[Lingtyp] syntactic construction formula

[Martin Haspelmath]

This problem was addressed in the 1980s by Gazdar and others, under the 
heading of "ID/LP grammars" (e.g. GPSG; see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID/LP_grammar).

The Wikipedia article gives an English example of the type "X C Y/X Y C":

/John suddenly screamed / John screamed suddenly./

The proposal here is to have two ID ("immediate dominance") rules, where 
the comma notation shows that nothing is said about the ordering:

S –> NP, VP
VP –> V, Adv

plus separate LP ("linear precedence") rules, e.g.

NP < VP
(but not: V < Adv/Adv < V, because either order is possible, and no rule 
is needed)

More generally, I find the following kind of notation fairly transparent 
(where NM stands for "nominal (expression)"):

PP: [P – NM], e.g. "in the house"
N: [Adj – N – ed], e.g. "blue-eye-d"
S: [NM, V, Adv], e.g. German "hier wohnt Maria/Maria wohnt hier" ('Here 
lives Maria/Maria lives here')

In other words, a dash signals fixed precedence, while a comma signals 
cooccurrence in a constituent/syntagma without positional entailments.

Martin


Am 20.12.20 um 11:23 schrieb Christian Lehmann:
>
> Dear all,
>
> Guillermo González Campos and I are garnishing our (future) Cabecar 
> grammar with formulas of syntactic structure. Each representation 
> layer (like "structural", "semantic", ...) is one-dimensional. The 
> structural layer involves symbols representing significative 
> components plus indexed brackets. Some constructions comprise a 
> component C which is obligatory, but may occur in different positions. 
> Sometimes a "basic" position may be identified, of which other 
> positions are optional permutations. If so, I can provide a formula 
> for the basic position and add a prose sentence on the variation. Now 
> suppose there is no such basic position. A possibility of representing 
> such a state of affairs is to provide a construction formula for each 
> of the variants, like:
>
> X C Y
>
> X Y C
>
> Rather space-consuming and less than elegant. Is there a notation 
> which allows one to write something like
>
> X C Y C
>
> to mean that C can and must occupy either of the two positions? 
> (Ordinary parentheses would not work, in my view, as they imply 
> optionality.)
>
> Thanks for advice,
>
> Christian
>
> -- 
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
>
> Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
> E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
> Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
>
>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522

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