R.D.Borsley (r.d.borsley@bangor.ac.uk)
Mon, 25 Nov 1996 10:38:56 +0000 (GMT)
Has anyone thought about the implications for HPSG-type theories of the observations and ideas about coordination in Bayer's recent Language paper on coordination? It seems to me that he presents quite strong evidence for including some sort of disjunction and conjunction within categories, but also that there are objections to some features of his approach. As I understand it, he assumes that the work that is done in HPSG-type grammars by underspecification should be done entirely by disjunction (join). This would seem to entail that object position would have to be identified as a position allowing an [NPdefsing or NPindefsing or NPdefplur or NPindefplur] (at least). This seems pretty undesirable. Unlike an underspecification appproach, this approach also does not lead one to expect the same range of options in different positions, e.g. object of a verb and object of a preposition. This must be a disadvantage. A further point is that his join introduction, which allows an X to count as an [X or Y], must surely lead to computational problems. It would be better I would have thought, if disjunction was a consequence of conjoining unlike categories and not a prerequisite for such coordination. I assume too that his antecedent strengthening, which allows an element requiring an X to count as an element requiring an [X and Y] must also lead to computational problems. Again, it would seem better if conjunction were a consequence of coordination of categories with different requirements and not a prerequisite. Does anyone have any thoughts on any of this? Bob Borsley Department of Linguistics | URL: http://www.linguistics.bangor.ac.uk/ University of Wales, Bangor | FAX: +44 1248 38 29 28 Bangor LL57 2DG | Wales | Visit our web pages!
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