The paper proposes a theory relating syntax, semantics, and intonational prosody, and covering a wide range of English intonational tunes and their semantic interpretation in terms of focus and information structure. The theory is based on a version of combinatory categorial grammar which directly pairs phonological and logical forms without intermediary representational levels.

This thesis presents accounts of a range of linguistic phenomena in an extended categorial framework, and develops proposals for processing grammars set within this framework. Linguistic phenomena whose treatment we address include word order, grammatical relations and obliqueness, extraction and island constraints, and binding. The work is set within a flexible categorial framework which is a version of the Lambek calculus (Lambek, 1958) extended by the inclusion of additional type-forming operators whose logical behaviour allows for the characterization of some aspect of linguistic phenomena. We begin with the treatment of extraction phenomena and island constraints. An account is developed in which there are many interrelated notions of boundary, and where the sensitivity of any syntactic process to a particular class of boundaries can be addressed within the grammar. We next present a new categorial treatment of word order which factors apart the specification of the order of a h...

Since the pioneering work of Lees and Klima (1963), it has commonly been assumed that a single generalization determines the possible antecedents of anaphors (reflexive and reciprocal expressions) in English. The mechanisms proposed to express this generalization have evolved considerably over the last quarter century, but the transformations

The central claim of this dissertation is that an elliptical VP is a proform. This claim has two primary consequences: first, the elliptical VP can have no internal syntactic structure. Second, the interpretation of VP ellipsis must be governed by the same general conditions governing other proforms, such as pronouns. The basic condition governing the interpretation of a proform is that it must be semantically identified with its antecedent. A computational model is described in which this identification is mediated by store and retrieve operations defined with respect to a discourse model. Because VP ellipsis is treated on a par with other proforms, the ambiguity arising from “sloppy identity ” becomes epiphenomenal, resulting from the fact that the store and retrieve operations are freely ordered. A primary argument for the proform theory of VP ellipsis concerns syntactic constraints on variables within the antecedent. I examine many different types of variables, including reflexives, reciprocals, negative polarity items, and wh-traces. In all these cases, syntactic constraints are not respected under ellipsis. This indicates that the relation governing VP ellipsis is semantic rather than syntactic. In further support of the proform theory, I show that there is a striking similarity in the antecedence possibilities for VP ellipsis and those for pronouns. Two

1.1 Accounting for disjoint reference Obviation versus Blocking. Two approaches to the distribution of anaphors and pronominals have been explored in Binding Theory. The OBVIATION approach, originating in Lasnik 1976 and extensively developed in the GB tradition, posits autonomous disjoint reference principles which directly filter out illicit coindexations in certain structural domains. The BLOCKING approach treats disjoint reference derivatively, by making anaphors obligatory under coreference in the binding domain, and invoking a syntactic or pragmatic principle that forces disjoint reference pronominals in the “elsewhere ” case. 1 1 My interest in reflexive pronouns comes partly from historical syntax and partly from the Case theory that Dieter Wunderlich and I have been thinking about since 1991. The first version of this paper was written that year, and I was fortunate to be able to discuss it with Dieter at the time, who made insightful suggestions especially about the Swedish material. I then set it aside for some years, realizing that many of the things I was trying to do were being done in a more sophisticated way by Reinhart & Reuland and by Burzio. Still, my conclusions differed from theirs on some points, and so I returned to the paper in 1996, adding the OT analysis, which was presented at an OT syntax conference at Stanford, and revising it once more for this publication in honor of Dieter Wunderlich. I am grateful to Cleo Condoravdi for her detailed comments on several drafts of this paper and for her advice and encouragement over the years. Special thanks also to Annie Zaenen and Peter Sells for their guidance, and to Ekkehard König and Tomas Riad for the interest they have take in this work. Many people have been generous with their

In this paper, we argue that the grammatical scopings of quantifiers should be treated by deductive methods. In support of this position, we offer a logical treatment of almost all previously proposed substantive constraints on quantifier scoping, including those imposed by coordinate structure, control verbs, unbounded dependency constructions, anaphoric dependency and nested dependent quantifiers. These are correctly captured by a handful of linguistically motivated and logically natural inference schemes for quantification, coordination and unbounded dependency, combined with the previously motivated function introduction and elimination schemes of categorial logic. In addition, we argue that phrase-structure and transformational accounts of similar phenomena at best provide an approximation of the logical approach.

The argument-modifier distinction is less clear i n NPs than in VPs since nouns do not typically take arguments. The clearest cases of arguments in NPs are found in certain kinds of nominalizations which retain some "verbal" properties (Grimshaw 1990). The status of apparent arguments of non-deverbal relational nouns like sister is more controversial.

In this paper, logical form representations for pronouns, singular definite noun phrases (NPs), and singular indefinite NPs are developed. These representations allow decisions about the precise meaning of a sentence to be postponed until the required information becomes available. Three computational constraints for this logical form are proposed: compactness, modularity, and formal consistency. Initially, NPs are represented using a composite representation for all allowable meanings, conforming with the compactness constraint. This representation is provided using only syntactic and sentence level information, consistent with the modularity constraint. When an ambiguity can be resolved, the precise behavior is specified in a way compatible with the initial representation, conforming with the formal consistency constraint. The scope of this approach is demonstrated by using a wide variety of examples, and a computer implementation is described. Related approaches are also discussed.

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This paper focuses on the semantics of implicit arguments and compares it with that of explicit indefinites with which they can be truth-conditionally paraphrased. It is shown that once the discourse-potential of expressions is taken into account, the semantics of implicit arguments differs from their indefinite explicit counterparts. They are shown to be semantically identical to a particular kind of non-quantificational NP (a-definites) which are characterized by their inability to serve as antecedents for future reference. A model of this behavior of implicit arguments, it is argued, follows naturally from the underlying assumption of Discourse Representation Theory that semantic representations must include two kinds of information, a set of available discourse markers and a set of predicative conditions. Because implicit arguments satisfy a predicate's argument positions without introducing discourse markers into the Discourse Representation Structure of a sentence, they cannot serve as the antecedent of definite pronouns. When they do enter into anaphoric relations it is not through discourse markers equality clauses, but instead is the result of either lexical identification of variables (via semantic detransitivization or