Predicate Clefts in LFG

[Joan Bresnan]

Hi, Seth.  I've only now had a chance to read through the conversation
on predicate clefting, and I have a few comments for you.  I'll put another
comment on Ash's comment to you, in another message.

I like your outlined approach to the analysis.  It raises a couple of
things to think about, though.  Jane Grimshaw, in her OT work on
do-support, has argued that `do' is a relatively unmarked `pro-verb in
English do-support and Japanese light verb constructions, and there
are varieties of German that also use `do' in verb-second
constructions.  In addition, the presence/absence of pro-verbs has
been taken as a correlate of the presence/absence of a VP in some work
on nonconfigurationality (e.g. Jeffrey Heath on Nunggubuyu in NLLT
1986).  Your rough translation of the Koopman example "It's EATING
that John did to the salt" bears out this possibility.  (I think
Andrew Koontz-Garboden's comment is directed at this kind of
possibility.)  The cooccurrence of `do' with a full lexical verb
doesn't diminish the plausability of the intuition, since we know that
some types of pronouns can coocur with common nouns (witness German
and Greek determiner/pronouns).

Perhaps more importantly, hypothesizing that "VP has no
pronominal elements at all" [I would replace "pronominal" with
"pro-verbal" here] raises the explanatory question: if it is true, why
should it be true?  Why can't there be very generic anaphoric verbs?

Perhaps you can think of answers to these questions which will make
the idea even more convincing.

Best wishes,

Joan


> (c) The reason why the feature appears on an NP "gap" and not on an NP,
> but appears on a V and not a "V-gap" is that (i) for a particular
> catagory, the feature seeks out the "least marked"/"most featureless"
> member of that catagory; (ii) the catagory NP has NP "gap" (no real
> phonological, semantic or syntactic features), but V doesn't have any
> "gap"; there is no "verbal trace".  VP has no "pronominal elements" at
> all; thus, for verbs, this feature seeks out only full Vs.
>




> This rough grammatical picture, of course, fits very, very nicely within
> LFG (and for more subtle reasons, I think it does better in LFG than in
> HPSG).  So, I thought that I should get in touch with what researchers
> working within the LFG tradition have independently developed regarding
> predicate clefts.  There may be aspects to the construction that might
> actually force a very different analysis within this framework from what
> I am imagining above.  More than anything, though, I need to understand
> and build on the work of those who have studied these phenomena within the
> conceptual structure of LFG.
>
> Thus, even work on the more standard clefts and pseudoclefts might be of
> relevance here, especially since "predicate clefts" seem to take on a
> 'biclausal structure' in many Kwa/Kru languages.
>
> Please, any information anyone out there has would be greatly greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Best,
>
> Seth.
>
>
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Joan Bresnan wrote:
>
> > Hi Seth.
> >
> > In my textbook, pp. 247-8, there is a brief discussion and analysis of a possibly relevant
> > Icelandic construction which I call "focussed complement extraposition" (`Sigga's opinion is
> > that self lacks talent'--due to Joan Maling).  These constructions show connectivity effects
> > which I capture with f-structure sharing, and would be relevant to similar connectivity effects
> > in pseudo-cleft constructions, I think.
> >
> > If, however, by "predicate clefts" you mean the kind of  West African construction discussed
> > by Hilda Koopman  in her book on verb raising, the above discussion would not be helpful.
> >
> > Perhaps you can explain a little more about your focus of interest?
> >
> > Joan
> >
> > On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 20:17:28 -0500, Seth Cable <scable at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> >
> > >Hello,
> > >
> > >I'm working on the syntax of predicate clefts, and I would be very
> > >interested to know the work that has been done on them in the LFG tradition.
> > > What might be some good works in which the predicate cleft has been given
> > >an LFG treatment?
> > >
> > >Best,
> > >
> > >Seth.
> >