Ellipsis in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Abstract

The chapter provides an overview of the types of analyses of elliptical phenomena that have been proposed in the literature on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). First, it explains the central insights behind the analyses, which have concentrated on three classes of phenomena: (i) non-sentential utterances, (ii) argument or predicate ellipsis, and (iii) constructions involving unpronounced syntactic structure. HPSG is crucially non-modular. Constraints involving various levels can be easily stated, which benefits the framework for the analysis of ellipsis, because it allows one to express simultaneous semantic and syntactic constraints on ellipsis (explaining for instance the connectivity effects among non-sentential utterances) and provides means to integrate non-semantic information-information about the realization of utterances-into context. A more detailed discussion of the theory then follows. The chapter provides a more technically precise account of the syntax of argument ellipsis, an area which has received a considerable amount of analysis in HPSG, for which there is a broad consensus. Subsequently, more recent developments are introduced and a detailed analysis of non-sentential utterances is provided. In particular, we introduce an alternative version of HPSG, which allows the grammar to directly interface with dialogue context as conceived in the framework of KoS.

English fragments, Minimize Domains, and Minimize Forms

“…(Ginzburg & Sag, 2000, p. 298) (17) *Someone shot Ben but I don't know by who. (Merchant, 2001, p. 35) Several authors have argued that fragments tolerate non-linguistic antecedents like (16) only under limited circumstances (Culicover & Jackendoff, 2005;Ginzburg & Miller, 2018;Ginzburg & Sag, 2000;Merchant, 2004). The fragment in (17), mismatching its active antecedent in voice, has been claimed to be ungrammatical (Merchant, 2001).…”

Remnant connectivity in pseudogapping: Experimental evidence for a direct generation approach

“…PG is thus relevant to the general issue of the status of fragments in syntax, along with constructions like Bare Argument Ellipsis and Sluicing (e.g. Ginzburg & Sag 2000;Merchant 2001Merchant , 2004Merchant , 2013Culicover & Jackendoff 2005;Chung 2006Chung , 2013Ginzburg & Miller 2019;Nykiel & Hawkins 2020;Nykiel & Kim 2021).…”

“…The second is a direct generation approach (i.e. monostratal licensing of ellipsis, see Van Craenenbroek & Temmerman 2019, for introductions to a variety of such approaches; in particular, Ginzburg & Miller 2019;Jacobson 2019, which are especially relevant here) initially proposed by [2] In examples of PG, for clarity, the correlate and the remnant are italics with underlined; in some cases we strike out the ellipted verb to make the intended interpretation explicit; in other cases we simply underline the antecedent.…”

“…The second is a direct generation approach (i.e. monostratal licensing of ellipsis, see Van Craenenbroek & Temmerman 2019, for introductions to a variety of such approaches; in particular, Ginzburg & Miller 2019; Jacobson 2019, which are especially relevant here) initially proposed by Miller (1990) in a Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar framework and also adopted by Hoeksema (2006). A more recent direct generation account in terms of hybrid type-logical categorial grammar is developed in Kubota & Levine (2017).…”

Perspective de la grammaire générative sur l’anaphore

“…En particulier, une grammaire peut être entendue comme un ensemble de principes de bonne formation qui permettent de vérifier si une structure est bien formée ou non. Parmi celles-ci on peut noter en particulier, la Grammaire Catégorielle (CG, voir, par exemple, sur une construction elliptique, Kubota et Levine 2017), la Grammaire Lexicale-Fonctionnelle (LFG, voir par exemple Bresnan 1982) , la Grammaire Syntagmatique Guidée par les Têtes (HPSG, voir Pollard et Sag 1994, Ginzburg et Miller 2019, la Grammaire de Construction (CxG, Goldberg 1995), etc.…”