HPSG vs PP/MP: empirical differences

[Carl Pollard]

Hi Steve,

>
Regarding the comparison of HPSG with GB/P&P/MP, I'd like to plug my paper:

WECHSLER, STEPHEN. 1999. HPSG, GB, and the Balinese Bind. In Lexical
And Constructional Aspects of Linguistic Explanation, ed. by A.
Kathol, J.-P. Koenig and G.Webelhuth. Stanford: CSLI.

It's a case study in 'the myth of the notational variant.'  I compare
HPSG and GB analyses of binding in a Western Austronesian language
(Balinese), that are, in some intuitive sense 'the same', under
correspondences of the following sort:

HPSG:					GB:
ARG-ST list items     			theta positions (under VP)
relative obliqueness			relative c-command
VALENCE list items			spec's of functional projections
ARG-ST/VALENCE structure-sharing	chains

The two analyses make the same predictions for simple Balinese
examples.  But they diverge radically when the data become more
complex:  the HPSG analysis correctly applies without any alteration,
while the GB analysis turns out to be deeply flawed.   It's not a
minor problem, fixable by tinkering with the definition of c-command
or something.  In fact it seems that a GB analysis of W. Austronesian
binding is impossible under normal assumptions.
>>

I pretty much followed you up to the penultimate sentence (though your
correspondences differ somewhat from the way I usually explain in
intro. courses how GB concepts map onto HPSG ones), but the last one
came as a big surprise. Seldom, if ever, have I heard it assserted
that framework X cannot analyze phenomenon Z; usually one hears:
framework X cannot analyze phenomenon Z as simply and elgantly as
framework, or that analysis of phenomenon Z in framework X necessarily
makes recourse to ancillary devices that lack independent motivation.
Betcha you get challenged on this!

>
	The problem for MIT theories arises from the propensity for
modeling different types of abstract relation (argument structure,
grammatical relations, etc.) within a single phrase structure
representation-- a model from the 'Old Stone Age', as Bob Levine put
it.
>>

To use a neutral characterization.

>
	To my knowledge the only GB syntactician to take up my
challenge is Lisa Travis, who proposed a radical overhaul of GB theta
theory and binding theory to allow for these languages.
>>

That's fine -- there are as many HPSG binding theories as there are
binding theorists who have worked in the framework. In your opinion,
is the radical overhaul now serious competition for your analysis?

Carl