[HPSG-L] Selection of phonology in nonlocal dependencies and raising

[Stefan Müller]

Hi everybody,

I recently got some comments on the section on SBCG in my GT textbook. I
rethought everything and have some questions that I cannot answer but
maybe somebody on the list knows the answer.

One motivation for the change in feature geometry with locality of
selection. This braught MOTHER. Interestingly SYNSEM is gone now and
PHON is grouped with SYN and SEM. LOCAL is gone too. Rather than
selecting for synsem objects and sharing local objects in nonlocal
dependencies, complete signs are selected for and shared in nonlocal
dependencies.

MOTHER was introduced to exclude the selection for arguments of
arguments of arguments. As with computational complexity, I think that
this should not be hardwired in the grammar formalism, the fact that we
do not select arguments of arguments is just a fact about what the
theories do. We do not have to state explicitely everything that is
impossible.

But let's assume we think that MOTHER should be there because of
locality issues. Wouldn't it be a problem then that a head that is far
away can select the phonology of one of its arguments?

In the approach to raising in SBCG the subject of the downstairs head is
shared with the matrix subject. So "eat" can see the phonology of "Kim":

Kim can eat apples.

Of course we can have long chains of raising verbs. Question: Are there
languages that show phonological effects accross several words? And if
so, does it help to have a head that selects for the phonology of a
phrase far away or should these phonological effects be treated on the
phrasal level?

The second issue is nonlocal dependencies:

Bagels, I think that Sandy likes.

"likes" can see the phonology of "bagels", as can "that" as can "think".
In principle there could be languages that require that the filler has
three vowels in it or anything like this.

Are there languages that have phenomena in which the phonology of the
filler affects elements at the extraction path?


The stuff is written down more carefully here (Section 10.6.2) and will
be updated depending on the outcome of this discussion.

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/~stefan/Pub/grammatical-theory.html


Thank you very much for your feedback and possibly for references to
work that describes relevant phenomena.

Best wishes

        Stefan

-- 
PGP welcome

Stefan Müller       Tel: (+49) (+30) 838 52973
                    Fax: (+49) (030) 838 4 52973
Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie
Deutsche Grammatik
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
14 195 Berlin

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/~stefan/

http://langsci-press.org/

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/Projects/CoreGram.html