The Combinatory Morphemic Lexicon
Cem Bozsahin∗ Middle East Technical University
Grammars that expect words from the lexicon may be at odds with the transparent projection of syntactic and semantic scope relations of smaller units. We propose a morphosyntactic framework based on Combinatory Categorial Grammar that provides flexible constituency, flexible category consistency, and lexical projection of morphosyntactic properties and attachment to grammar in order to establish a morphemic grammar-lexicon. These mechanisms provide enough expressive power in the lexicon to formulate semantically transparent specifications without the necessity to confine structure forming to words and phrases. For instance, bound morphemes as lexical items can have phrasal scope or word scope, independent of their attachment characteristics but consistent with their semantics. The controls can be attuned in the lexicon to language-particular properties. The result is a transparent interface of inflectional morphology, syntax, and semantics. We present a computational system and show the application of the framework to English and Turkish.
1. Introduction
The study presented in this article is concerned with the integrated representation and processing of inflectional morphology, syntax, and semantics in a unified grammar ar- chitecture. An important issue in such integration is mismatches in morphological, syntactic, and semantic bracketings. The problem was first noted in derivational mor- phology. Williams (1981) provided examples from English; the semantic bracketings in (1a–2a) are in conflict with the morphological bracketings in (1b–2b).
(1) a. -ity b. hydro hydro electric electric -ity
(2) a. -ing b. G¨odel G¨odel number number -ing
If the problem were confined to derivational morphology, we could avoid it by making derivational morphology part of the lexicon that does not interact with gram- mar. But this is not the case. Mismatches in morphosyntactic and semantic bracketing
∗ Computer Engineering and Cognitive Science, Middle East Technical University, 06531 Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected].