predicatives and adjuncts

[Kiril Simov]

Dear All,

I am sending this on behalf of Milena Slavcheva.

Kiril

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Dear HPSG-ers,

I have a question related to HPSG analysis of predicative constructions.

The tendency in the HPSG literature is to treat primary predicatives (as in
Examples 1 and 2) as a construct where a semantically vacuous predicate
(the copula) takes an XP as a complement (or as a variant the construct is
that of a copula subcategorizing for a lexical element and sharing the
arguments with that element). This is the generally accepted analysis in
Pollard & Sag 1987, Pollard & Sag 1994, Miller & Sag 1997, Przepiorkowski
2000a, Przepiorkowski 2000b.

1) Jenata                       e   vesela. (Bulgarian)
     Woman-the[fem,sg]   is   happy[fem,sg]
     'The woman is happy.'

2) Jenata           e    v     gradinata.  (Bulgarian)
     Woman-the   is   in    garden-the.
     'The woman is in the garden.'

As for secondary predicatives (example 3), the tendency is to treat the
phrases in question as adjuncts since they are not obligatory and do not
satisfy argument requirements but add to the semantics of the VP they
modify. (Certainly, we have to be aware of the fact that in this structural
configuration the issue of complementation and adjunction is strongly
defined by the subcategorization properties of the verbs). The tendency of
this analysis can be retraced in Pollard & Sag 1987, Pollard & Sag 1994.

3)
Jenata                           vleze       v       stayata
vesela.
Woman-the[fem,sg]            go-past   into   room-the        happy[fem,sg]
'The woman entered the room happy.'

The question is: are you aware of any attempts in the HPSG community to
analyze primary predicative phrases as adjuncts?

In connection with that there arises the more general and very important
issue of the application of the HPSG mechanisms of adjuncts: adjuncts being
lexical and phrasal, adjuncts selecting for the heads they modify via the
MOD feature, adjuncts being the semantic heads in the semantic composition
of the sentence.
Thus references to works on the application of the adjunction mechanisms
are greatly appreciated as well.

References cited above:
[Miller & Sag 1997] Miller, P., I. Sag. French Clitic Movement without
Clitics or Movement, 1997.

[Pollard & Sag 1987]  Pollard, C., I. Sag. Information-Based Syntax and
Semantics. CSLI Publications, 1987.

[Pollard & Sag 1994]  Pollard, C., I. Sag. Head-Driven Phrase Structure
Grammar. CSLI Publications, 1994.

[Przepiórkowski 2000a] Przepiórkowski, A. ARG-ST on Phrases Headed by
Semantically Vacuous Words: Evidence from Polish. In: CSLI On-Line
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Head-driven Phrase
Structure Grammar, Berkeley, 22-23 July, 2000.

[Przepiórkowski 2000b] Przepiórkowski, A. Predicative case agreement with
Quantifier Phrases in Polish. Paper presented at the UNC Linguistics
Colloquium, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, April 8, 2000.

Best regards,

Milena
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Milena Slavcheva

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences                 Phone: +359 2 979 2812
Central Laboratory for Parallel Processing   Fax:     +359 2 70 72 73
Linguistic Modelling Department                 E-mail:  milena at lml.bas.bg
25A, Acad. G. Bonchev St.                        URL:
www.lml.bas.bg/~milena/
1113 Sofia,
BULGARIA                                       www.BulTreeBank.org
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