguments of the verb. Third, object shift may occur only in contexts where the main verb has moved out of the vP ("Holmberg's generalization," cf. Holmberg 1986). Since there is no verb movement in embedded clauses in Main- land Scandinavian, object shift is generally absent in these clauses, as it is missing in main clauses with periphrastic tenses. No such restriction holds for scrambling in West Germanic. Most accounts of these phenomena thus assume that object shift and scram- bling are different operations (e.g. Haider and Rosengren 1998). Such proposals also posit that scrambling and object shift are defined in purely syntactic terms which reflect language-specific restrictions. Hardly any approach argues that there is a unique universal operation of preposing discourse-given objects and relates the *This short contribution is intended to express my gratitude to Valéria Molnar for several won- derful stays in Lund during the last three years and for long and inspiring discussions of both theoretical issues and personal matters on these occasions.
  • On Pseudogapping in HPSG*

    On Pseudogapping in HPSG*

    On Pseudogapping in HPSG* Dong-woo Park Department of Laguage and Literature, Seoul National University 599 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, Korea [email protected] Abstract. This study investigates the constraints imposed on the pseudogapping in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Based on the existing schema to account for coordination and gapping, a new pseudogapping schema in coordination structures is proposed in this paper. In the process of capturing the constraints, new DOM lists are added and an existing DOM list is divided into two DOM lists depending on the feature of elements in each domain. Furthermore, new features SEP and INC are introduced. SEP is used for distinguishing prepositions which should be located in the same domain with the following NPs from those which can be separated from the following NPs. INC feature determines whether overlapping adverbs are in non-empty lists or not. Pseudogapping occurs not only in coordination structures, but in comparative or subordination structures. Thus, this paper introduces a pseudogapping schema that can be applied to all structures mentioned above. Keywords: DOM lists, SEP feature, INC feature, pseudogapping schema. 1 Introduction English has ellipsis like these examples. (1) a. Sluicing: She read something, but she won’t say what [vP ]. b. Verb Phrase Ellipsis: She read something and he did [vP ] too. c. Pseudogapping: She’ll read something to Sam, but she won’t [vP ] to Billy. d. Gapping: Some read something to Sam and others [vP ] to Billy. e. Right Node Raising: She deliberately [vP ], and he accidentally, read something.
  • A-Scrambling Exists!

    A-Scrambling Exists!

    University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 6 Issue 1 Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Penn Article 20 Linguistics Colloquium 1999 A-Scrambling Exists! Martha McGinnis Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation McGinnis, Martha (1999) "A-Scrambling Exists!," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 6 : Iss. 1 , Article 20. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol6/iss1/20 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol6/iss1/20 For more information, please contact [email protected]. A-Scrambling Exists! This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol6/iss1/20 A-Scrambling Exists! Martha McGinnis 1 Preliminaries The nature of scrambling is a focus of recent debate in the syntactic literature. The term scrambling is used to describe apparently optional permutations of word order, found especially in languages with extensive case-marking. Saito (1989) argues that scrambling is A-bar movement (like wh-movement), rather than A-movement (like movement to the subject position). Webelhuth (1989) argues for scrambling to positions with mixed A- and A-bar proper- ties, while Mahajan (1990) counters that local (clause-internal) scrambling can be either to an A- or an A-bar position, while long-distance scrambling is A-bar movement. In a recently published paper, Frank, Lee & Rambow (FLR; 1996) take a careful look at different types of evidence for the kind of movement in- volved in scrambling in German and Korean. They conclude that there is no A-scrambling, and that scrambling is actually a special kind of A-bar move- ment that can affect binding relations in some languages.
  • A Theory of Generalized Pied-Piping Sayaka Funakoshi, Doctor Of

    A Theory of Generalized Pied-Piping Sayaka Funakoshi, Doctor Of

    ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: A Theory of Generalized Pied-Piping Sayaka Funakoshi, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Howard Lasnik Department of Linguistics The purpose of this thesis is to construct a theory to derive how pied-piping of formal features of a moved element takes place, by which some syntactic phenomena related to φ-features can be accounted for. Ura (2001) proposes that pied-piping of formal-features of a moved element is constrained by an economy condition like relativized minimality. On the basis of Ura’s (2001) proposal, I propose that how far an element that undergoes movement can carry its formal features, especially focusing on φ-features in this thesis, is determined by two conditions, a locality condition on the generalized pied-piping and an anti-locality condition onmovement. Given the proposed analysis, some patterns of so-called wh-agreement found in Bantu languages can be explained and with the assumption that φ-features play an role for binding, presence or absence of WCO effects in various languages can be derived without recourse to A/A-distinctions.¯ ATHEORYOFGENERALIZEDPIED-PIPING by Sayaka Funakoshi Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Advisory Committee: Professor Howard Lasnik, Chair/Advisor Professor Norbert Hornstein Professor Omer Preminger Professor Steven Ross Professor Juan Uriagereka c Copyright by ! Sayaka Funakoshi 2015 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Howard Lasnik for his patience, support and encouragement.
  • By Nayoun Kim 2019

    By Nayoun Kim 2019

    NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Hold, Release, and Retrieve: The Study of Wh-Filler-Gap Dependencies and Ellipsis A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Linguistics By Nayoun Kim EVANSTON, ILLINOIS September 2019 2 © Copyright by Nayoun Kim 2019 All Rights Reserved 3 Abstract This dissertation is concerned with how components in memory structures and online structure building processes interact by investigating the online processing of Wh-Filler-Gap Dependencies (WhFGD) and ellipsis constructions. Resolving long-distance dependencies involves linking the dependent element to the controlling element. In the case of Wh-gap dependency formation, the wh-element is linked to the gap. In the case of ellipsis resolution, the ellipsis site is linked to the antecedent. In the processing of long-distance dependency resolution, I point out that two component processes are involved: the storage/maintenance component and the retrieval component. A series of studies on WhFGD formation reveal that the sentence processing mechanism involves the maintenance component on top of the retrieval component. Studies on ellipsis constructions further reveal that when the antecedent is retrieved, detailed grammatical structural information should be retrieved, thus grammatical and structural information must be encoded in memory. Based on the results of these studies, I specifically argue for the following points: (i) the filler is released from memory, depending on the grammatical requirement of the filler; (ii) given that information associated with the filler being retrieved reflects the extent to which the filler is maintained, the parser retrieves grammatical information associated with the wh- filler; and (iii) the parser is sensitive to grammatical distinctions at the ellipsis site in contrast to the processing of Anaphoric one and Pronoun it.