Constraint-based Syntax 2: Week 3
Maximal phrase types
In Week 1, the following 3 phrase types were introduced: hd-subj-ph, hd-spr-ph, and hd-comp-ph.
Head-Specifier Phrases
Exercise: parse the 3 expressions cat, a, and a cat in order to see how the valence features of the noun drive the formation of the hd-spr-ph the cat.
Online Grammar for Chapter 2: HPSG Background
For the moment, there is little more to say about head-specifier phrases.
Clauses and non-clauses
Following traditional grammar, GS make use of the concept of clauses, i.e. declarative clauses, interrogative clauses, etc. All clauses are phrases, but there are of course non-clausal phrases as well, for instance, VPs, NPs, APs, and PPs. In order to license these non-clausal phrases, GS postulate the following subtypes of hd-comp-ph, to which we have added the subtype sbjn-vp to license subjunctive VPs. The crucial difference between the phrases is the choice of the head, as shown in the table:
| Subtype of hd-comp-ph | Full name | Distinctive property | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| fin-vp | Finite verb phrase | the head is V[fin] | snores, likes Fido |
| sbjn-vp | Subjunctive verb phrase | the head is V[sbjn] | be happy, dance, give Lilly a book |
| nf-hc-ph | Non-finite head-complement phrase | the head is a non-finite V or N, A, P | dancing, depended on Fido, afraid of Fido, picture of Lilly |
| cp-ph | Complementizer phrase | the head is C | that Lilly danced, for Lilly to like Fido |
- Note
- The four subtypes of hd-comp-ph listed above are all the subtypes of hd-comp-ph that exist in this grammar and they are mutually incompatible. This means that every hd-comp-ph must also be one and only one of its maximal subtypes! As a consequence, in the online grammar you will never see the type hd-comp-ph; instead, when a head combines with its complements, the program will display one of the maximal four subtypes listed in the table.
Exercise: parse all of the examples above and examine the structure of the respective phrases and how they are licensed by the information in the head daughter (HEAD, VFORM, and COMPS).
Online Grammar for Chapter 2: HPSG Background
Clauses
Clauses play a central role in GS' theory of English grammar. First, they have their own syntactic and semantic characteristics, which distinguish them from non-clauses. Secondly, they recognize a number of different clauses types that each have a distinctive combination of syntactic and semantic properties.
States of Affairs vs. Messages
In the system of GS, verbs and verb phrases have states of affairs (soa) as their content. Simplifying somewhat for now, a state of affairs consists of a situation in which objects that are present in the situation (which may be people, things, properties, etc.) stand in a certain relationship to each other. Here are some informal examples:
- a state of affairs involving two entities, Fido and Lilly, who stand in the relationship that he chases her (in this state of affairs)
- a state of affairs involving three entities, a book, Fido, and Lilly, who stand in the relationship that her gave it to her
- a state of affairs involving one entity, Lilly, who stands in the relationship that she snores (it is kind of awkward to say that something stands in a one-place relationship - it would be more intuitive in this case to say that Lilly has the property of snoring. But to keep the system general, we will also use the word relation when there is only a single object involved in the state of affairs.)
Note that a state of affairs is completely abstract: all by itself, nothing is said about whether there is such a state of affairs or not and nothing is said about whether somebody believes, claims, denies, or dreams of such a state of affairs! This is precisely the crucial difference between non-clauses and clauses: non-clauses such as verbs and verb phrases have such abstract states of affairs as their content. In contrast, clauses express messages' about a state of affairs. One type of message is proposition, the claim that a state of affairs actually holds. Thus, the sentence Lilly chases Fido expresses the proposition that there is a state of affairs where she chases him and by uttering this sentence, a speaker is actually committed to asserting that the proposition is true, i.e. that the world corresponds to the state of affairs described in the sentence she uttered.
All clauses have in common that they are phrases and that they must have a content of type message, as follows:
| Clause type | Full name | Content value | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| decl-clause | declarative clause | austinian | Lilly danced. |
| inter-clause | interrogative clause | question | Does Lilly dance?, Who danced? |
| imp-clause | imperative clause | outcome | Dance! |
| excl-clause | exclamative clause | fact | What a cat!, Is Lilly smart! |
Head-Complement Phrases
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