What about the PRED features?

[Dick Hudson]

The exchanges about PRED have been fascinating. Joan Bresnan's contribution
(below) suggests that PRED is a formalisation of the notion `head of
phrase'. Would that be a fair interpretation?

>Concerning the discussion of the PRED initiated by Avery Andrews and
>recently added to by Ron Kaplan, I would add the following remarks.
>
>The original *linguistic* idea of the PRED feature was to define the
>linguistic concept of "nucleus of predication", a grammatical
>construct echoing ideas of traditional grammar (e.g. Jespersen's nexus
>theory) and certainly playing a fundamental role in syntactic matters
>(not just semantics).  The nucleus of predication, or nucleus for
>short, can be defined in LFG as a region of f-structure in relation to a
>single predicator (PRED).  It defines possible binding domains (as
>TENSE also does), it plays a role in case phenomena (case can "spread"
>to nonarguments in a nucleus in some languages); it explains certain
>properties of "small clauses" without assuming artifactual c-structure
>nodes.  In short, it has grammatical motivation, not just semantic
>motivation.
>
>Exactly the same doubts about having a PRED feature in f-structure can
>be raised about having a TENSE feature in f-structure.  Again the
>answer is the same.  Many *grammatical* phenomena depend on knowing the
>locus of tense in relation to other grammatical functions.  The fact
>that there is a semantics of tense as well does not diminish its
>grammatical role and hence its motivation for being in f-structure.
>
>Joan
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Richard Hudson
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
work phone +171 419 3152; work fax +171 383 4108
email dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk; web-site http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm