Subcategorization

Abstract: Immediate effects of verb-specific syntactic (subcategorization) information were found in a cross-modal naming experiment, a self-paced reading experiment, and an experiment in which eye movements were monitored. In the reading studies, syntactic misanalysis effects in sentence complements (e.g., "The student forgot the solution was. . .") occurred at the verb in the complement (e.g., was) for matrix verbs typically used with noun phrase complements but not for verbs typically used with sentence complements. In addition, a complementizer effect for sentencecomplement-biased verbs was not due to syntactic misanalysis but was correlated with how strongly a particular verb prefers to be followed by the complementizer that. The results support models that make immediate use of lexically specific constraints, especially constraint-based models, but are problematic for lexical filtering models. Many aspects of language comprehension take place rapidly, with readers and listeners making commitments to at least partial interpretations soon after receiving linguistic input (e.g., Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Crain & Steedman, 1985; Frazier, 1989; Frazier & Fodor, 1978; Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1987; Tyler, 1989). The on-line nature of comprehension has important consequences for syntactic processing (parsing). Immediate interpretation requires some local syntactic commitments even though sentences often contain temporary ambiguities. As a result, readers and listeners will occasionally make incorrect commitments that will require revision when, an ambiguity is resolved at a later point in processing. The frequency of syntactic misanalysis or garden-pathing will depend on the types of commitments made by the system and the information used to determine these commitments. A system that makes complete syntactic commitments using only a restricted domain of syntactically

Abstract: Event-related potentials were recorded from 13 scalp locations while participants read sentences containing a syntactic ambiguity. In Experiment 1, syntactically disambiguating words that were inconsistent with the "favored" syntactic analysis elicited a positive-going brain potential (P600). Experiment 2 examined whether syntactic ambiguities are resolved by application of a phrase-structure-based minimal attachment principle or by word-specific subcategorization information. P600 amplitude was a function of subcategorization biases rather than syntactic complexity. These findings indicate that such biases exist and can influence the parser under certain conditions and that P600 amplitude is a function of the perceived syntactic well-formedness of the sentence.

Abstract: Introduction to the CLE, Hiyan Alshawi and Robert C. Moore - language analysis and interpretation, overview of CLE components logical forms, Jan van Eijck and Hiyan Alshawi - levels of logical form in the CLE, resolved logical form, quasi logical form categories and rules, Hiyan Alshawi - constraints, components and rules, categories for linguistic analysis, CLE categories, category unification and subsumption, Boolean expression feature values, feature sets, defaults and macros, internal category representation, grammar rules, syntax and morphology rules, semantic rules, lexical entries unification-based syntactic analysis, Stephen G. Pulman - theoretical background, subcategorization, start categories, sentence types, subject-auxilliary inversion, unbounded dependencies, passives, conjunctions semantic rules for English, Jan van Eijck and Robert C. Moore - semantic rules and sences, general principles of the CLE semantics, the semantics of specific constructions lexical analysis, David Carter - tokenizing the input, segmenting the tokens, recovering from unknown tokens syntactic and semantic processing, Robert C. Moore and Hiyan Alshawi - parsing, semantic analysis, morphological processing, ambiguities and packing quantifier scoping, Douglas B. Moran and Fernando C.N. Pereira - quantifier scoping problem, scoping rules and references, the scoping algorithm, refinements to the basic algorithm, implementation sortal restrictions, Hiyan Alshawi and David Carter - applying sortal restrictions, encoding sorts as terms, the external representation of sorts, specifying the sort hierarchy, developments resolving quasi logical forms, Hiyan Alshawi - deriving LFs from QLFs, anaphoric terms, context model, constraints on resolved LFs, anaphoric relations and formulae, further work on QLF resolution lexical acquisition, David Carter - strategy adopted, assumptions behind the strategy eliciting syntactic behaviour and semantic informtion, incorporating new entries, the core lexicon the CLE in application development, Arnold Smith - linguistic applications, model-based systems, the LF-Prolog query evaluator, the order-processing exemplar, extending the interface, new directions ellipsis, comparatives and generation, Hiyan Alshawi and Stephen G. Pulman Swedish-English QLF translation, Hiyan Alshawi, et al - the Swedish CLE, QLF-based translation, disambiguation and interaction.

Abstract: or lexical host, must also necessarily be the phonological host. This paper shows that the structural and phonological hosts need not be the same; i.e., clitics can simultaneously attach syntactically to a structural host, while attaching independently to a different phonological host. Thus the two-strategy assumption of clitic positioning and attachment is inadequate. Instead, three independent parameters are required. These binary parameters encode two structural notions-DOMINANCE and PRECEDENCE-and one phonological notion-LIAISON. The values of the parameters constrain possible clitics to eight types, each of which is illustrated in this paper. These parameters are encoded in the lexical subcategorization frame for clitics. It is shown that clitics are PHRASAL AFFIXES. Although languages appear to differ widely in types of clitics and cliticization, this paper shows how a unitary analysis of apparently diverse clitic types is possible in terms of the three-parameter system. Languages analysed include Classical Greek, Spanish, French, Ngiyambaa, Nganhcara, and some Uto-Aztecan languages.* This paper proposes very restrictive universals having to do with clitic po