filler gap constructinons, Apuntes de Inglés

¡Descarga filler gap constructinons y más Apuntes en PDF de Inglés solo en Docsity! English Filler-Gap Constructions∗ Ivan A. Sag Stanford University April 4, 2008 1 Introduction In the tradition of transformational grammar, the term ‘(grammatical) construction’ has been a theoretical taboo at least since the 1980s. It was then that Chomsky argued that transfor- mations like ‘passive’ and ‘raising’, common in earlier versions of transformational grammar, should be eliminated in favor of general conditions on structures that would allow a single operation – ‘Move NP’ – to do the work of a family of such transformations. This guided the subsequent evolution of transformational theory, where one finds discussion of even more general operations, such as ‘Move α’ or simply ‘Move’. This evolution from construction- specific rules to proposals focused on general principles from which the idiosyncrasy of indi- vidual constructions are supposed to be derived is universally heralded by practitioners of GB or ‘Minimalism’ as a significant positive step in the evolution of linguistic science. However, as noted already by McCawley (1988a), the centerpiece of Chomsky’s (1986) argument – his discussion of the passive construction – did not touch on crucial issues such as the participial verb morphology, the choice of the preposition by, and the role of the verb be. McCawley pointed out that these properties of the construction followed from nothing under the more ‘explanatory’ proposals made by Chomsky, whose analysis of passivization, when complete, was comparably stipulative to the ‘construction-based’ transformational alternative it sought to replace. Yet Chomsky (1993: 4) writes as follows, fomenting an anticonstructionist bias throughout the generative world that remains alive and well even today: [In a Principles-and-Parameters approach,] the notion of grammatical construc- tion is eliminated, and with it, the construction-particlar rules. Constructions such as verb phrase, relative clause, and passive remain only as taxonomic artifacts, ∗Parts of this paper were presented at the Symposium on Constructions organized by Adele Goldberg at the 2004 LSA Meeting in Boston. I would like to thank all the following people for valuable discussion of the ideas developed here: Valerio Allegranza, Adrian Brasoveanu, Liz Coppock, Bill Croft, Bruno Estigarribia, Chuck Fillmore, Adele Goldberg, Jonathan Ginzburg, Ray Jackendoff, Paul Kay, Bob Levine, and Stefan Müller. I am also grateful to Bob Borsley, Rui Chaves, Liz Coppock, Paul Kay, Jong-Bok Kim, and Laura Michaelis for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1 collections of phenomena explained through the interaction of the principles of UG, with the values of the parameters fixed. The ‘interaction of principles’ envisaged by Chomsky to this day remains elusive. Despite often-repeated rhetoric, the proposals made within mainstream generative grammar continue to be insufficiently precise, heavily dependent upon theory-internal assumptions that cannot be independently established, and, in many cases, empirically defective once they are made precise enough to test.1 Equally problematic is the distinction Chomsky has drawn between ‘core’ phenomena and the ‘periphery’ of language. The core phenomena are meant to be ‘pure instantiations of Universal Grammar’, while the periphery consists of ‘marked exceptions (irregular verbs, etc.)’ (see Chomsky and Lasnik 1993). The move away from constructions thus leads to the study of ‘Core Grammar’ and to the systematic exclusion of other phenomena. But how are we to know which phenomena are core and which are peripheral? The liter- ature offers no principled criteria for distinguishing the two, despite the obvious danger that without such criteria, the distinction risks becoming either vacuous or else a legitimation of analyses that are insufficiently general or otherwise empirically flawed. There is the further danger that grammatical theories developed on the basis of ‘core’ phenomena may become disconfirmable only by examining data from the periphery – precisely the data that are ig- nored by researchers working under these assumptions.2 In addition, the shift to a focus on an arbitrarily delimited subset of grammatical phe- nomena (those that relate to the principles of UG, a notion whose particulars are seldom, if ever made precise and which have been assumed to be in considerable flux over the past few decades) has led to a loss of both precision and descriptive coverage within the practice of modern generative grammar. Indeed, since the 1960s,3 no large-scale, internally consistent transformational grammar has (to my knowledge) been written for any human language. This remarkable fact is a consequence of both a general perception in the field that such large- scale descriptions are irrelevant for theoretical purposes and the research community’s lack of interest in the development of applications (e.g. linguistically precise language engineering technology), which would require that more attention be paid to matters of scale and consis- tency. Even though work in ‘Construction Grammar’ is often associated with data-driven or exemplar-based models of language learning, I will demonstrate that there is in fact no in- consistency between the concern for general principles of grammar (even Universal Grammar in Chomsky’s sense) and a construction-based approach to grammatical description. While it remains true that the ‘standard theory’ transformational grammars that Chomsky disparages in the above quote failed to provide a basis for expressing generalizations over construction- specific transformations, there are nonetheless other, well-developed frameworks for the study 1For critical discussion substantiating these defects, see, for example, Johnson and Lappin 1999, Postal 2004, and Seuren 2004. 2For further arguments that the core-periphery distinction is both unmotivated and largely inconsistent with more realistic models of language learning, see Fillmore et al. 1988, Kay and Fillmore 1999, Jackendoff 1997, Culicover 1999, and Culicover and Jackendoff 2005. 3In the 1960s, there were attempts to develop consistent fragments of transformational grammars for English. However, these efforts were of limited scope and had little or no impact on mainstream generative theory. d. The head daughter may be an otherwise non-occurring finite auxiliary like first- person aren’t (Aren’t I allowed to go? vs. *I aren’t allowed to go.). Ginzburg and Sag (2000) [henceforth GS-00], building on the discussion of Fillmore (1999), provide an analysis of these constructions in terms of a multiple-inheritance hierar- chy of phrasal types. The proposal presented here simplifies the analysis of GS-00 in terms of the closely related framework of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) outlined in Sag 2007. In SBCG, words and phrases are modeled as signs (sign is a type of feature structure reflecting a grammatically induced correspondence of sound, syntactic category, meaning, and/or contextual conditions). Signs include specifications for the features PHONOLOGY (), SYNTAX (SYN), SEMANTICS (SEM), and CONTEXT (CNTXT), whose values are as shown in (7):8 (7)           sign PHON phonological-object SYN syntactic-object SEM linguistic-meaning CNTXT context-object           More precisely, a sign is a function that maps each appropriate feature to an appropriate value, each of which is complex. That is, the value associated with each feature shown in (7) is another functional feature structure, which maps a different set of of features onto appropriate values (some of which may be atoms like +, −, or accusative). A construction, by contrast, is a constraint defining a class of mother-daughter config- urations.9 These configurations are modeled as feature structures of a diferent type, called construct. A feature structure of this type is a function mapping the feature MOTHER (MTR) to a sign and the feature DAUGHTERS (DTRS) to a list of signs.10 We may represent such functions in the same format we used in (7), i.e. as in (8): (8)     construct MTR sign0 DTRS 〈 sign1, ..., signn 〉     While feature structures of type sign model conventional sound-meaning correspondences, different types of feature structures model various kinds of linguistic information that are relevant to the system of grammar that determines which signs are well-formed. Sign well-formedness in SBCG is defined by the following principle: 8A complete list of the feature and type abbreviations used in this paper is provided in Appendix 2. 9Sag (2007) posits two kinds of construction: combinatory constructions (defining classes of constructs) and lexical class constructions (defining classes of lexemes or words). I will have nothing to say here about lexical class constructions. 10A list of elements can also be treated as a function whose domain is the features FIRST and REST. (9) Sign Principle: Every sign must be lexically or constructionally licensed, where: a sign is lexically licensed only if it satisfies some entry in the lexicon, and a sign is constructionally licensed only if it is the mother of some construct. The constructions of the grammar thus interact with the lexicon to impose constraints on sign well-formedness. The sentences defined by an SBCG are those well-formed signs whose cat- egory includes the specifications appropriate for a finite, root, verbal projection.11 An SBCG thus defines a set of derivations that can be represented as trees, much like the derivations of a Context-Free Grammar. However, the labels on the nodes of these trees are not monadic category names (NP, S, V, etc.), but rather feature structures of type sign.12 As already noted, natural language generalizations typically manifest themselves along varying analytic grains. This fact is modeled precisely in a hierarchical type system, where idiosyncratic constraints can be imposed by an individual construction itself, while constraints of full generality or of intermediate grain can be stated in terms of appropriate superordinate types, e.g. construct or any of the subtypes of construct that the grammar recognizes. The types relevant to English auxiliary inversion are included in a hierarchical organization of the construct types, part of which is sketched in (10): (10) a. phrasal-construct (phr-cxt) and lexical-construct (lex-cxt) are immediate subtypes of construct. b. headed-construct (hd-cxt) and nonheaded-construct (nhd-cxt) are immediate sub- types of phr-cxt. c. aux-initial-clause (ai-cl), filler-head-clause (filler-hd-cl), and head-functor-construct (hd-func-cxt) are immediate subtypes of hd-cxt. Each subtype of construct in (10) defines the domain of some grammatical property or constraint. The type phrasal-construct is used to pick out a class of constructs which (as op- posed to lexical constructs) are used to build phrases. That is, the MTR value of any feature structures of type phr-cxt must be of type phrase. The type hd-cxt distinguishes headed phrasal constructs from others. This is done in terms of the feature HD-DTR, whose value (a sign) is identified with a particular member of the DTRS list. Different kinds of headed-construct, cor- responding to the various subtypes of the type hd-cxt, correspond to a more or less traditional taxonomy of local dependency relations between the head-daughter and its sister(s). 11This must be specified for an SBCG, just as a CFG includes a specification of the ‘start’ symbol. 12Here I forego discussion of certain points of detail. For example, I follow GS-00 in assuming that elliptical utterances (e.g. With a spoon.) are analyzed as a finite clause. This predicts that such expressions can be embed- ded in clause-embedding constructs (e.g. I think with a spoon), etc. For further aspects of the general framework of SBCG, see Sag 2007. An important constraint associated with headed constructs is the Head Feature Principle (HFP), which requires the mother’s syntactic category to match that of its head daughter. This constraint, which is the ‘X’ part of ‘X Theory’, can be formulated as follows:13 (11) Head Feature Principle: hd-cxt ⇒      MTR [ SYN [ CAT X ] ] HD-DTR [ SYN [ CAT X ] ]      The HFP works in tandem with a constraint specifying the general properties of aux-initial clauses, that is the following constraint governing all feature structures of type auxiliary- initial-clause: (12) ai-cl ⇒               MTR [ SYN [ VAL 〈 〉 ] ] DTRS 〈 X0, X1, . . . Xn 〉 HD-DTR X0 :       word SYN    CAT [ INV + ] VAL 〈 X1,...,Xn 〉                        In this type of construct, the head daughter must be an invertible word, i.e. a finite, auxil- iary verb whose lexical entry allows resolution to [INV +]. The sisters of the head daughter are identified with the elements of the latter’s VALENCE (VAL) list. Since the mother’s VAL list is empty (i.e. the mother of an aux-initial clause must be [VAL 〈 〉], the mother can select no further valents. These constraints can be thought of in terms of a ‘bottom-up’ procedure that ‘cancels off’ all the valents of the head daughter so as to ‘saturate’ its valence (i.e. subcatego- rization) requirements, but the static nature of the constraint ensures that it can equally well be regarded as part of a ‘top-down’ procedure that introduces valents, adding corrsponding elements to the head daughter’s valence list. The static nature of constructions makes them useful for parsing and generation algorithms that blend ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies with probabilistic assessments of ‘goodness of fit’ in an effort to model human sentence pro- cessing, which we know is incremental, flexible, and highly integrative (for further discussion of this point, see Sag and Wasow in press). The constraint in (12) predicts the common properties of aux-initial clauses given in (6), assuming that (1) the grammar of words ensures that [INV +] elements are all [AUX +] and finite [VFORM fin(ite)], (2) finite auxiliaries like better are lexically specified as [INV −], and (3) auxiliaries like first-person aren’t are lexically specified as [INV +], rendering them com- patible with aux-initial clauses, but incompatible with, for example, the Subject-Predicate 13Variables such as X, X1, and Y range over feature structures in the constructions and other constraints that are formulated here. Σ-variables and L-variables range over sets and lists of feature structures, respectively. A colon indicates that the immediately following constraint must be satisfied by all values of the immediately preceding variable, i.e. it introduces a restriction on a variable. This analysis presupposes the existence of further, familiar constructions, such as the Head-Complement Construction, used to build the auxiliary verb’s VP complement (get the job) in Figures 1 and 2: (14) Head-Complement: hd-comp-cxt ⇒                     hd-cxt MTR    SYN [ VAL 〈 Z 〉 ] SEM FR〈NP ,p〉(X0, . . . , Xn)    DTRS 〈 H , Y1:[SEM X1], . . . , Yn:[SEM Xn] 〉 HD-DTR H:      word SYN [ VAL 〈Z, Y1, . . .,Yn〉 ] SEM X0                          Here 〈NP , p〉 is the semantic type of functions from NP denotations to propositions. The signs licensed by the constructs that satisfy this Head-Complement construction all have a singleton valence list. I assume, following Fillmore 1999 and GS-00, that English grammar also includes a few more aux-initial constructions. These license constructs that instantiate three further subtypes of ai-cxt (see (12) above), as shown in (15)–(17): (15) Inverted Exclamative Clause: inv-excl-cl ⇒         MTR    SYN [ CAT [ IC + ] ] SEM fact(FRp(X1, . . . , Xn))    DTRS 〈 [SEM X1], . . ., [SEM Xn] 〉         (16) Inverted Conditional Clause: inv-cond-cl ⇒            MTR       SYN    CAT   IC − SELECT S      SEM λq.[FRp(X1, . . . , Xn) ⇒κ q ]       DTRS 〈 [SEM X1], . . ., [SEM Xn] 〉            (17) Inverted Propositional Clause: inv-prop-cl ⇒           MTR       SYN [ CAT [ IC + ] ] GAP nelist SEM FRp(X1, . . . , Xn)       DTRS 〈 [SEM X1], . . ., [SEM Xn] 〉           In (15), I follow GS-00, who argue that the semantics of exclamative clauses is a fact (roughly in the sense of Vendler (1968, 1972)). The function fact maps a proposition to the correspond- ing Vendlerian fact. I return briefly to the evidence supporting this claim in section 4.2 below. Note, however, that the constructional analysis presented here is consistent with a broad range of semantic alternatives. (16) licenses subordinate clauses that modify another clause.17 Here, ⇒κ denotes whatever conditional relation is appropriate for the semantic analysis of examples like (3) above. Finally, the Inverted Propositional Construction in (17) allows an independent aux-initial clause to have a propositional meaning, but only when the GAP value is a non- empty list (nelist). This permits such clauses only at the top of FG dependencies, as discussed below. In addition to its role in the analysis of matrix wh-interrogatives, this construction is also used to license the head daughter of negative-adverb-initial sentences like (18), though here the extraction dependency is bounded: (18) Seldom/Never in my life [have I seen such beauty]. 2.2 The Subject-Predicate Construction GS-00 provides an account of a number of (both ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’) declarative clauses in terms of a hierarchy of clausal types. My approach here is similar, though somewhat streamined: (19) a. clause and non-clause are immediate subtypes of the type phr-cxt. b. declarative-clause (decl-cl), interrogative-clause (int-cl), imperative-clause (imp- cl), and exclamative-clause (excl-cl), and relative-clause (rel-cl) are immediate sub- types of the type clause. The constraints specific to the type decl-cl require that the mother’s semantics is propositional (a proposition or outcome - see below) and that the clause’s VFORM value is either finite or infinitival (inf). We may thus streamline the formulation of the following Subject-Predicate 17Following Van Eynde (1998), who builds directly on Allegranza 1998, the features MOD and SPR of Pollard and Sag 1994 are replaced by the single feature SELECT (SEL). The values of this feature indicate properties of the phrasal head that are selected by a given modifier or specifier. See also Van Eynde 2006, 2007 and Allegranza 2007. Construction (SPC) by assuming that the type subject-predicate-clause sp-cl is a subtype of decl-cl: (20) Subject-Predicate Construction: sp-cl ⇒                        hd-cxt MTR          SYN      CAT   VFORM fin INV −   VAL 〈 〉      SEM FR(X1, X2)          DTRS 〈 Y: [SEM X1 ] , H:   SYN [VAL 〈 Y 〉 ] SEM X2   〉 HD-DTR H                        That is, subject-predicate clauses involve exactly two daughters: the first is the subject daugh- ter (typically an NP); the second is the head daughter. The head daughter, which selects the first daughter as its only valent, need not be lexical. The fact that the semantics of the mother must be propositional follows from the fact that constructs licensed by this construction must also be declarative clauses, and hence must obey the constraints that apply to constructs of type decl-cl in addition to the constraints in (20). Following GS-00, I assume there are a number of similar constructions, including the one that licenses ‘Mad Magazine’ sentences like (21a) and the construction responsible for absolute clauses like the one italicized in (21b):18 (21) a. (What,) Me, worry? b. (With) My friend in jail, I’m sunk. According to GS-00, The SPC exists independently of these, licensing simple declarative clauses like (22a), ‘present subjunctive clauses like (22b), and ‘imperative clauses’ like (22c): (22) a. Sandy reads Proust. b. (I insist that) Sandy read Proust. c. You/Everyone read Proust! In GS-00, the semantic differences here follow from the lexical differences between indicative and base-homophonous, subjunctive lexical forms. Note that SPC requres that the mother be specified as [VFORM fin] and [INV −]. Given the HFP, this requires that the VP head daugh- ter also be so specified, correctly ruling out both non-finite clauses like (23a,b) and clauses containing [INV +] lexical heads like (23c), as well as a host of other examples discussed more fully in GS-00 and in Sag to appear : 18See, for example, Akmajian 1984 and, for a somewhat different analysis, Lambrecht 1990. a. (I met the person) who they nominated. b. (I’m looking for a bank) in which to place my trust (28) The-Clause: a. (The more people I met), the happier I became. b. The more people I met, (the happier I became.) All five kinds of clause exhibit an extraction dependency between a clause-initial filler phrase and a gap located within the sentential head daughter. However there are several parameters of variation that distinguish these types of clause from one another, including the following: (29) Parameters of Variation in FG Clauses: a. Is there a distinguished wh element in the filler daughter, and if so, what kind? b. What are the possible syntactic categories of the filler daughter? c. What are the possible syntactic categories of the head daughter? d. Can the head daughter be inverted/finite? Must it be? e. What is the semantics and/or syntactic category of the mother? f. What is the semantics and/or syntactic category of the head daughter? g. Is the clause an island? Must it be an ‘independent clause’? Let us consider these in turn. The five types of FG clause each impose a distinct condition: the filler daughter of a topicalized clause must contain no distinguished element (wh-phrase or the-phrase); wh-interrogative, wh-relative, and wh-exclamative clauses each require the filler daughter to contain a distinct type of wh-element; and the filler of a the-clause must contain the definite degree marker the. These requirements are illustrated in (30): (30) Distinguished Elements within the Filler Daughter: a. [My bagels], she likes. (topicalization) b. [What (books)] do they like? (wh-interrogative) c. (the person) [who(se book)] they like . . . (wh-relative) d. [What a play] he wrote! (wh-exclamative) e. [the more books] they read . . . (the-clause) When these requirements are not met, ungrammatical sentences like the following result: wh-WORD INTERROGATIVE EXCLAMATIVE RELATIVE EXAMPLE who (Noun) + − + who whose(Det) + − + whose book what(Noun) + % − what what(Detsing ) + − − what book what(Detpl ) + + − what stories which(Noun) − − + which which(Det) + − + which book how(Advmanner ) + − % how how(Degree word) + + − how tall when(Advtime) + − % when where(Advplace) + − + where why(Advreason) + − + why Figure 4: So-Called ‘Wh’-Words and their Functions (31) Mismatches of Distinguished Element a. *[Which bagels]/*[Who], she likes. (topicalization) b. *[What a book] do they like? (wh-interrogative) c. *the thing [[what] they like ] . . . (wh-relative) d. *[Which bagels]/*[What] she likes! (wh-exclamative) e. *[which books] they read, the more they learn. (the-clause) The variation in wh-forms is in part the residue of historical processes. The ancient Indo- European pattern, involving distinct paradigms for interrogative, relative, and (‘proximate’ and ‘remote’) demonstrative forms has been largely leveled in modern IE languages. The relevant inventory of English wh-forms is shown in Figure 4.20 The data motivating these fine-grained distinctions include the following:21 (32) a. Who did they visit? 20This sixth entry in Figure 4 is restrictied to non-elliptical uses of which. I am regarding an interrogative wh-phrase like the one in Which did you read? as an elliptical NP containing the determiner which. 21I am assuming, following GS-00, that predicates like amazing allow both exclamative and interrogative clause complements. Thus, apparent examples of embedded exclamatives like (i) and (ii) are in fact embedded interrogatives: (i) It’s amazing what she read. (ii) It’s amazing who all she visited. b.*Who they visited! c. The person who they visited . . . (33) a. Whose book did she read? b.*Whose book she read! c. The person whose book she read . . . (34) a. What did she read? b.*What she read! c.*The only one what she read . . . (35) a. What book did she read? b.*What book she read! c.*The only one what book she read . . . (36) a. Which book did she read? b.*Which book she read! c.*The only one which book she read . . . (37) a. How did they do that? b.*How they did that! c.%The way how they did that . . . (38) a. How tall did they get? b.*How tall they got! c.*The extent how tall they got . . . (39) a. When did they do that? b.*When they did that! c. The time when they did that . . . (40) a. Where did they do that? b.*Where they did that! c. The place where they did that . . . b. Wh-interrogative/relative: infinitival VP head daughter possible. I know how much time (*for them) to take. The time in which (*for them) to finish . . . And, of course, the semantics of FG clauses is not uniform. These are determined as indicated: (48) Semantics of the Clause: a. Interrogative: question (propositional function) b. Relative: proposition c. Exclamative: fact d. The-Clause: proposition e. Topicalization: austinean (proposition or outcome) This classification follows GS-00, who motivate a Vendlerian semantics analysis (couched in the framework of Situation Semantics) that recognizes facts, propositions, questions, and outcomes as distinct types of semantic object.24 As noted earlier, generative discussions have largely ignored the data sets summarized in this section, instead focussing on proposals of ever increasing metatheoretical abstractness and ever diminishing empirical breadth and precision. These proposals are often accompanied by claims about their increased explanatoriness, perhaps most boldly by Chomsky (1993: 435): A look at the earliest work from the mid-1950s will show that many phenomena that fell within the rich descriptive apparatus then postulated, often with accounts of no little interest and insight, lack any serious analysis within the much narrower theories motivated by the search for explanatory adequacy and remain among the huge mass of constructions for which no principled explanation exists—again, not an unusual concomitant of progress. It should be noted, however (as Paul Kay reminds me), that while accepting with equanimity a progressive reduction of the range of facts that lie within the domain of a scientific theory may be within the mainstream of generative linguistics, it is well outside the mainstream of scientific practice, and should surely to be regarded with extreme skepticism, if more compre- hensive alternative theories are available. Moreover, in the sections that follow I will demon- strate that if we step outside the confines of transformational grammar, GB and ‘Minimalism’, then it becomes possible to articulate a more comprehensive theory of grammar that expresses the appropriate generalizations underlying English FG constructions, while at the same time providing a precise account of all the idiosyncrasies found in the data sets outlined in this section. 24GS-00 also treat a class of non-propositional topicalizations that will be ignored here. 3.2 The Uniformity of FG Constructions The common properties of the various FG constructions that we have examined are in part expressed in terms of the common construct type filler-head-clause (fill-hd-cl). Constructs of this type, which is a subtype of hd-cxt, are subject to the following constraint: (49) fill-hd-cl ⇒                   MTR   SYN [VAL L1 ] GAP L2   DTRS 〈 [SYN X ] , H 〉 HD-DTR H :         phrase SYN   CAT verbal VAL L1   GAP 〈 [SYN X ] 〉 ⊕ L2                           Filler-head constructs thus require exactly two daughters: the first is the filler daughter; the second is the head daughter. (49) links the syntax and semantic information of the filler daugh- ter to those of the first element of the head daughter’s GAP list, which will in turn be identified with the gap position that appears within the head daughter. The syntactic category of the head daughter is moreover specified in terms of the superordinate type verbal, which (following Sag 1997 and GS-00) can resolve to either of its two subtypes verb and complementizer. Thus according to (49) the head daughter of a FG construction (barring some further constraint imposed by a specific construction) may be a verbal projection (S or VP) or a CP. Following a long tradition in the GPSG/HPSG literature, beginning with Gazdar 1981 and including Pollard and Sag 1994 and Levine and Hukari 2006, the presence of an extraction site (a ‘gap’) is encoded in terms of a feature specification such as [GAP 〈 NP 〉]. By contrast, a gapless expression (more precisely, an expression all of whose gaps are ‘already bound’) is specified as [GAP 〈 〉]. Here I follow GS-00, whose traceless theory allows a lexical head to appear without a complement just in case a sign corresponding to that complement appears as an element of its GAP list. The GAP lists of a word’s syntactic arguments are ‘amalgamated’ to form that word’s GAP list, and a general principle of grammar (such as the generalized version of the HFP in GS-00) requires that a head daughter’s GAP list be the same as its mother’s GAP list. Thus general grammatical principles, all formulated as local constraints that well-formed constructs must satisfy, ensure that GAP specifications are inherited as indicated in a structure like the one shown in Figure 5. An analysis along these lines has numerous advantages over movement-based analyses that are ubiquitously assumed, but seldom made precise, in the transformational literature. First, by treating FG dependencies purely in terms of constraints on feature specifications, rather than by movement, this analysis provides the basis for a solution to the dilemma (first dis- cussed by Gazdar et al. 1982) that transformational theory fails to provide a uniform account of single-gap movement and across-the-board extraction. These are not avoided by accounts based on ‘three-dimensional’ phrase markers.25 That is, no unified movement algorithm exists 25Such as those developed by Goodall (1987) and Moltmann (1992). For discussion, see Milward 1994, Sag 2000, and the references cited there.     FORM 〈 I, think, Kim, likes 〉 SYN S GAP 〈 NP 〉         FORM 〈 I 〉 SYN NP GAP 〈 〉         FORM 〈 think, Kim, likes 〉 SYN VP GAP 〈 NP 〉         FORM 〈 think 〉 SYN V GAP 〈 NP 〉         FORM 〈 Kim, likes 〉 SYN S GAP 〈 NP 〉         FORM 〈 Kim 〉 SYN NP GAP 〈 〉         FORM 〈 likes 〉 SYN S GAP 〈 NP 〉     Figure 5: An Incomplete Derivation Showing “Inheritance” of GAP-Specifications (54) Topicalized Clause: top-cl ⇒                                  MTR       SYN [ CAT [ IC + ] ] SEM [λX.Y ](Z) GAP 〈 〉       DTRS 〈     SEM Z WH { } REL { }     , H 〉 HD-DTR H:             SYN      CAT   INV − VFORM fin   VAL 〈 〉      SEM Y GAP 〈 [SEM X ] 〉                                              The specifications [WH { }] and [REL { }], together with a theory of pied piping (e.g. that of GS-00 or Van Eynde (2004)), ensures that the clause-initial filler constituent neither IS nor CONTAINS an interrogative, exclamative, or relative wh-word. The specification [IC +] further ensures that all clauses licensed by this construction are independent clauses. This correctly allows topicalization in both ‘root’ environments and in embedded environments where ‘main clause phenomena’ (those specified as [IC +]) are licensed, e.g. those in (55):26 (55) a. They argued convincingly that [[problems of this sort], we would never be able to solve ]. b. Nothing made things clearer than the fact that [[the people from her district], no one had issued an invitation to ]. It is important to see that certain information is not mentioned explicitly in (54), but is guaran- teed by the constraint already introduced (in (49)) specifying that these are general properties common to all filler-head constructs. These consequences include the fact that there are ex- actly two daughters, the second of which is the head daughter whose GAP value is related to the filler daughter. Figure 6 illustrates a construct licensed by the Topicalized Clause construction whose head daughter is the mother of the incomplete derivation tree in Figure 5 above. Note that the vari- able used to construct the mother’s semantics is identified with that of the element within the head daughter’s GAP list, creating a function-denoting abstract that takes the filler daughter’s semantics as its argument, as indicated in Figure 6. This provides a propositional semantics for the mother. No doubt the construction in (54) should impose some kind of ‘theme-rheme’ 26See Chomsky 1977 for discussion.                       FORM 〈 bagels, I, think, she, likes 〉 SYN           CAT        verb VFORM fin IC + INV −        VAL 〈 〉           SEM [λX.think(like(X)(she))(I)](bagels) = think(like(bagels)(she))(I) GAP 〈 〉                                 FORM 〈 bagels 〉 SYN NP SEM bagels WH { } REL { }                                   FORM 〈 I, think, she, likes 〉 SYN           CAT        verb VFORM fin IC + INV −        VAL 〈 〉           SEM think(like( X )(she))(I) GAP 〈   SYN NP SEM X   〉                         Figure 6: A Construct Licensed by the Topicalized Clause Construction condition (making the filler daughter the theme) on the mother of this kind of construct (pre- sumably, within its CONTEXT value). However, in the absence of a generally accepted theory of ‘information structure’, I will not speculate about the details of this condition.27 In the absence of further constraints, the filler daughter in a topicalized construct may be of any syntactic category: (56) a. Bagels, I like . (NP) b. Onto the table, they managed to throw seven books . (PP) c. Happy, I’m not . (AP) 27See Prince 1998 for some relevant discussion. Since signs in this theory also specify contextual information, they provide a natural home for the kind of contextual constraints that are associated with particular constructions, according to Prince, Lambrecht (1994) and others. d. Carefully, she rotated the timing device . (AdvP) e. Go to the store, he wouldn’t . (VP) In all likelihood there are syntactic restrictions on topicalized fillers, and some of the exam- ples in (56) may well instantiate constructions (related to, but) distinct from Topicalization. The present approach can scale up (using construct types to express cross-constructional gen- eralizations) to the diverse range of non-wh fronting constructions that is required for a more comprehensive analysis of English. Note further that (54) requires that the head daughter be finite, correctly ruling out exam- ples like (57): (57)*Bagels, (for) Kim to like. But like the SPC discussed earlier, the head daughter in a topicalized construct may be sub- junctive: (58): (58) a. We suggest that [[proposals of this kind], she be kept informed of .] b. [Proposals of this kind], nobody be taken in by ! This is an interesting difference between topicalized clauses and the other kinds of filler-head constructions that we will consider. For more on the semantic treatment of subjunctives as outcomes (the same semantic type as imperatives), see GS-00, Ch. 2. Note that the head daughter of a topicalized clause must be [VAL 〈 〉]. This means that VPs cannot head a topicalized clause, ruling out ‘spurious’ ambiguity for a sentence like (59), which is analyzed only as an untopicalized declarative clause: (59) [Proposals of this kind] bother me. In addition, the [GAP 〈 〉] requirement on (the mother of) a topicalized clause makes it an extraction island: (60)*[How many of the visitors]i did he say that [[bagels]j , he would give j to i]? And finally, because the filler daughter is also specified as [GAP 〈 〉], no further FG depen- dency can penetrate the filler daughter, correctly ruling out examples like (61): (61)*[How many of the visitors]i did he say that [[pictures of i]j , he would give j to the newspapaper]? Absolute extraction islands can thus be treated in terms of a simple constraint requiring that a certain construction (or one of its daughters) be [GAP 〈 〉]. By contrast, ‘weak’ islands28 28Kluender (1992, 1998) presents experimental evidence that weak island phenomena can in fact be explained by independently motivated considerations of processing complexity. For further evidence of this kind, see Arnon et al. to appear, Sag et al. to appear, Hofmeister et al. 2007, and Hofmeister to appear, 2007. This seems to be a highly promising line of inquiry for actually EXPLAINING certain island phenomena, rather than treating them as an arbitrary property of grammar. The semantics illustrated here (adapting that of GS-00) assumes that a wh-exclamative clause denotes a fact that involves an existential quantification. The symbol Eu here is an existential quantifier over entities that are ‘unusual’ in the relevant context (one directly related to the speaker’s mental space). Exclamative wh-expressions like what (a) require that the value of the WH feature be a singleton set containing a distinguished variable (V) in (64). This WH specification is then inherited in accordance with general constraints similar to the constraints governing GAP-specifications.30 As a result, the filler daughter in (64) includes a non-empty specification for WH precisely because it contains an exclamative wh-expression, which is the only way such a specification could arise. As the wh-exclamative clause is constructed, the semantics is required to introduce Eu , binding the variable in the filler daughter’s WH set. The reduced semantics for the clause illustrated in Figure 7 can be loosely paraphrased as ‘It’s a fact that there’s an unusual play that I saw’. The constraints in (64) allow for exclamatives to appear as independent and non-independent clauses (the IC value is unconstrained), but the head daughter must always be both uninverted and finite. The following observations are thus correctly predicted: (65) a. It’s amazing [what a nice person Sandy is ]. b.*It’s amazing [what a nice person is Sandy ]. c. What a nice person Sandy is ! d.*What a nice person is Sandy ! e.*It’s amazing [what a nice person (for) Sandy to be ]. f.*What a nice person (for) Sandy to be ! In addition, the [VAL 〈 〉] condition on the head daughter in (64) correctly predicts that subject exclamative clauses, like subject topicalizations, are impossible: (66) a.*It’s amazing [what a nice person just walked in]. b.*What a nice person is talking to Sandy. Because a fact is constructed from a proposition (see GS-00, Ch. 3), the only phrases that can serve as the head daughter of a wh-exclamative clause are those whose SEM value is of this type. This provides a principled semantic explanation for the deviance of examples like the following, where the head daughter’s semantics is not a proposition: (67) a.*What a nice person [be sure to visit ]! b.*It’s amazing what a nice person [they be considering ]. c.*What a nice person [will you visit ]!/? 30In particular, these specifications are also threaded through the heads of complex wh-phrases, predicting the possibility of a language where the head of such a phrase agrees with the wh-element contained within that phrase. Polinsky (2007) discusses what appears to be a case of exactly this. d.*What a nice person [am I fond of ]! And the [GAP 〈 〉] condition correctly predicts that wh-exclamatives, like topicalized clauses, are islands for purposes of FG constructions: (68)*This is [the person]i that it’s amazing [[what a nice present]j they gave j to i.] Finally, it appears that wh-exclamatives require that the filler daughter be an NP, AP, or AdvP: (69) a. What an interesting person Kim wrote about ! b. How happy Kim is ! c. How quickly they forget ! d.*About what an interesting person Kim wrote ! e.*Go to what a fine store he would ! 4.3 Wh-Interrogatives GS-00 (Ch. 6) propose an analysis that draws a fundamental distinction between subject and nonsubject wh-interrogatives. Instances of the former type occur in both matrix and embedded environments, as shown in (70): (70) a. What fell? b. I wonder [what fell]. The Subject Wh-Interrogative Construction thus involves very local extraction - the wh-expression is both the filler and the highest subject in the sense made precise in GS-00. Here we will confine our attention to nonsubject interrogatives, as these provide the most interesting com- parison with other FG constructions. Interrogative clauses like those in (70) are licensed by a distinct construction which is related to the one discussed in this section. The potential semantic difficulties of quantifying into questions are avoided in GS-00 by treating questions as propositional abstracts (functions from sets to propositions). Wh- questions are individuated in terms of a non-empty set of ‘parameters’ and an open proposi- tion. Accordingly, the SEM value of both (70a) and the embedded clause in (70b) is written as in (71), where the abstracted parameter set is singleton: (71) λ{x}[fall(x)] The Nonsubject Wh-Interrogative Construction places a number of conditions on the con- structs that it licenses: (72) Nonsubject Wh-Interrogative Clause: ns-wh-int-cl ⇒               MTR [ SEM λ{V, . . .}[λX.Y (Z)] ] DTRS 〈   SEM Z WH {V }   ,          SYN    CAT   INV W IC W      SEM Y GAP 〈 [SEM X ] 〉          〉               (72) interacts with our earlier constraints governing headed constructs and filler-head con- structs in a now familiar way, licensing constructs like the one in Figure 8. In fact the constraint interaction is quite subtle here, as constraints on the construct type interrogative-clause (int-cl) play an important role: (73) int-cl ⇒          MTR      SEM   question PARAMS Σ1   STORE Σ2      HD-DTR [STORE Σ1 ∪ Σ2 ]          According to (72), the variable V in the filler daughter’s WH value must be included in the set of variables that is abstracted over to form the question that serves as the clause’s SEM value. And because of (73), this variable is also part of the head daughter’s STORE value, but not the mother’s. That is (thinking ‘bottom-up’), V and possibly some other parameters are ‘retrieved’ from the head daughter’s STORE value and the remaining parameters are ‘passed up’ to constitute the mother’s STORE value. This is a general property of interrogative clauses both here and in GS-00.31 This analysis permits other variables to be retrieved as well, thus allowing for multiple readings of multiple wh-interrogative sentences like (74a), first discussed by Baker (1970): (74) Who remembers where we bought what? a. Who remembers the answer to the question ‘Where did we buy what?’ λ{v}[v remembers λ{x, y}[we bought x at y]] b. For which pairs x, y, does x remember where we bought y? λ{v, x}[v remembers λ{y}[we bought x at y]] Let us now consider the interaction of the various constraints included within the Nonsub- ject Wh-Interrogative Construction in (72). First, the head daughter’s SEM value must be a 31Note that the Polar Interrogative Construction in (13) above also obeys (73), even though the abstracted set is empty. Polard-interrogative constructs are also classified as interrogative clauses. See Appendix 1. (78) a. Who did you see ? b. To whom did you send the letter ? c. How happy are they ? d. How quickly do you think you can do that ? Non-NP QP fillers are also allowed (if this is the correct analysis of examples like (79a)); VP fillers are never possible:33 (79) a. How much does it cost ? b.*Go to which store would they not ? Finally, observe that the grammar sketched here does not treat wh-interrogative clauses as extraction islands. That is, the constraints formulated in (72) allow for extractions like the following: (80) a. They are [the kind of relative]i that I never know [[what sort of present]j to give j to i]. b. ?They are [the kind of relative]i that I never know [[what sort of present]j I should give j to i]. c.*?These are [the relatives]i that I don’t know [[what presents]j they gave j to i]. Note that here, as elsewhere, the finite verb with specific time reference brings degraded ac- ceptability in (80c), with a less eventive finite clause like (80b) being intermediate. Facts like these can be better explained in terms of processing complexity, rather than via grammatical constraints, along the lines suggested by Gibson (1998, 2000), Kluender (1998), Hofmeister et al. (2007), Sag et al. (to appear), Arnon et al. (to appear) and others. But even if this intrin- sically more interesting approach to explaining island effects should prove to be untenable, such a result could easily be accommodated by further restricting the construction in (72). 4.4 Wh-Relatives Relative wh-words, which (as noted earlier) are only partly homophonous with interrogative and exclamative wh-words, are distinguished (following Pollard and Sag 1994) in terms of non-empty specifications for the feature REL. The Finite Wh-Relative Construction guarantees that the filler daughter in a finite wh-relative clause (and hence a relative word somewhere within the filler) bears a [REL {x}] specification, where the variable x is abstracted over to form the semantics of the relative clause. Assuming fin-wh-rel-cl is a further subtype of fill- hd-cl, this construction can be formulated as shown in (81): 33Examples like (79b) are independently accounted for by the pied piping theory of GS-00 and hence may not bear on the question of which constraints the Nonsubject Wh-Interrogative Construction should impose on its filler daughter. (81) Finite Wh-Relative Clause: fin-wh-rel-cl ⇒                        MTR     SYN [ CAT [ SEL [ SYN CNP ] ] ] SEM λPλx[λ℘X(Y ) ∧ P (x)]     DTRS 〈            SYN   CAT nom VAL 〈 〉   WH { } REL {x} SEM Y            ,             SYN      CAT     INV − IC − VFORM fin          SEM X GAP 〈 [SEM ℘ ] 〉             〉                        Here the filler daughter’s syntactic category is specified as nom (nominal), which is an inter- mediate category type that must resolve to either noun or preposition. Thus only NP or PP fillers are allowed in constructs licensed by this construction, as noted in (43) above. The semantics specified in (81) ensures that the head daughter (the clause that follows the filler daughter) has a propositional semantics. This again provides a natural semantic account of why many kinds of phrase cannot head a relative clause, including all the following, where the head daughter’s ‘clause-type/meaning-type’ is as indicated: (82) a.*[the people]i [who [what a story they told to i ]]... (*interrogative/question) b.*[the people]i [who [what else they read to i ]]... (*interrogative/question) c.*[the people]i [who [what book to read to i ]]... (*interrogative/question) d.*the books [which [be sure to read by tomorrow]]... (*imperative/outcome) e.*the books [which [he have read by tomorrow]]... (*subjunctive/outcome) The Finite Wh-Relative Clause Construction gives rise to constructs like the one shown in Figure 9. In addition, since no VAL value is specified for the head daughter in (81), nothing rules out wh-relatives like (83), where the italicized head daughter is a finite VP: (83) the woman [[whose friend] likes Kim]]. . . Relative clauses combine with a nominal expression, a CNP, to form a larger CNP in accordance with a kind of head-functor construction that adds the semantics of the relative clause to the restriction set of the CNP’s parameter. This gives rise to head-relative constructs like the one sketched in Figure 10, where the head daughter’s SEL value is identified with the nominal head daughter, as indicated by shading. This construction can apply recursively, giving rise to ‘stacked’ relative clauses of the sort shown in (84): (84) a. [[My uncle who lives in Oregon] whose friend Kim likes] . . ..                    FORM 〈 whose, friend, Kim, likes 〉 SYN           CAT       verb VFORM fin INV − SEL CNP       VAL 〈 〉           SEM λPλx[λ℘[like(℘)(Kim)](x’s-friend) ∧ P (x)] = λPλx[like(x’s-friend)(Kim) ∧ P (x)]                             FORM 〈 whose, friend 〉 SYN NP SEM x’s-friend WH { } REL {x}                             FORM 〈 Kim, likes 〉 SYN           CAT       verb VFORM fin INV − SEL CNP       VAL 〈 〉           SEM like(℘)(Kim) GAP 〈 [SEM ℘] 〉                    Figure 9: A Construct Licensed by the Finite Wh-Relative Clause Construction       FORM 〈 joker, whose, friend, Kim, likes 〉 SYN CNP SEM λPλx[like(x’s-friend)(Kim) ∧ P (x)](joker) = λx[like(x’s-friend)(Kim) ∧ joker(x)]           FORM 〈 joker 〉 SYN CNP SEM joker              FORM 〈 whose, friend, Kim, likes 〉 SYN    CAT   VFORM fin SEL CNP      SEM λPλx[like(x’s-friend)(Kim) ∧ P (x)]          Figure 10: A Nominal-Modifier Construct Although any of the recent proposals for analyzing the semantics of correlatives (e.g. that of Beck 1997) are broadly compatible with the analysis presented here, I base my treatment on that of Brasoveanu (2008), who argues that the semantic essence of this construction is a relation of correpondence R that is predicated of the differentials specified within the two the-clauses. On this view, what (90) means is sketched in (91): (90) The greater a natural number is, the greater its square is. (91) There is a natural correspondence between α and β, where α is the difference (differen- tial) between (any) two natural numbers and β is the difference between the squares of those two numbers. The first approximation of the meaning of R suggested by Brasoveanu is that it simply guar- antees the truth of (92): (92) Given two natural numbers x and y, if x − y is positive, then so is x2 − y2 As Brasoveanu points out, the relation in question varies from language to language. In Ro- manian, for example, the relevant relation is simple identity. As a result, the Romanian analog of (90) is false.38 A detailed analysis of comparative correlatives is beyond the scope of this paper, but the direction such an analysis would take is reasonably clear. The comparative specifier the se- mantically introduces a differential within each clause, that is, the functions as a differential specifier like much or three feet in three feet/much taller than Sandy is. Just as the grammar of degree words must ensure that three feet picks out the differential between the height that Kim has and the height that Sandy has in (93), that same grammar, together with constraints spec- ified within the lexical entry for the differential specifier the, must ensure that the differential of the two heights in (94) corresponds to the variable ∆: (93) Kim is three feet taller than Sandy is. [the positive difference between Kim’s height and Sandy’s height is three feet] (94) The taller Sandy is... [the positive difference between Sandy’s height at t1 and Sandy’s earlier height at t2 is ∆] I will assume that the singleton set containing ∆ is the REL value of specifier the and that this is inherited as the REL value of phrases containing the, in accordance with the general theory of pied piping discussed earlier. Thus, phrases like the following will all be specified as [REL {∆}]: (95) the more, the taller, the taller a man, the more customers, the more customers’ ac- counts,.... 38For further discussion of these and related issues, in particular the dynamic aspects of the interpretation of these sentences, which I am ignoring here, see Brasoveanu 2008. These assumptions allow an account of the-clauses that is parallel to the other kinds of filler- head constructs discussed above. I posit the construction in (96) to license constructs of type the-clause (the-cl) as a distinct subtype of fill-hd-cl: (96) The-Clause: the-cl ⇒                    MTR   SYN [CREL the ] SEM (ι∆ : [λV.X](Y ))   DTRS 〈            SYN   CAT adjectival VAL 〈 〉   SEM Y WH { } REL {∆}            ,       CAT [ VFORM fin ] SEM X GAP 〈 [SEM V ] 〉       〉                    Here adjectival is an intermediate-level category type that must resolve to noun, adjective or adverb, requiring the filler daughter within a the-clause to be an NP, AP or AdvP. Since the filler daughter is specified as [REL {∆} ], it must contain an occurrence of the differential specifier the, as just noted. It also follows that the differential variable associated with the differential specifier the is the one used to construct the ι-term which (simplifying somewhat) is the interpretation of the the-clause. A well-formed construct of type the-cl is illustrated in Figure 11. And since each the-clause has an ι-term as its SEM value, these serve as the arguments of the relation R in a relative-correlative construct like the one sketched in Figure 12. 5 Conclusion In this paper, I have examined the often subtle grammatical and semantic factors that distin- guish the various kinds of filler-gap clauses in English. In addition, I have provided a surface- oriented analyses of these clauses in a framework where constructions are taken as basic. All of the English extraction constructions examined here are related. The classes of construct they license form subtypes of the filler-head-construct type. Hence constraints stated in terms of this construct type reflect general properties of all the filler-gap sentences examined here. Moreover, the constraint-based analysis of extraction I have presented is independently mo- tivated by the existence of numerous languages where words and constructions are sensitive to the presence or absence of a filler-gap dependency at intermediate levels along the extrac- tion path,39 and provides a uniform analysis of general properties of extraction dependencies within a given language, as well as the cross-linguistic generalizations. As shown here in detail, particular extraction constructions exhibit idiosyncrasies that any observationally adequate grammar must account for. These include variation in: 39For further discussion of these issues, see Hukari and Levine 1995, Bouma et al. 2001, and Levine and Hukari 2006.                         FORM 〈 the, more, books, you, read 〉 SYN           CAT     verb VFORM fin INV −     VAL 〈 〉 CREL the           SEM (ι∆ [you read δ1 many books at t1 & you read δ2 many books at an earlier t2 & δ1 > δ2 & δ1 − δ2 = ∆ ]) GAP 〈 〉                               FORM 〈 the, more, books 〉 SYN NP WH { } REL {δ}                          FORM 〈 you, read 〉 SYN           CAT     verb VFORM fin INV −     VAL 〈 〉 CREL none           SEM read(℘)(you) GAP 〈 [SEM ℘] 〉                    Figure 11: A The-Clause Appendix 1 Grammar Signature Type Partitions: Partition of linguistic-object: list(σ), set(σ) sign, construct, phon-obj, syn-obj, sem-obj, ctxt-obj, cat, boolean, . . . Partition of list(σ): nonempty-list(σ), empty-list (〈 〉). Partition of set(σ): nonempty-set(σ), empty-set ({ }). Partition of sign: lex-sign, expr Partition of expr: word, phrase Partition of lex-sign: word, lexeme Partition of cat: nominal, verbal, . . . Partition of nominal: preposition, noun Partition of adjectival: noun, adj, adv Partition of verbal: complementizer, verb Partition of construct: phr-cxt, lex-cxt Partition of phr-cxt: hd-cxt and nhd-cxt Partition of phr-cxt: clause and non-clause Partition of hd-cxt: ai-cxt, hd-comp-cxt, sp-cl, fill-hd-cl, comp-corr-cl. . . Partition of nhd-cxt: coord-cxt, . . . Partition of clause: decl-cl, int-cl, imp-cl, excl-cl, rel-cl, comp-corr-cl, . . . Partition of decl-cl: sp-cl, . . . Partition of int-cl: pol-int-cl, subj-wh-int-cl, ns-wh-int-cl, . . . Partition of excl-cl: inv-excl-cl, wh-excl-cl, . . . Partition of rel-cl: fin-wh-rel-cl, inf-wh-rel-cl, . . . Partition of fill-hd-cl: top-cl, ns-wh-int-cl, wh-excl-cl, fin-wh-rel-cl, inf-wh-rel-cl, the-cl, . . . Partition of boolean: plus (+), minus (−) Feature Declarations: sign:           PHON phon-obj SYN syn-obj SEM sem-obj CNTXT ctxt-obj CNTXT set(sem-obj)           lex-sign: [ ARG-ST list(expr) ] construct:   MTR sign DTRS list(sign)   syn-obj:   CAT cat VAL list(expr)   cat: [ SEL expr ] verbal:   VFORM fin, inf,... IC boolean   verb:   AUX boolean INV boolean   noun: [ CASE nom/acc ] Some Grammatical Constructions of English: Head Feature Principle: hd-cxt ⇒      MTR [ SYN [ CAT X ] ] HD-DTR [ SYN [ CAT X ] ]      Subject-Predicate Clause: sp-cl ⇒                        hd-cxt MTR          SYN      CAT   VFORM fin INV −   VAL 〈 〉      SEM FR(X1, X2)          DTRS 〈 Y: [SEM X1 ] , H:   SYN [VAL 〈 Y 〉 ] SEM X2   〉 HD-DTR H                        Head-Complement: hd-comp-cxt ⇒                  MTR    SYN [ VAL 〈 Z 〉 ] SEM FR〈NP ,p〉(X0, . . . , Xn)    DTRS 〈 H , Y1:[SEM X1], . . . , Yn:[SEM Xn] 〉 HD-DTR H:      word SYN [ VAL 〈Z, Y1, . . .,Yn〉 ] SEM X0                       Filler-Head Clause: fill-hd-cl ⇒                   MTR   SYN [VAL L1 ] GAP L2   DTRS 〈 [SYN X ] , H 〉 HD-DTR H :         phrase SYN   CAT verbal VAL L1   GAP 〈 [SYN X ] 〉 ⊕ L2                           Wh-Exclamative Clause: wh-excl-cl ⇒                  MTR [ SEM fact(EuV [λX.Y (Z)]) ] DTRS 〈     SEM Z WH {V } REL { }     ,             SYN      CAT   INV − VFORM fin   VAL 〈 〉      SEM Y GAP 〈 [SEM X] 〉             〉                  Nonsubject Wh-Interrogative Clause: ns-wh-int-cl ⇒               MTR [ SEM λ{V, . . .}[λX.Y (Z)] ] DTRS 〈   SEM Z WH {V }   ,          SYN   CAT   INV W IC W      SEM Y GAP 〈 [SEM X ] 〉          〉               Finite Wh-Relative Clause: fin-wh-rel-cl ⇒                        MTR     SYN [ CAT [ SEL [ SYN CNP ] ] ] SEM λPλx[λ℘X(Y ) ∧ P (x)]     DTRS 〈            SYN   CAT nom VAL 〈 〉   WH { } REL {x} SEM Y            ,             SYN      CAT     INV − IC − VFORM fin          SEM X GAP 〈 [SEM ℘ ] 〉             〉                        Infinitival Wh-Relative Clause: inf-wh-rel-cl ⇒                      MTR     SYN [ CAT [ SEL [ SYN CNP ] ] ] SEM λPλx[M [[λ℘X](Y ) ∧ P (x)]]     DTRS 〈            SYN   CAT prep VAL 〈 〉   SEM Y WH { } REL {x}            ,          SYN   CAT [VFORM inf] VAL 〈 fni 〉   SEM X GAP 〈 [SEM ℘ ] 〉          〉                      The-Clause: the-cl-cxt ⇒                    MTR   SYN [CREL the ] SEM (ι∆ : [λV.X](Y ))   DTRS 〈            SYN   CAT adjectival VAL 〈 〉   SEM Y WH { } REL {∆}            ,       CAT [ VFORM fin ] SEM X GAP 〈 [SEM V ] 〉       〉                    6 Appendix 2: Abbreviations Features: ARG-ST (ARGUMENT-STRUCTURE), CAT (CATEGORY), CNTXT (CONTEXT), CREL (COR- RELATIVE), DTRS (DAUGHTERS), HD-DTR (HEAD-DAUGHTER), IC (INDEPENDENT-CLAUSE), INV (INVERTED), MTR (MTR), PHON (PHONOLOGY), REL (RELATIVE), SEL (SELECT), SEM (SEMANTICS), SYN (SYNTAX), VAL (VALENCE) Types: adj (adjective), adv (adverb), ai-cl (aux-initial-clause), decl-cl (declarative-clause), excl- cl (exclamative-clause), expr (expression), fill-hd-cl (filler-head-clause), fin (finite), fin-wh- rel-cl (finite-wh-relative-clause), hd-comp-cxt (head-complement-construct), hd-cxt (headed- construct), hd-func-cxt (head-functor-construct), imp-cl (imperative-clause), inf (infinitive), inf-wh-rel-cl (infinitival-wh-relative-clause), int-cl (interrogative-cl), inv-excl-cl (inv-excl-cl), lex-cxt (lexical-construct), nhd-cxt (nonheaded-construct), ns-wh-int-cl (nonsubject-wh-interrogative- clause), phr-cxt (phrasal-construct), pol-int-cl (polar-interrogative-clause), rel-cl (relative- clause), sp-cl (subject-predicate-clause), subj-wh-int-cl (subject-wh-interrogative-clause), wh- excl-cl (wh-exclamative-clause) References Abeillé, A. and Borsley, R. D. in press. Comparative Correlatives and Parameters. Lingua . Ackerman, F. and Webelhuth, G. 1998. A Theory of Predicates. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Akmajian, A. 1984. Sentence Types and the Form-Function Fit. Natural Language and Lin- guistic Theory 2, 1–24. Allegranza, V. 1998. Determiners as functors: NP structure in Italian. In S. Balari and L. Dini (eds.), Romance in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, pp 55–108, Stanford: CSLI Publications. Allegranza, V. 2007. The Signs of Determination. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Arnon, I., Snider, N., Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, T. F. and Sag, I. A. to appear. Processing Ac- counts for Gradiance in Acceptability: The Case of English Multiple Wh-Questions. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society. Baker, C. L. 1970. Indirect Questions in English. Ph. D.thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana– Champaign. Beck, S. 1997. On the semantics of comparative conditionals. Linguistics and Philosophy 20, 229–271. Borsley, R. D. 2004. An Approach to English Comparative Correlatives. In S. Müller (ed.), Proceedings of the HPSG-2004 Conference, Center for Computational Linguistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, pp 70–92, Stanford: CSLI Publications. Bouma, G., Malouf, R. and Sag, I. A. 2001. Satisfying Constraints on Extraction and Adjunc- tion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1(19), 1–65. Brasoveanu, A. 2008. Comparative and Equative Correlatives as Anaphora to Differentials, poster presented at Semantics and Linguistic Theory 18 (UMass Amherst) and at the 9th Semfest, Stanford. Bresnan, J. W. 2000. Lexical-Functional Syntax. Oxford: Basil Blackwell’s. Carnie, A. 2007. Syntax - A Generative Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, second edition. Chomsky, N. 1977. On Wh-Movement. In A. Akmajian, P. Culicover and T. Wasow (eds.), Formal Syntax, pp 71–132, New York: Academic Press. Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger. Chomsky, N. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20, pp 1–52, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. and Lasnik, H. 1993. Principles and parameters theory. In J. Jacobs, A. von Stechow and W. Sternefeld (eds.), Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, pp 506–569, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. A. Manaster-Ramer (ed.), Mathematics of Language, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kroch, A. 1989. Asymmetries in Long Distance Extraction in a Tree Adjoining Grammar. In M. R. Baltin and A. S. Kroch (eds.), Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure, Univer- sity of Chicago Press. Lambrecht, K. 1990. What, me, Worry?: Mad Magazine Sentences Revisited. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkele y Linguistics Society, pp 215–228. Lambrecht, K. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Menta l Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langacker, R. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 2: Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Levine, R. D. and Hukari, T. 2006. The Unity of Unbounded Dependency Constructions. Stan- ford University: CSLI Publications. McCawley, J. 1988a. Review of [Noam Chomsky’s] Knowledge of Language. Language 64(2), 355–365. McCawley, J. D. 1988b. The Comparative Conditional Constructions in English, German a nd Chinese. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkel ey Linguistics Society, pp 176–187. McCloskey, J. 1979. Transformational syntax and model theoretic semantics: a case study in modern Irish. Dordrecht, 1979: Reidel. McCloskey, J. 1990. Resumptive Pronouns, Ā-Binding, and Levels of Representations in Irish. In R. Hendrick (ed.), The Syntax of the Modern Celtic Languages, pp 199–248, New York: Academic Press. Michaelis, L. A. and Lambrecht, K. 1996. Toward a Construction-Based Model of Language Function: The Ca se of Nominal Extraposition. Language 72, 215–247. Milward, D. 1994. On-Constituent Coordination: Theory and Practice. In ACL (ed.), 15th In- ternational Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING ’94), August 5-9, pp 935– 941, Kyoto, Japan. Moltmann, F. 1992. Coordination and Comparatives. Dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Newmeyer, F. J. 1998. Language Form and Language Function. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Polinsky, M. 2007. Complementation in a Language Without Complement Clauses. Talk pre- sented at the (Un)Usual Events Fest, Department of L inguistics, Stanford University. Pollard, C. J. and Sag, I. A. 1987. Information-based Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 1. Stanford: CSLI Publications [Distributed by University of Chicago Press]. Pollard, C. J. and Sag, I. A. 1994. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press. Postal, P. M. 1998. Three Investigations of Extraction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Postal, P. M. 2001. Islands. In M. Baltin and C. Collins (eds.), The Handbook of Syntactic Theory, Oxford: Blackwell. Postal, P. M. 2004. Skeptical Linguistic Essays. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Postal, P. M. and Pullum, G. K. 1982. The contraction debate. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 122–138. Prince, E. 1996. Constructions and the syntax-discourse interface. Unpublished ms., Univer- sity of Pennsylvania. [Available from : http://www.ling.upenn.edu/∼ellen/home.html]. Prince, E. 1998. On the limits of syntax, with reference to Left-Dislocation and Topicaliza- tion. In P. Culicover and L. McNally (eds.), The Limits of Syntax, pp 281–302, San Diego: Academic Press. Pullum, G. K. 1997. The morpholexical nature of English to-contraction. Language 73, 79– 102. Pullum, G. K. and Zwicky, A. M. 1997. Licensing of prosodic features by syntactic rules: The key t o auxiliary reduction. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. [Abstract available at http://www-csli.stanford.edu/∼zwicky/LSA97.abst.pdf]. Radford, A. 2004. Minimalist Syntax - Exploring the structure of English. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Ross, J. R. 1967. Constraints on Variables in Syntax. Ph. D.thesis, MIT, [Published in 1986 as Infinite Syntax! Norwood, N. J.: Ablex]. Sag, I. A. 1997. English Relative Clause Constructions. Journal of Linguistics 33(2), 431–484. Sag, I. A. 2000. Another Argument Against Wh-Trace. Jorge Hankamer Webfest, http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/. Sag, I. A. 2007. Sign-Based Construction Grammar: An informal synopsis. Unpublished ms, Stanford University. Sag, I. A. to appear . Rules and Exceptions in the English Auxiliary System, Journal of Lin- guistics. Sag, I. A. and Fodor, J. D. 1994. Extraction Without Traces. In R. Aranovich, W. Byrne, S. Preuss and M. Senturia (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Stanford University: CSLI Publications/SLA. Sag, I. A., Hofmeister, P. and Snider, N. to appear. Processing complexity in Subjacency violations: the Complex Noun Phrase Constraint. In Papers from the 43rd Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Sag, I. A. and Wasow, T. in press. Performance-Compatible Competence Grammar. In K. Börjars and R. Borsley (eds.), New Models of Grammar, Oxford: Basil Blackwell’s. Seuren, P. A. M. 2004. Chomsky’s Minimalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shieber, S. M. 1986. Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Steedman, M. 1996. Surface Structure and Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Steedman, M. 2000. The Syntactic Process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. Torrego, E. 1984. On Inversion in Spanish and Some of Its Effects. LI 15, 103–129. Van Eynde, F. 1998. The Immediate Dominance Schemata of HPSG. A deconstruction and a reconstruction. In P. Coppen, H. van Halteren and L. Teunissen (eds.), Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands 1997. Selected Papers from the Eighth CLIN Meeting, pp 119–133, Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi. Van Eynde, F. 2004. Pied Piping is a Local Dependency. In S. Müller (ed.), Proceedings of the HPSG-2004 Conference, Center for Computational Linguistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, pp 313–334, Stanford: CSLI Publications, [Available at http://cslipublications. stanford.edu/HPSG/5/]. Van Eynde, F. 2006. NP-Internal Agreement and the Structure of the Noun Phrase. Journal of Linguistics 42(1), 139–186. Van Eynde, F. 2007. The Big Mess Construction. In S. Müller (ed.), The Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Stanford Uni- versity, pp 415–433, Stanford: CSLI Publications. Vendler, Z. 1968. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Vendler, Z. 1972. Res Cogitans. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Zaenen, A. 1983. On syntactic binding. Linguistic Inquiry 14, 469–504. Zwicky, A. M. 1994. Dealing out meaning. In Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp 611–625, Berkeley: BLS.