SYNTAX WITHOUT TRANSFORMATIONS

Some linguistic theories describe languages declaratively, without transformations or movements. This makes the tasks of grammar formalization and implementation easier. We shall explore the features of a formalism designed for the theory HPSG, using sample solutions to some phenomena (valency, agreement, word order) and compare them to solutions available in other theories. An important component of the course is a practical task to implement and test a grammar describing selected phenomena in a grammar-writing environment.

PREREQUISITES:

  • Deklarativní popis češtiny I (Declarative description of Czech) or Deklarativní popis češtiny II (1st semester in parallel, an informal introduction to HPSG)

    or some awareness of non-transformational linguistic theories

    SYLLABUS:

    1. Introduction: the merits of constraint-based grammar formalisms for theoretical linguistics and natural language processing, an overview of assumptions
    2. Foundations of HPSG and its formal properties
    3. Formalisms for HPSG and their possibilities
    4. Solutions proposed within HPSG to some linguistic phenomena: valence, agreement, modification by adjuncts, function words, syntactic control, unbounded dependencies, inflection and derivation, word order, topic-focus articulation, binding, semantic interpretation; comparison to solutions proposed within alternative theories
    5. Methods of implementation, grammar writing in system TRALE (more documentation on TRALE and ALE at ALE Documentation)

    Alexandr Rosen
    2007-09-12