ARG-ST as a head feature

[Martin Jansche]

On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, J P Blevins wrote:

> However, there are of course other strategies for access control.
> One simple model, with obvious application to inheritance-based
> grammar formalisms, is the private/protected/public distinction
> within object-oriented derivatives of C.  A straightforward
> application to feature structures would classify particular
> features, such as the CONTENT features mentioned by Carl, as
> syntactically inaccessible (i.e., private). Another class, which
> would include the traditional HEAD features, would be classified
> as accessible to the head daughter (i.e., the analogue of
> protected).

This analogy is flawed, due to a confusion of inheritance (code
sharing and subtyping in certain programming languages, not just
extensions of C) and "feature percolation" or structure sharing in the
HPSG framework.  If you want a public/private distinction, it would
amount to defining the subtype/-sort relation in such a way that the
features appropriate for a subtype include only the public features of
its supertypes plus all features the type itself introduces.  I'm not
sure what this would accomplish, since the rationale for this kind of
access control in programming languages is quite different from what
you seem to have in mind.

- martin jansche