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Abstract. In this paper, we present a unified feature-based theory of complement, adjunct, and subject extraction, in which there is no need either for valence reducing lexical rules or for phonologically null traces. Our analysis rests on the assumption that the mapping between argument structure and valence is defined by realization constraints which are satisfied by all lexical heads. Arguments can be realized as local dependents, in which case they are selected via the head’s valence features. Alternatively, arguments may be realized in a long-distance dependency construction, in which case they are selected via the head’s SLASH features. Furthermore, we argue that in English post-verbal adjuncts, as well as complements, are syntactic dependents selected by the verb, thus providing a uniform analysis of complement and adjunct extraction. Finally, we provide an alternative treatment of subject extraction which is subsumed by our general analysis and offer a new account of the that-trace effect. 1.

The canonical linguistic process is the cycle of the speech-circuit [Saussure, 1915]. A speaker expresses a psychological idea by means of a physiological articulation. The signal is transmitted through the medium by a physical process incident on a hearer who from the consequent physiological impression recovers the psychological idea. The hearer may then reply, swapping the roles of speaker and hearer, and so the circuit cycles. For communication to be successful speakers and hearers must have shared associations between forms (signifiers) andmeanings(signifieds). De Saussure called such a pairing of signifier and signified a sign. Therelationisone-to-many (ambiguity) and many-to-one (paraphrase). Let us call a stable totality of such associations a language. It would be arbitrary to propose that there is a longest expression (where would we propose to cut off IknowthatyouknowthatIknow that you know...?) therefore language is an infinite abstraction over the finite number of acts of communication that can ever occur. The program of formal syntax [Chomsky, 1957] is to define the set of all and only

this paper. Thanks are also due to Steve Pulman, Ewan Klein, David Beaver and Guy Barry for discussion during the early stages of the work, and to other members of the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Science and the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. The research was supported by the British Science and Engineering Research Council (Research Fellowship B/90/ITF/288, and Research Grant RR30718)

The research of the last four decades suggests strongly that abstract laws of significant generality underlie much of the superficial complexity of human language. Evidence in favor of this conjecture comes from two different types of facts. First, there are cross-linguistic facts. Investigation of unfamiliar and typologically diverse languages is regularly illuminated by what we already know about other

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

This paper describes a logic grammar formalism, modifier structure grammars (MSGs), together with an interpreter written in Prolog, which can handle coordination (and other natural language constructions) in a reasonable and general way. The system produces both syntactic analyses and logical forms, and problems of scoping for coordination and quantifiers are dealt with. The MSG formalism seems of interest in its own right (perhaps even outside natural language processing) because the notions of syntactic structure and semantic interpretation are more constrained than in many previous systems (made more implicit in the formalism itself), so that less burden is put on the grammar writer

this paper, I shall briefly examine the claims they make. My conclusion with regard to each is that they fail to make their casd because closer attention reveals that their empirical claims about English are incorrect. Moreover, both arguments concern anaphora, and both fail in ways related to that concern

This paper addresses a number of empirical problems surrounding the analysis of `extraction' from French nominal phrases. The lexically based analysis that we present expresses a fundamental generalization in this domain, namely, the correlation between the potential for extraction from NPs and the possibility of `pied piping'. As observed by Godard (1992), this generalization is left unexplained by existing accounts of extraction. We will also sketch how our treatment of extraction and pied piping fits into a broader analysis of the core syntactic phenomena of modern French. Our lexical treatment of cliticization, itself a consequence of the strict lexicalism that we embrace, allows us to unify the analysis of unbounded extraction phenomena with that of cliticization, in the process explaining their common properties. We are able to derive the facts in question through the interaction of independently motivated constraints on representations. The relevant generalizations are naturally cast as constraints in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), whose relevant constructs we explain in section 3 below.

This is a screen version, enhanced with some dynamic features, of the paper that has appeared under the same title in Bouma, Hinrichs, Kruij# & Oehrle (eds.) Constraints and Resources in Natural Language Syntax and Semantics. CSLI, Stanford, 1999. You can use the # and # keys to move through the document. The # sign at the bottom of the screen brings you back from a hyperlink. Contents # Contents 1 Cognition = computation, grammar = logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.1 Grammatical resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.1.1 Composition: the form dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1.1.2 Composition: the meaning dimension. . . . . . . . . . 16 1.1.3 Lexical versus derivational meaning. . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.2 Grammatical reasoning: logic, structure and control . . . . . 20 2 Patterns for structural variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.1 English relativization: right branch extraction . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.2 Dutch relativization: left branch extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.3 Dependency: blocking extraction from subjects . . . . . . . . . 43 3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Contents # 1. Cognition = computation, grammar = logic Within current linguistic frameworks a rich variety of principles has been put forward to account for the properties of local and unbounded dependencies. Valency requirements of lexical items are checked by subcategorization principles in HPSG, principles of coherence and completeness in LFG, the theta criterion in GB. These are supplemented by, and interacting with, principles governing non-local dependencies: movement and empty category principles, slash featu...