morphology in HPSG - summary

[Frank Van Eynde]

>
>     Around Thanksgiving, I posted a query to the HPSG list asking
> people to recommend me any recent HPSG literature dealing with
> morphology and the distinction between inflectional and derivational
> morphology.  I am personally interested in derivational morphology and
> its effects on syntactic processes, and how this could be handled in the
> HPSG framework.
>     Although, I received only several references, I received a lot of
> requests for posting the summary of my query.  For this reason, I’m
> posting a short summary and hope that more references will be coming
> when this message gets posted.


 Larisa,

 Another reference is

Frank Van Eynde, Auxilaries and verbal affixes. A monostratal
cross-linguistic analysis. Habilitationsschrift, University of Leuven,
1994. (especially chapters 4 and 5)

It reviews the way in which transformational grammar (Barriers & MP)
treats auxiliaries and verbal affixes and contrasts it with
the way in which monostratal grammar (GPSG and esp. HPSG) treats them.
It then adopts the latter approach, albeit with the proviso
that verbal affixation is not modelled in terms of lexical rules
(in 1994 these were still very popular). The alternative which I
proposed is an affix-based treatment, in which the properties
of a morphologically complex word are derived from the
properties which are associated with the morphemes, taking
into account the way in which the morphemes are combined.
The main thesis is that the modes of combination are
different for inflection and derivation, and that the
combination of a stem with an inflectional affix can be
modelled in terms which are very similar to the way in
which a head combines with a marker in syntax. This proposal
is then applied to a detailed analysis of the verb form systems
of 4 Germanic and 4 Romance languages.

Affix-based treatments of morphology are not very popular in HPSG,
the mainstream opinion being that words should be analyzed in
radically different ways than phrases. Still, I think that
there are also some similarities between word and phrase structure,
at least in terms of modes of combination, and that a complete
grammar should provide devices for making also the similarities
explicit. That's basically what the thesis is all about.

As for availability, I did not put it on the web, but I still have
hard copies. If you give me your address, I will send a copy.

Friendly greetings,

Frank Van Eynde