This paper deals with negation in Guadeloupean Creole. We present the diversity of uses of negation in GC and detail the constraints on negative concord. We show that the different n-words exhibit a non-homogeneous behavior. Our analyses are couched in the Tree-Adjoining Grammar framework.

presents results on the integration of frame-based representations into the framework of eXtensible MetaGrammar (XMG). Originally XMG allowed for the description of tree-based syntactic structures and underspecified representations of predicate-logical formulae, but the representation of frames as a sort of typed feature structure, particularly type unification, was not supported. Therefore, we introduce an extension that is capable of handling frame representations directly by means of a novel -dimension. The aim is not only to make possible a straightforward specification of frame descriptions, but also to offer various ways to specify constraints on types, be it as a connected type hierarchy or a loose set of feature structure con-1 This article is a substantially revised and extended version of Lichte et al. (2013). It has greatly benefited from discussions with Laura Kallmeyer, Rainer Osswald, Christof Rumpf and Yulia Zinova. We also thank both the reviewers of the ESSLLI 2013 workshop on High-level Methodologies in Grammar Engineering (HMGE) and the the reviewers of the JLM for detailed and helpful comments. The work presented in this paper was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the CRC 991. It was also financially supported by the scientific network PARSEME (COST Action IC1207) with a travel grant for Simon Petitjean. When finishing this article we learned with great sadness of the passing of our friend and colleague Christof Rumpf. We dedicate this article to his memory.

This paper introduces XMG 2, a modular and extensible tool for various linguistic description tasks. Based on the notion of meta-compilation (that is, compilation of compilers), XMG 2 reuses the main concepts underlying XMG, namely logic programming and constraint satisfaction, to generate on-demand XMG-like compilers by assembling elementary units called bricks. This brick-based definition of compilers permits users to design description languages in a highly flexible way. In particular, it makes it possible to support several levels of linguistic description (e.g. syntax, morphology) within a single description language. XMG 2 aims to offer means for users to easily define description languages that fit as much as possible the linguistic intuition.

Complex predicates formed of a semantically 'light' verbal head and a noun which contributes the major part of the meaning are frequently referred to as 'light verb constructions' (LVCs). In the paper, we present a case study of LVCs with the German posture verb stehen 'stand'. In our account, we model the syntactic as well as semantic composition of such LVCs by combining Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG) with frames. Starting from the analysis of the literal uses of posture verbs, we show how the meaning components of the literal uses are systematically exploited in the interpretation of stehen-LVCs. The paper constitutes an important step towards a compositional and computational analysis of LVCs. We show that LTAG allows us to separate constructional from lexical meaning components and that frames enable elegant generalizations over event types and related constraints.

We sketch an approach to encode relations of arbitrary arity as simple languages. Our main focus will be faithfulness of the encoding: we prove that with normal finite-state methods, it is impossible to properly encode the full class of rational (i.e. transducer recognizable) relations; however, there is a simple encoding for the synchronous rational relations. We present this encoding and show how standard finite-state methods can be used with this encoding, that is, arbitrary operations on relations can be encoded as operations on the code. Finally we sketch an implementation using an existing library (FOMA).