Filler-gap mismatches

[Yehuda N. Falk]

Dear HPSG'ers,

Another LFG lurker decloaking........

Just wanted to make a few comments about the issues that have been raised
in the HPSG/LFG dialog that has emerged here.

I think the crucial difference between the theories is the one Ron has
identified: modularity. LFG is crucially based on the idea that different
dimensions of linguistic structure (constituency, function, phonology,
argumenthood, semantics, information structure, etc.) are represented at
distinct levels with there own formal properties, primitives, principles of
organization, etc., and that these parallel levels are related to each
other by correspondence relations like the phi function mapping c-structure
to f-structure. This is not an arbitrary decision: it is based on a view of
the nature of language which LFG researchers believe is supported by the
empirical facts.

So the basic conceptual reason for not including category information in
f-structure is that categories are information about the distribution of
elements of overt expression (which is what c-structure models), not
functional information. If the notion of modularity that LFG is based on is
right, this distinction will bear fruit. So the fact that choosing the
category of an XCOMP (like "become" does) seems to be a more complex option
is accounted for by the fact that it requires reference to corresponding
elements on a different representation.

Concerning gerunds and related constructions, Ivan wrote:

>Note also that a plausible approach to gerunds -- in
>terms of fine-grained category grain -- is developed by Rob Malouf in his
>recent CSLI book.

and Ron wrote:

>For example, we can
>account for constructions such as gerunds that have a mixture of
>properties that are normally associated with different parts of speech
>by saying that nodes of the different part-of-speech (ignoring
>bar-level) types map to the same f-structure, in effect, that the
>c-structure nodes are co-heads of the functional units.  (I think Joan
>and others have written about this).

Joan's analysis of gerunds (as DP-headed-by-VP) appears in Bresnan 2001.
She has also looked at "mixed categories" in other languages and I have
been working on an analysis of Hebrew action nominals with an NP-over-VP
analysis (which I will be presenting at the LFG conference this year). This
is, of course, a very different analysis from Malouf's "fine-grained
category" analysis. The analyses differ *empirically*, in terms of what
Malouf dubs lexical coherence (predicted by Malouf's analysis) vs. phrasal
coherence (predicted by Bresnan's analysis). Joan's analysis builds on a
relatively traditional view of categories combined with an imperfect
correspondence between levels: if Joan is right (and me, too, for that
matter), this constitutes empirical evidence for the LFG approach.

And I think that's the point. Cross-pollination of ideas between theories
is a good thing, and there certainly are many similarities between LFG and
HPSG as constraint-based, lexicalist, unificationist theories. But LFG and
HPSG are not notational variants of each other. Ultimately, empirical
evidence will hopefully point the way to which theory is closer to the
"truth", but we ain't there yet. The best line to take is for proponents of
each theoretical framework to develop the best analyses they can, and then
we can see where they go. Trying to make LFG look more like HPSG (or vice
versa) serves no purpose.

Cheers!
Yehuda


                            Yehuda N. Falk
       Department of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
                     Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel
                        msyfalk at mscc.huji.ac.il
      Personal Web Site    http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msyfalk/
     Departmental Web Site    http://atar.mscc.huji.ac.il/~english/

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