Practical Grammar 10

When it rains, it pours

Note the following sharp contrasts:

(1) It rained.
(2) *Ingrid rained

(3) There arose a storm
(4) *Ingrid arose a storm

What these examples show is that there are places where only meaningless expressions like it and there can occur in English, but not meaningful expressions like Ingrid or the cat. rain and similar words are called weather verbs and the construction in (3) has the name existential construction. This leads to the it of weather verbs being referred to as weather-it and the there in the existential construction as existential there. It is assumed that both expressions are meaningless and that the only subject th weather verbs permit is weather-it and the only subject that the existential construction tolerates is the existential there.

Note: for both of these meaningsless pronouns, there are pronouns spelled identically that are meaningful and in fact that is no coincidence: the meaningless pronouns developed historically from the meaningful ones in environments where their meaning came to be more and more bleached. As a consequence, we need two different lexical entries with the spelling it and two different ones for there as well.

Altogether, with respect to their subjects, there are three different verb classes in English:

1. 'Normal' verbs: they require a meaningful subject. They make up almost all verbs. Examples: sing, dance, put, tell, insult.
2. wheather-verbs: require wheather-it as their subject. Examples: rain, snowed, thunder.
3. Existential verbs: demand that their subject be the existential there. Examples: arise, be, arrive.

Implementation

It is actually fairly easy to implement these ideas in XLFG. We need the following:

a. A way of marking the distinction between words that do and do not have meaning
b. To make sure that normal verbs only tolerate meaningful subjects.
c. To find a way of making weather-verbs require their subject to be the meaningless weather-it and that the existential verbs require their subject to be the existential-there.

A

We already have a way to distinguish meaningful from meaningless nouns. Recall that we specify the meaning of a noun in its PRED value. To model a meaningless noun simply means to not give it a PRED value.

B

This is also straightforward: meaningful subjects are those which are assigned a semantic role in the verb's PRED value. Meaningless subjects are of course not assigned a semantic role. After all, since meaningless expressions do not refer to anything, there is nothing that could play that role in an event.

C

This is a little more involved and requires two theoretical innovations.

1. FORM values for meaningless it and there. The problem is that weather verbs ONLY tolerate the meaningless it as a subject and existential verbs ONLY the meaningless there. But, how can these verbs tell these two meaningless items apart? The answer is that we need to give these two nouns functional information that the verb can selects. This is what the new FORM feature is for. In their lexical entries, it is marked FORM:it and there is marked FORM:there. Meaningful items don't need the form feature.

2. The completeness and coherence conditions assume that all the grammatical functions in a verb's PRED value are assigned a thematic role. For the subjects of weather and existential verbs, however, that is precisely not the case. Therefore, these subjects have to be listed outside the verb's PRED value. The PRED value of rain, for instance, will then be: [PRED:'RAIN'<>SUBJ'] . Since rain has no meaningful dependent, the brackets after its meaning stay empty. The non-semantic subject is then listed after the brackets.

With this, we have all the pieces in place for the next excercise.

Existential sentences

English has a second expletive, namely the word there in sentences like (3):

(3) There arose a storm

These sentences are called existential sentences, because they express that an instance of the concept named by the postverbal NP exists or comes about. Sentence (3), for instance, says that a storm came into existence. This can also be expressed by "A storm arose", but (3) stresses the existential aspect more strongly.

Existential sentences require the expletive there as a SUBJ, because the existence is expressed by the verb arise and there contributes no meaning to the sentence. In this usage, there is a noun. In its usage as a locative element (which we are not dealing with here), it is an adverb.

From what was said above, the constrast between (3) and (4) follows. Implement these two sentences:

(4) *Ingrid arose a storm

Sentence (3) should get a single Argument Structure, namely the following one:

Weather verbs and existential verbs in functional control constructions

Add the following test items to your grammar and parse all items:

(5) Ingrid bought olives
(6) *it bought olives
(7) *There bought olives

(6) it rained
(6) *Ingrid rained
(7) *there rained

(8) There arose a storm
(8) *Ingrid arose a storm
(9) *it arose a storm

The data above together with the data from Unit 9 illustrate the following generalizations:

a. The verb buy tolerates as its SUBJ the word Ingrid but not the expletives it and there.
b. The verb rain tolerates as its SUBJ the expletive it but not the words Ingrid and the expletive there.
c. The verb arise in its existential use tolerates as its SUBJ the expletive there but not the words Ingrid and the expletive it.

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