Tübingen, University, Diss., 1999.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2001--Tübingen.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the morphosyntax of the constituents referred to as noun phrases in traditional grammar. In line with Abney’s (1987) Determiner Phrase (DP) Hypothesis, this study investigates the syntactic structures of Sinitic nominal phrases by means of a thorough study of lexical elements, such as numerals, classifiers, possessives, adjectives, and nouns, and functional elements, such as plural/collective markers, force particles, and modification markers. It is argued that the syntactic structure of the nominal phrase is universal regardless of the presence of lexical items which realise the heads of the functional projections. This study further proposes a unified account of the articulated structure of nominal phrases, as a full-fledged DP, to explain the syntactic phenomena in both classifier and non-classifier languages. More specifically, a Probe-Goal feature-valuing model is proposed to account for parametric variation among Sinitic and other languages within the framework of Chomsky’s (2000, 2001, 2004) Phase-based Minimalist Programme. Furthermore, given the assumption of the Split-DP Hypothesis, this study proposes that the DP in Sinitic languages is also not a unitary projection but an articulated array of functional projections, including DforceP, DfocusP, DtopicP and DdefiniteP. As their counterparts in the clausal domain, these functional projections encode discourse-related properties, such as illocutionary force, topic, and focus. As far as modification structures are concerned, this study argues that the bare modifier is base-generated in the Spec of a functional or lexical projection, whereas the marked modifier is adjoined to the left of the nominal phrase by the operation Adjunction.

Implementations of grammatical theory have traditionally been based upon Context- Free Grammar (CFG) formalisms which all but ignore questions of learnability. Even implementations which are based upon theories of Generative Grammar (GG), a paradigm which is supposedly motivated by learnability, rarely address such questions. In this thesis we will examine a GG theory which has been formulated primarily to address questions of learnability and present an implementation based upon this theory. The theory argues from Chomsky's definition of epistemological priority that principles which match elements and structures from prelinguistic systems with elements and structures in linguistic systems are preferable to those which are defined purely linguistically or non-linguistically. A procedure for constructing phrase-structure representations from prelinguistic relations using principles of node percolation (rather than the traditional X-theory of GG theories or phrase-structure rules of CFG theories) is presented and this procedure integrated into a left-right, primarily bottom-up parsing mechanism. Specifically, we present a parsing mechanism which derives phrase-structure representations of sentences from Case- and 0-relations using a small number of Percolation Principles. These Percolation Principles simply determine the categorial features of the dominant node of any two adjacent nodes in a representational tree, doing away with explicit phrase structure rules altogether. The parsing mechanism also instantiates appropriate empty categories using a filler-driven paradigm for leftward argument and non-argument movement. Procedures modelling learnability are not implemented in this work, but the applicability of the presented model to a computational model of language is discussed. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation proposes a principle of "economy of command", arguing that it provides a simple and natural explanation for some well-known properties of human language syntax. The focus is on the abstract combinatorial system that constructs the hierarchical structure of linguistic expressions, with long-distance dependencies determined by the structural relation of c-command. Adopting the assumption of much recent work that properties of syntax reflect very general organizational principles, I propose that syntactic forms with fewer and shorter c-command relations are preferred. Within the boundaries of strict binary branching assumed here, this results in a preference for hierarchical tree structures to be shallow and bushy, rather than deep and narrow. I pursue two broad applications of this principle, to syntactic movement and phrase structure. I argue that movement, the displacement of material to thematically unrelated positions, is a mechanism to reduce the number and length of c-command relations in the affected structures. I detail the properties we expect if movement is driven by this principle, including antilocality, a size threshold effect, a class of island effects, and feedback effects on iterated patterns of movement. I argue that these predictions align well with recent empirical descriptions of syntactic movement. I develop an account in these terms of the cross-linguistic ordering of elements within nominal phrases. Utilizing a computer program, I show that a single underlying structure common to all languages can give rise to all and only the attested word order possibilities via c-command-reducing movements, and describe the required shape of this underlying structure. The principle of economy of command also makes predictions about the format of phrase structure. Among the possible ways to build self-similar syntactic structure, the phrasal forms that build trees with the fewest c-command relations are "endocentric", in the geometric sense that each phrase contains a unique local terminal, and every daughter of the phrase that does not contain its associated terminal is another phrase. This provides a structural basis for the mysterious headedness of phrases. These successes support the validity of the principle, and reinforce the broader project of seeking naturalistic explanation of linguistic properties.

In this dissertation, I provide a left-to-right incremental parsing approach for Headdriven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG; Pollard and Sag (1987, 1994)). HPSG is a lexicalized, constraint-based theory of grammar, which has also been widely exploited in computational linguistics in recent years. Head-final languages are known to pose problems for the incrementality of head-driven parsing models, proposed for parsing with constraint-based grammar formalisms, in both psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. Therefore, here I further focusmy attention on processing a head-final language, specifically Turkish, to highlight any challenges that may arise in the case of such a language. The dissertation makes two principal contributions, the first part mainly providing the theoretical treatment required for the computational approach presented in the second part. The first part of the dissertation is concerned with the analysis of certain phenomena in Turkish grammar within the framework of HPSG. The phenomena explored in this part include word order variation and relativization in Turkish. Turkish is a head-final language that exhibits a considerable degree of word order freedom, with both local and long-distance scrambling. I focus on the syntactic aspects of this freedomin simple and complex Turkish sentences, detailing the assumptions Imake both to dealwith the variation in the word order, and also to capture certain restrictions on that variation, within the HPSG framework. The second phenomenon, relativization in Turkish, has drawn considerable attention in the literature, all accounts so far being within the tradition of transformational grammar. Here I propose a purely lexical account of the phenomenon within the framework of HPSG, which I claim is empirically more adequate than previous accounts, as well as being computationally more attractive. The motivation behind the work presented in the second part of the dissertation mainly stems from psycholinguistic considerations. Experimental evidence (e.g. Marslen- Wilson (1973)) has shown that human language processing is highly incremental, meaning that humans construct aword-by-word partial representation of an utterance as they hear each word. Here I explore the computational effectiveness of an incremental processing mechanism for HPSG grammars. I argue that any such processing mechanism has to employ some sort of nonmonotonicity in order to guarantee both completeness and termination, and propose a way of doing that without violating the soundness of the overall approach. I present a parsing approach for HPSG grammars that parses a string of words fromleft to right, attaching every word of the input to a global structure as soon as it is encountered, thereby dynamically changing the structure as the parse progresses. I further focus on certain issues that arise in incremental processing of a “free”word order, head-final language like Turkish. First, I investigate howthe parser can benefit from the case values in Turkish in foreseeing the existence of an embedded phrase/clause before encountering its head, thereby improving the incrementality of structuring. Second, I propose a strategy for the incremental recovery of filler-gap relations in certain kinds of unbounded dependency constructions in Turkish, which further enables one to capture a number of (strong) preferences that humans exhibit in processing certain examples with potentially ambiguous long-distance dependency relations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 231-238).

This thesis advances a specific model of 1-syntax, based on Hale and Keyser (1993, 1994) and Dechaine (1996) as a point of departure, and also proposes a general theory of the relation between the lexicon and the syntax. One of the essential proposals that I make is the F\mctionalization Principle, which permits a lexical head to project a functional projection if and only if the meaning of the head is represented by 1-syntactic structure without any extra semantic features. I refer to this type of head as a light head. The Functionalization Principle leads us to a principled account of various lexical and functional uses of lexical items such as a passive morpheme -en and have. Examples that support my analysis range from adjectival and verbal passives (e.g. Mary is very pleased and The glass was broken by BUI), to constructions of alienable and inalienable possession (e.g. John has Jive bucks and John has blue eyes), to causative/experiential constructions (e.g. John had his students walk out of class), and to perfect constructions (e.g. Lucie has advised the prime minister). Furthermore, the analysis of possessive have is extended to possessive nominals (e.g. John's cat and John's eyes). I also examine the implications of the theories of 1-syntax and 1- functors for Case. I propose that 1-syntactic structure partly determines inherent Case whereas the 1-functor checks what I call l-Junctor Case through the Spec-head relation. Furthermore, I show that these analyses of inherent Case and 1-functors account for essential properties of possessive D (a genitive marker -*s), some Hindi marked subject constructions and Japanese experiential transitive constructions.

Both ditransitive verbs and causative transitive verbs in Japanese are linked with the two verbal arguments: the dative phrase and the accusative phrase. Despite this similarity, the syntax of these verbs is in sharp contrast: the ditransitive verb construction involves the mono-clausal structure, whereas the transitive causative construction contains the bi-clausal structure (Kuroda 1965b, Saito 1982; 1985, Hoji 1985, Miyagawa 1989, among others). One crucial instance for such distinction is the behavior of the dative phrase of the two types of construction with respect to the ‘subjecthood’. The subject-oriented anaphor in Japanese (e.g., zibun ‘self’) can take the dative phrase of the transitive causative verb as its antecedent, whereas it cannot the dative phrase with the ditransitive verb as its antecedent (Kuroda 1965b). Notwithstanding the difference, this thesis attempts to proposes a unified account for these two types of dative-accusative constructions in terms of the Phase Theory within the framework of Generative Grammar (Chomsky 2000; 2001). Investigating four subcategories of dative-accusative verbs (i.e., spray/load verbs, give verbs, causative transitive verbs and causative motion verbs), I claim that there are two types of Dative Case Assignment in Japanese: the In-situ Assignment and the Assignment after Movement. The former type of assignment is manifested in VP of give verbs and in that of transitive causative verbs; on the other hand, the latter type of assignment is identified in VP of spray/load verbs and in that of causative motion verbs. In the Phase theory, the probe-goal relation between the functional head and its ccommanding goal(s) (i.e., (Multiple) Agree) governs Case-licensing mechanism. In standard assumptions, the Accusative Case domain is the c-command domain of the light verb v (Chomsky 2004). Following these assumptions, I claim that the two types of Dative Case Assignment can be ultimately attributed to the two distinctive Case features on the functional head v of the four types of dative-accusative constructions: vacc[+multiple] and vdat. If vacc[+multiple] is selected by Merge, the Dative Assignment after Movement is implemented, whereas if vdat is selected, the In-situ Dative Assignment is induced. Hence, the difference in Dative Case Assignment is predicted at which Select picks up vocabularies from the Lexicon in order to set up a reference set for a derivation of the dative-accusative construction. The in-situ dative assignment for the ditransitive construction has been proposed in the literature (e.g., Miyagawa 1996); however, no proposal of a movement-based dative assignment for the ditransitive construction has been made. This is one of the important outcomes of my thesis. However, the most important consequence of my two types of Dative Assignment is the link between two hitherto unrelated phenomena: Dative Case Assignment and the condition on argument alternation. Argument alternation has attracted much attention in the literature of lexical semantics, being independently analyzed from most of the syntactic properties of these ditransitive verbs that I examine in the thesis (Kageyama 1980; 1996, Levin 1993, Kishimoto 2001c, Iwata 2008). However, I show that the condition on argument alternation can be written solely by the syntactic terms without any stipulation of constructional meaning; namely, when vdat is selected in a numeration of a ditransitive verb, the derived verb is never licensed to participate in argument alternation, whereas when vacc [+multiple] is selected, the complex verb is licensed to participate in the alternation. A further contribution of my thesis is to accommodate a new pair within the causative-ditransitive paradigm in Japanese in addition to its already-existing membership between transitive causative verbs and give verbs (Kuno 1973, Miyagawa 1996): a pair of causative motion verbs and spray/load verbs. This new pairing further strengthens the existence of the causative-ditransitive paradigm as a natural class in Japanese. The pairing is solely motivated by the Dative Case Assignment that I propose.

This thesis advances a specific model of 1-syntax, based on Hale and Keyser (1993, 1994) and Dechaine (1996) as a point of departure, and also proposes a general theory of the relation between the lexicon and the syntax. One of the essential proposals that I make is the F\mctionalization Principle, which permits a lexical head to project a functional projection if and only if the meaning of the head is represented by 1-syntactic structure without any extra semantic features. I refer to this type of head as a light head. The Functionalization Principle leads us to a principled account of various lexical and functional uses of lexical items such as a passive morpheme -en and have. Examples that support my analysis range from adjectival and verbal passives (e.g. Mary is very pleased and The glass was broken by BUI), to constructions of alienable and inalienable possession (e.g. John has Jive bucks and John has blue eyes), to causative/experiential constructions (e.g. John had his students walk out of class), and to perfect constructions (e.g. Lucie has advised the prime minister). Furthermore, the analysis of possessive have is extended to possessive nominals (e.g. John's cat and John's eyes). I also examine the implications of the theories of 1-syntax and 1- functors for Case. I propose that 1-syntactic structure partly determines inherent Case whereas the 1-functor checks what I call l-Junctor Case through the Spec-head relation. Furthermore, I show that these analyses of inherent Case and 1-functors account for essential properties of possessive D (a genitive marker -*s), some Hindi marked subject constructions and Japanese experiential transitive constructions. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate