An Introduction to Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Type: Introductory Course

Section: Language

Lecturer: Stefan Müller

Description

The course will introduce the key concepts of Pollard and Sag (1994) and will focus on basic parts of the HPSG theory, recent developments and special parts that are important for grammars of other languages than English.

There will be lectures about the general setup of the theory (feature structure descriptions, types, multiple inheritance, valence representation), nonlocal dependencies with a discussion of the formal devices to introduce them (traces, immedeate dominance rules, lexical rules, slash amalgamation), relative clauses, linearization, and complex predicates.

The theory of constituent order is not developed very much in the work of Pollard and Sag. I therefore refer to work by Reape (1990, 1992, 1994), Kathol (1995, 2000), and Müller (1999). The background for the other topics is work about the verbal complex that was done by Hinrichs and Nakazawa (1994) and Kiss (1995).

Prerequisites

Course material

Note: More recent slides can be found on the Linguistic Theories in Contrast page or if you read German on the general HPSG teaching page.

Version of September 28, 2003:

• Slides (in pdf-Format for viewing, 1.0M)
• Handouts (pdf-Format 4up for printing, 620K)
• Special Session on Obliqueness
  • Slides (in pdf-Format for viewing, 73K)
  • Handouts (PostScript 4up for printing, 44K)
• The Chapter 2 of Complex Predicates: Verbal Complexes, Resultative Constructions, and Particle Verbs in German contains a very brief overview about basic HPSG concepts. Chapter 3 contains a detailed discussion of control and raising and the predicate complex.

Further Reading

• Books
  • An HPSG grammar for English and the key concepts of HPSG in general are described in:
    • Pollard, Carl J. and Ivan A. Sag, 1987. Information-Based Syntax and Semantics Volume 1 Fundamentals. No. 13 in CSLI Lecture Notes, Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
    • Pollard, Carl J. and Ivan A. Sag, 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.
    
    
  • An HPSG grammar for German is described in:
    • Müller, Stefan, 1999. Deutsche Syntax deklarativ. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar für das Deutsche. Linguistische Arbeiten, Nr. 394, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
    • Müller, Stefan. 2002. Complex Predicates: Verbal Complexes, Resultative Constructions, and Particle Verbs in German. Studies in Constraint-Based Lexicalism. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
    
    
  • Introductory books:
    • Borsley, Robert D., 1999. Syntactic Theory: A Unified Approach. second edition, London: Edward Arnold.
    • Sag, Ivan A. and Thomas Wasow, 1999. Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
  
  
• Literature about HPSG in general can be found at:
  • http://www.cl.uni-bremen.de/HPSG-Bib/
  
  
• Linearization aspects are discussed in:
  • Kathol, Andreas, 2000. Linear Syntax. Oxford University Press
  • Müller, Stefan, 1999. Deutsche Syntax deklarativ. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar für das Deutsche. Linguistische Arbeiten, Nr. 394, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
  • Müller, Stefan, 2000. Continuous or Discontinuous Constituents? In Hinrichs, Erhard, Detmar Meurers und Shuly Wintner (Eds). 2000.: Proceedings of the ESSLLI-2000 Workshop on Linguistic Theory and Grammar Implementation, Birmingham, p. 133-152.
  • Reape, Mike, 1990. Getting Things in Order, In Bunt, Harry and Arthur van Horck (Eds): Discontinuous Constituency. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, p. 209-253, Appeared 1996.
  • Reape, Mike, 1994. Domain Union and Word Order Variation in German, In Nerbonne, John, Klaus Netter, and Carl J. Pollard (Eds): German in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. No. 46 in CSLI Lecture Notes, Stanford: CSLI, p. 151-198.