Abstract

Kaplan et al. (1989) present a framework for translation based on the description and correspondence concepts of LexicalFunctional Grammar (Kaplan and Bresnan, 1982). Certain phenomena, in particular the head-switching of adverbs and verbs, seem to be problematic for that approach. In this paper we suggest that these difficulties are more properly considered as the result of defective monolingual analyses. We propose a new description-language operator, restriction, to permit a succinct formal encoding of the informal intuition that semantic units sometimes correspond to subsets of functional information. This operator, in conjunction with an additional recursion provided by a description-by-analysis rule, is the basis of a more adequate account of head-switching that preserves the advantages of correspondence-based translation.

Citations