Introduction to HPSG (LSA 104P)

Instructors: Stefan Müller and Ivan A. Sag

Course Areas: Morphology/Syntax

Course Description

• Class 1: Feature structures, the linguistic sign, basic clause structures, phrasal projection, the hierarchical organization of lexical and phrasal information.
• Class 2: Lexical regularities, constituent order variation (within and across languages), order domains, auxiliaries, complex predicates via 'argument composition', 'clitics' and clitic 'climbing'.
• Class 3: The feature-based analysis of long distance dependencies (in cross-linguistic perspective), island constraints.

Slides and Handouts

• Class 1
  • Slides (in pdf format for viewing, )
  • Handouts (in pdf format for printing (4up), )
• Class 2
  • Slides (in pdf format for viewing, )
  • Handouts (in pdf format for printing (4up), )
• Class 3
  • Slides (in pdf format for viewing, )
  • Handouts (in pdf format for printing (4up), )

Literature

• Müller, Stefan. 2007. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: Eine Einführung. Stauffenburg Einführungen, No. 17, Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.
• Müller, Stefan. 2002. Complex Predicates: Verbal Complexes, Resultative Constructions, and Particle Verbs in German. Studies in Constraint-Based Lexicalism, No. 13, Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• Pollard, Carl, and Ivan A. Sag. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Stanford: CSLI Publications. (Chapter1.pdf) (Chapter3.pdf) (Chapter4.pdf)
• Sag, Ivan A., Thomas Wasow, and Emily M. Bender. 2003. Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction. Stanford: CSLI Publications. second edition.

You will find almost 1,000 other publications related to HPSG in the HPSG Online Bibliography.

Further Material

• LinGO and the Matrix: The LKB system and various grammars implemented in it.
• Grammix: CD rom containing the Trale system and various grammars implemented in it.
• Delphin: An international collaboration for the development of open-source NLP tools integrating HPSG, MRS and statistical processing methods.

Material Referred to in the Discussion

• Markus Egg's paper on again (Derivation and resolution of ambiguities in wieder-sentences)
• Some examples of the strange behaviour of nouns like Mädchen. See also Müller, 1999, p. 417
• Material on extraction and contraction:
  • Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1997) The morpholexical nature of to-contraction. Language 73, 79-102.
  • Sag, Ivan A., and Janet D. Fodor. 1994. Extraction Without Traces. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Pp 365--384.
  • Sag, Ivan A. 2000. Another Argument Against Wh-Trace. In the Jorge Hankamer Webfest. (http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge).
• Comments on subject selection:
  • German and the Extended Projection Principle: Chapter 3.2 of Müller, 2007
  • Comments on Kratzer's Severing the External Argument from Its Verb: Chapter 17.3.6 of Müller, 2007
  • If you do not read German, I could send you a draft of a paper in English that discusses this the EPP and non-selected external arguments.
• Some quotes on precision:
  • Manfred Bierwisch (the first German generative grammarian) in Bierwisch, Manfred (1963): Grammatik des deutschen Verbs. studia grammatica II, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, p. 163:
    Es ist also sehr wohl möglich, daß mit den formulierten Regeln Sätze erzeugt werden können, die auch in einer nicht vorausgesehenen Weise aus der Menge der grammatisch richtigen Sätze herausfallen, die also durch Eigenschaften gegen die Grammatikalität verstoßen, die wir nicht wissentlich aus der Untersuchung ausgeschlossen haben. Das ist der Sinn der Feststellung, daß eine Grammatik eine Hypothese über die Struktur einer Sprache ist. Eine systematische Überprüfung der Implikationen einer für natürliche Sprachen angemessenen Grammatik ist sicherlich eine mit Hand nicht mehr zu bewältigende Aufgabe. Sie könnte vorgenommen werden, indem die Grammatik als Rechenprogramm in einem Elektronenrechner realisiert wird, so daß überprüft werden kann, in welchem Maße das Resultat von der zu beschreibenden Sprache abweicht.
  • Chomsky, 1993, p. 2–3 Lectures on Government and Binding, first edition appeared 1981:
    It is this point of view that lies behind the rough distinction between leading ideas and execution, and that motivates much of what follows. I think that we are, in fact, beginning to approach a grasp of certain basic principles of grammar at what may be the appropriate level of abstraction. At the same time, it is necessary to investigate them and determine their empirical adequacy by developing quite specific mechanisms. We should, then, try to distinguish as clearly as we can between discussion that bears on leading ideas and discussion that bears on the choice of specific realizations of them.
  See Müller, 1999, p. 439 for some discussion of these quotes.
• Arguments against remnant movement:
  • Fanselow, Gisbert, 2002. Against Remnant VP Movement. In: Alexiadou, A., E. Anagnostopoulou, S. Barbiers, & H.-M. Gärtner (eds). Dimensions of Movement. Amsterdam: Benjamins . 91-127.
  • De Kuthy, Kordula, 2002. Discontinuous NPs in German, Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  • De Kuthy, Kordula und Walt Detmar Meurers (2001), Partial Constituent Fronting in German, Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 3(3), 143–205.
• VerbMobil
  • The general project page: http://verbmobil.dfki.de/
  • The VerbMobil book: Verbmobil: Foundations of Speech-to-Speech Translation Series: Artificial Intelligence Wahlster, Wolfgang (Ed.), Berlin: Springer, 2000.
  • The Chapter on the German grammar

Related Events at the Institute

• Workshop: Grammar Engineering across Frameworks

  Grammix will be demoed at the demo session. The demo session will be held at CSLI. Registration is required but free.

• The 14th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar including a workshop on Constructions and Grammatical Theory.

  You can meet more people working in the framework of HPSG and take part in the conference dinner. No registration necessary, that is, there is no registration fee.