Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T08:23:23.764Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Auxiliary inversions and the notion ‘default specification’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Georgia M. Green  and
Jerry L. Morgan
Georgia M. Green
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. E-mail: g-green@uiuc.edu (Green) jlmorgan@uiuc.edu (Morgan)
Jerry L. Morgan
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. E-mail: g-green@uiuc.edu (Green) jlmorgan@uiuc.edu (Morgan)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is commonly thought that (1) the description of English auxiliary inversions requires a feature with a default value, (2) that non-default values must be stipulated and learned as exceptions and (3) that when languages exhibit different values for a feature in different contexts, learning theory requires grammars to stipulate a default value. Distinguishing two perniciously confused uses of the term DEFAULT enables a demonstration that the first and third assumptions are incorrect. Conseqently, any argument that depends on them is invalid, and the absence in a theory of a mechanism for default-value declarations is not a deficiency. It is then shown that a comprehensive account of inverted structures has to encompass considerably more diversity of structural types than is generally recognized, but is entirely possible in a constraint-based grammar with monotonic multiple-inheritance and no overridable default specifications.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 43 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Calder, J. (1994). Feature-value Logics: some limits on the role of defaults. In Rupp, C. J., Rosen, M. A. & Johnson, R. L. (eds.) Constraints, language, and computation. London: Academic Press. 205–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, R. (1992). The logic of typed feature structures. Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science 32. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. D. (1992). Learnability of phrase structure grammars. In Levine, R. D. (ed.) Formal grammar: theory and implementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazdar, G., Klein, E., Pullum, G. K. & Sag, I. (1985). Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gazdar, G., Pullum, G. K. & Sag, I. (1982). Auxiliaries and related phenomena in a restricted theory of grammar. Language 58. 591–638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, G. M. (1981). Pragmatics and syntactic description. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 11.1. 27–37. Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.Google Scholar
Green, G. M. (1985). The description of inversions in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting, Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society. 117–145.Google Scholar
Green, G. M. (1994). Modelling grammar growth: universal grammar without innate principles or parameters. Paper presented at the 1994 Conference on Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar: explanatory mechanisms and empirical consequences, Copenhagen, August 1994.Google Scholar
Huddleston, R. (1994). The contrast between interrogatives and questions. Journal of Linguistics 30. 411–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyams, N. (1983). The acquisition of parameterized grammars. Ph.D. dissertation, CUNY.Google Scholar
Hyams, N. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrech1: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, J. L. (1978). Two types of convention in indirect speech acts. In Cole, P. (ed.) Syntax and semantics 9: Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. 261–280.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. & Moshier, D. (1990). Unifying partial descriptions of sets. In Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science 1: Information, Language, and Cognition. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. & Sag, I. (1987). Information-based syntax and semantics, Volume 1; Fundamentals. CSLI Lecture Notes Series 13. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. & Sag, I. (1994). Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar: CSLI and University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sag, I. (1994). Relative clauses: a multiple inheritance analysis. paper presented at the 1994 Conference on Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar: explanatory mechanisms and empirical consequences, Copenhagen, August 1994.Google Scholar
Shieber, S. (1986). An introduction to unification-based approaches to grammar. CSLI Lecture Notes Series 4. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Travis, L. (1989). Parameters of phrase structure. In Baltin, M. & Kroch, A. (eds.) Alternative conceptions of phrase structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Williams, E. (1981). Language acquisition, markedness, and phrase structure. In Takavolian, S. (ed.) Language acquisition and linguistic theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A. (in press). Dealing out meaning: fundamentals of syntactic constructions. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting, Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar