satisfiability of (f FEATURE) =/= VALUE in coordination?

[Mary Dalrymple]

You could think of this as an instance of Wasow's Generalization, which Sadler and Nordlinger state as follows:

Wasow’s Generalization: An element in construction with a coordinate constituent must be syntactically construable with each conjunct

If an element is constrained by the grammar in some negative or positive way, then if that element is a coordinate structure, each of the conjuncts must be constrained in the same negative or positive way.  

 - Mary



________________________________________
From: Lexical-Functional Grammar List [lfg at listserv.linguistlist.org] on behalf of Adam Przepiorkowski [adamp at IPIPAN.WAW.PL]
Sent: 16 October 2012 17:50
To: LFG at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: [LFG] satisfiability of (f FEATURE) =/= VALUE in coordination?

Dear John,

Many thanks for your quick reply!

> (f CASE) ~= ACC is NOT SATISFIED in this case.  In effect, the
> distribution gets wide-scope relative to the negation.  This seems to fit
> the linguistic facts better than giving the negation wide scope.

We understand that this is the decision taken in the XLE *implementation*,
but I've been wondering if there is any *theoretical* justification for
or discussion of such scoping in the LFG literature?

All best,

Adam P.

>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>
> On 10/16/12 9:14 AM, "Adam Przepiorkowski" <adamp at IPIPAN.WAW.PL> wrote:
>
>>Dear All,
>>
>>It's probably a newcomer's question – apologies if so.
>>
>>Imagine a coordination of two phrases, accusative and genitive (LFG
>>literature knows such examples from Russian).  Assume – as usual – that
>>CASE is a distributive feature.  What is the satisfiability of the
>>following trivial statement for such a coordinate phrase f?
>>
>>
>>(f CASE) =/= ACC
>>
>>
>>Two answers:
>>
>>1. SATISFIED because 1) it's the same thing as "NOT ((f CASE) =c ACC)",
>>   and 2) "(f CASE) =c ACC" is not satisfied (it is not satisfied for
>>   one of the conjuncts),
>>
>>2. NOT SATISFIED because "(f CASE) =/= ACC" is not satisfied for one of
>>   the conjuncts.
>>
>>XLE seems to favour the latter answer, but – given how negation is
>>defined in LFG (e.g., Dalrymple 2001, pp. 111–112) – we would expect the
>>former.
>>
>>It seems that we are essentially asking about the relative scope of
>>negation and distribution.
>>
>>All best,
>>
>>Adam Przepiórkowski
>>Agnieszka Patejuk
>>
>>--
>>Adam Przepiórkowski                          ˈadam ˌpʃɛpjurˈkɔfskʲi
>>http://clip.ipipan.waw.pl/ ____ Computational Linguistics in Poland
>>http://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/ ___________ Journal of Language Modelling
>>http://zil.ipipan.waw.pl/ ____________ Linguistic Engineering Group
>>http://nkjp.pl/ _________________________ National Corpus of Polish
>
>

--
Adam Przepiórkowski                   ˈadam ˌpʃɛpjurˈkɔfskʲi
Zespół Inżynierii Lingwistycznej _____ http://zil.ipipan.waw.pl/
Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego _____ http://nkjp.pl/
Journal of Language Modelling ________ http://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/
Polska Lista Językoznawcza ___________ http://tnij.org/pling