Kopfbild
Stefan Müller » Publications » Potential structure

Complex predicates: Structure, potential structure and underspecification

Authors: Stefan Müller

Subject Areas: complex predicates, valence, TAG, LFG, HPSG, Hindi, passive

This paper appeared in 2019 as Complex predicates: Structure, potential structure and underspecification. Linguistic Issues in Language Technology 16(3). 2–10.

This paper is a reply to Ashwini, Vaidya, Owen Rambow & Martha Palmer's paper Syntactic composition and selectional preferences in Hindi light verb constructions that will appear in Linguistic Issues in Language Technology.

This paper compares a recent TAG-based analysis of complex predicates in Hindi/Urdu with its HPSG analog. It points out that TAG combines actual structure while HPSG (and Categorial Grammar and other valence-based frameworks) specify valence of lexical items and hence potential structure. This makes it possible to have lightverbs decide which arguments of embedded heads get realized, somthing that is not possible in TAG. TAG has to retreat to disjunctions instead. While this allows straight-forward analyses of active/passive alternations based on the lightverb in valence-based frameworks, such an option does not exist for TAG and it has to be assumed that preverbs come with different sets of arguments.

Published version of February 16, 2019: