Grammatiktheorie Vorlesung 1 24'10'2002

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GrammatiktheorieVorlesung 1 (24.10.2002)

• Valia Kordoni
• Email kordoni_at_coli.uni-sb.de
• WWW http//www.coli.uni-sb.de/kordoni/courses/ws
  02-03/

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Structure of the Course Draft

• Grammar Models and their properties
• 1. Dependency Grammar2. Categorial Grammar3.
  Phrase Structure Grammars4. Some mixed forms of
  the above mentioned models

• Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG)
• 1. the "beginning"2. the characteristics3.
  the formal architecture4. the developments
  (theoretical developments-implementations)5.
  LFG for German

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Structure of the Course Draft (cont.)

• Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
• 1. the "beginning"2. the characteristics3.
  the formal architecture4. the developments
  (theoretical developments-implementations)5.
  HPSG for German

• Brief comparison of LFG and HPSG

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Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) the beginning

• The formal architecture of Lexical Functional
  Grammar developed in the late 1970s and was first
  described in detail in 1982.

• 1982 was the year of the publication of The
  Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations
  (Bresnan (ed.) 1982), the first collection of
  papers on the theory of Lexical Functional
  Grammar.

• The theory, which was motivated by
  psycholinguistic considerations, brought together
  several ideas that emerged from computational and
  linguistic investigations carried out in the
  early 1970s.

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LFG the characteristics and the formal
architecture

• LFG is particularly distinguished by its use of
  formally different representations for
  linguistically different kinds of information
  the c-structure, the f-structure, the
  a-structure, the ?-structure, the ?-structure,and
  so forth (cf., Kaplan and Bresnan 1982, Kaplan
  and Bresnan 1995, Kaplan 1995).

• This has been one important factor that has
  enabled LFG to provide interesting insights into
  linguistic structure.

• These insights have in turn shaped the theory in
  both formal and substantive ways.

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LFG the developments (1)

• A large and varied work has grown up in the
  years since the introduction of the theory of LFG.

• Among the advances in the theory of functional
  structure since the publication of the 1982
  volume is the ability to characterize nonlocal
  relations between (f-)structures, allowing for a
  formally well-defined treatment of long-distance
  dependencies and constraints on anaphoric binding
  (see, among others, Dalrymple 1993, Dalrymple,
  Maxwell and Zaenen 1995, Bredenkamp 1996).

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LFG the developments (2)

• Another major focus of work in LFG in recent
  years is the study of the relation between
  syntactic structure and argument structure.

• Beginning with Levin 1986, this research has
  focused on the connection between thematic
  argument structure (this is how the level of
  linguistic representation which contains thematic
  roles, like Agent, Patient, Theme, and so forth,
  is called) and grammatical functions (i.e.,
  subjects, objects, adjuncts, and so forth), and
  has attempted to discover the generalizations by
  which the two are related.

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LFG the developments (3)

• A major focus in LFG from the beginning has also
  been lexical integrity and the various levels at
  which wordhood can be defined (cf., Matsumoto
  1992, Bresnan and Mchombo 1995, Sells 1995).

• Another line of investigation in LFG has dealt
  with the phenomena of agreement and apparent
  null pronominals cross-linguistically (cf.,
  Bresnan and Mchombo 1987, Demuth and Johnson
  1989, Andrews 1990, Uyechi 1991, Nordlinger 1995).

• In recent years there has also been work
  exploring constituent structure and its
  independence from the functional structure of LFG
  (see Kroeger 1991, King 1993, Austin and Bresnan
  1995, Bresnan 1995b).

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LFG the developments (4)

• Very recent work in LFG explores semantic
  composition and the syntax-semantics interface.

• Dalrymple, Lamping, and Saraswat 1993 propose a
  deductive approach to assembly of meanings that
  relies on the projection architecture of LFG in
  order to specify the correspondence between the
  f-structure of LFG and ist meaning.

• The use of linear logic as a glue for assembling
  meanings gives a clean treatment of a range of
  phenomena including modification, complex
  predicate formation (Dalrymple, Lamping and
  Saraswat 1993), quantifier scoping, bound
  anaphora and their interactions with
  intensionality (Dalrymple, Lamping, Pereira, and
  Saraswat 1994).

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LFG and Germanic Languages

• Earlier work within LFG on the word order and
  constituency puzzles in Dutch and other Germanic
  languages (see Bresnan 1982) showed the success
  of an approach relying on the explicit separation
  of different kinds of syntactic information into
  dinstinct modules.

• Zaenen and Kaplan 1995 and Bresnan 1995a
  chronicle more recent explorations of word order,
  constituent structure, and the constituent
  structure (c-structure) / functional structure
  (f-structure) interface.

• These papers examine word order constraints that
  are definable in terms of functional relations
  and the functional structure / constituent
  structure interface. A new formal device called
  functional precedence is proposed to characterize
  relatively minor interactions involving
  information that is expressed most naturally in
  these different representations.

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LFG Our Focus

• Long Distance Dependencies

• Anaphoric Binding

• Word Order Phenomena

• Syntax-Semantics Interface

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LFG / HPSG

• LFG and HPSG are widely perceived as closely
  related paradigms

BUT

• Both have change MUCH since their inception

AND

• There is significant evidence that they may now
  differ more than they agree

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The ultimate aim

• We will concentrate on comparisons of specific
  grammars.

• Time permitting, we will also focus on

1. Which structures of grammar the two paradigms
permit or even impose.
2. Which assumptions about language are inherent
in each of the paradigms.