Phrase Structure Grammar
2.5 Rules, principles, constraints
2.5.6 Relational constraints
ID-schema 2
∨
ID-schema 3
∨
. . .
The restriction given by the IDP is actually very weak and almost trivial since it lists all schemata which are founded in possible languages only reflecting what a cross-linguistic type hierarchy would say. Originally, the IDP was thought as a phrase structural component consisting of few schemata, e.g. the six schemata listed in Footnote 64 (cf. Pollard and Sag, 1994: 38), but given the structural complexity of languages – regarded cross-linguistically – the accuracy of such a principle has been challenged.
2.5.6 Relational constraints
In addition to the constraints shown in the past sections, some relational symbols or functions have been introduced in the literature in order to extend the expres-sive power of the theory. Pollard and Sag (1994: 21) introduce first the “functional or relational symbols”: append (⊕),union (∪) and ≠, which they consider “neces-sary in a linguistically adequate description language”. Relational constraints are defined in the signature of the grammar, in order to be available as part of the descriptive language. The mathematical foundations of such constraints and their status as part of the descriptive language is given in King (1999) and extended by Richter (2000). The concept of relational constraint will be explained in the following using append.80
80For more details on relational constraints, see King (1999) and Richter (2000).
The append symbol (⊕) has already been used in former constraints, so for example in the formalisation of the ValP (50) in Section 2.5.5. There, append was used to express the concatenation of two lists. This may sound in some way
“derivationally”, but it isn’t (cf. Richter, 2000: 135f). The concatenation of lists as presented in the former constraints is only a short cut for a constraint which relates three lists as in (52). The example in (52) is well formed if and only if, 3 has the same value as the concatenation of 1 and 2 , whereby 1 , 2 , and 3 are all objects of type list.
(52) append( 1 , 2 , 3 )
This is by no means a derivational, but a declarative statement which can be represented as well as an AVM (cf. 53).81 Here, the value of the attribute A is the concatenation of the values of B and C, therefore the value of A is relational, viz.
it has no absolute value, but depends on the values of the other two attributes (cf.
Kiss, 1995: 51).
(53) ⎡
⎢⎢
⎢⎢
⎢⎢
⎢⎢
⎣
A 1 ⊕ 2 B 1 C 2
⎤⎥
⎥⎥
⎥⎥
⎥⎥
⎥⎦
Append has been used in the former constraints exactly in this sense: as a short cut for the declarative relation in (52), and yielding to some extent a “dynamic extension” of the structure-sharing concept (cf. Kiss, 1995: 51).
81For further notational variants ofappend, see e.g. Bildhauer (2014: 532).
structure
In this chapter the four central notions in linguistic theoryhead,argument,adjunct, and specifier will be described, distinguished, and exemplified by focusing how they apply to NPs. These four notions are based on the idea that different kinds of relationships can hold between linguistic objects, that is to say by ascribing a linguistic object one of these notions, the relation in which it stands to another linguistic object is indicated. The possible configurations of relations are illustrated in Figures 3.1–3.4.
X phrase
Y head
Figure 3.1: Head-phrase relation
X phrase
Z argument
Y head
Figure 3.2: Head-argument relation
X phrase
W adjunct
Y head
Figure 3.3: Head-adjunct relation
X phrase
V specifier
Y head
Figure 3.4: Head-specifier relation
It will be shown, that the notion of headedness differs from the other notions in that it represents a “vertical relation” between the “core” of a structure and the structure itself (Y and X respectively in Figure 3.1). In the head-phrase relation the element identified as the head determines main properties of the phrase. On the other hand, the notions of argument, adjunct, and specifier represent “horizontal relations” between the head and other constituents of the structure (Y and Z,W, orV in Figures 3.2–3.4 respectively).
Moreover, it will be presented by which diagnostics the different dependencies between constituents can be determined. For instance, while the head selects its arguments and determines their properties, adjuncts select the properties of the head with which it can be combined, and with respect to specifiers, there is a mutual specifier-head selection.
Besides the descriptive explanation of the differences between the relations, HPSG analyses of the different relations will be given to display the advantage of a framework which incorporates all levels of linguistic description at once, since semantics as well as syntax are relevant to highlight the differences between argu-ments, adjuncts, and specifiers.
3.1 Head
The notion of head is central throughout morphosyntactic theories, and with no doubt also for a theoretical framework which bears the attributehead-driven in its name (cf. Pollard and Sag, 1987: 6).1 In the combination of words (or affixes and stems in morphology) in endocentric structures, there is one element determining the relevant properties of the combination’s product (cf. Bloomfield, 1933: 194ff).
This element, which determines the properties of the whole structure, is named the head of the structure (cf. Zwicky, 1985; Fries and Machicao y Priemer, 2016b;
Machicao y Priemer, 2018b).
In this section, the notion of headedness as a vertical relation between a word and a phrase (or a morpheme and a word) as illustrated in Figure 3.5 will be motivated.
In the following Sections 3.2 and 3.3, the notion of head will be examined with respect to other elements with which it builds a phrase (cf. Machicao y Priemer, 2018c).
1But remember that HPSG is not axiomatically considered as head-driven anymore as mentioned in Footnote 53.
X phrase
Y head
Figure 3.5: Head-phrase relation
The definition of the headedness relation in a particular case is dependent on the properties which are projected from the head to the phrase.2 For instance, an element which can be considered a semantic head, does not need to coincide with the syntactic head of the same structure (cf. Ackema 2015 and Section 3.2.3 for a brief discussion of this). Here, I am going to focus on syntactic heads, and point out semantic aspects whenever they are needed.
For instance, in the following examples (1a) and (1b)Gewinn ‘win’ is considered the head of the whole structure.
(1) a. Gewinn win
der
the.f.sg.gen WM
World Championship.f.sg.gen
‘win of the World Championship’
b. fantastischer
fantastic.m.sg.nom Gewinn
win.m.sg.nom
‘fantastic win’
As shown in Figure 2.10 in Section 2.5.3, here repeated as Figure 3.6, the head N0 Gewinn projects its properties (through its projection line N0–N′–N′–NP) to the whole phrase NP. All other phrases (i.e. the DP, AP, and the complement NP) are dependents of the head. As pointed out by Hudson (2004: 8), dependency and headedness are “[. . . ] clearly very closely related” notions, nevertheless both can and should be separated. While headedness is the vertical relation along the projection line between the head N0 and its phrase NP in Figure 3.6, dependency is the horizontal relation between the head and the elements that are connected to its projection line, whereby the head determines the properties of the whole structure.
As a consequence, the whole structure is an NP and not, for instance, a DP or an
2For a discussion, see for instance Payne and Huddleston (2002: 330) and Hudson (2004).
AP).3
NP
DP
der
‘the’
N′
AP
fantastische
‘fantastic’
N′
N0
Gewinn
‘win’
NP
der WM
‘of the World Championship’
Figure 3.6: NP structure in X-bar-theory
Now, the relevant properties determined by the head can be divided into four main aspects (cf. Adger 2004: 62–90; Müller 2013a: 10–11; Machicao y Priemer 2018b; a.o.):
1. the organisation of the phrasal structure,
2. the word class and further morphosyntactic features, 3. the distributional potential of the phrase, and
4. the interpretation of the phrase.
In the following Sections 3.1.1–3.1.5, these four main properties of heads will be exemplified.
3That it is ahorizontal relationis more clear in the notion of head given by Payne and Huddleston (2002: 330). They assume a definition of head which is relational to the structure built. For instance, N0is the head related to the N′Gewinn der WM; but N′Gewinn der WM is the head related to the N′fantastische Gewinn der WM, and so on. N0is in this case called theultimate head. This notion of head is analogue to the syntactic notion of head-daughter in HPSG.