Research

Ohio State Dissertations in Linguistics (OSDL)

Hee-Rahk Chae (1992)

Lexically Triggered Unbounded Discontinuities in English: An Indexed Phrase Structure Grammar Approach

Advisor: Arnold Zwicky

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Abstract:

This dissertation provides a unified account of lexically triggered unbounded discontinuities in English under an Indexed Phrase Structure Grammar (IPSG). These discontinuous constructions contain particular lexical items which characterize them and trigger the existence of other parts in them. The trigger and the target (i.e. the triggered element) can be separated from each other by other elements (hence, discontinous) and they might not be elements of the same clause (hence, unbounded). There are two different types of constructions: Type A and Type B. The former comprises tough- and similar constructions, and Right Node Raising constructions. Type A/B constructions are subtypes of "Unbounded Dependency Constructions (UDCs)" and "Discontinuous Dependency Constructions (DDCs)", respectively.

Previous analyses of these constructions cannot effectively capture that the same lexical items in different constructions carry the same licensing properties with them. We introduce a new licensing mechanism which employs stacked LICENSOR features into a GPSG framework. LICENSOR is a kind of index, which is the characterizing feature of an Indexed Grammar. Under the present (IPSG) framework, we can capture the constituency of neighboring elements via tree structure, and the dependency between disontinuous elements via mechanisms of indices. As for the contributions of thes study, first, we factor out a new homogeneous group of constructions (UDCs and DDCs). Second, the present framework with stack mechanisms has some advantages over other grammatical frameworks without such mechanisms. We need not assume Extraposition in those cases where we would need to posit ungrammatical "source" sentences. In addition, we need not employ "flattening/liberation" mechanisms to account for interactions between different constructions. Third, we provide a solution for the problem of excluding ungrammatical crossed-dependency sentences. We cannot posit a single constraint for this purpose because not all crossed-dependency sentences are ungrammatical.