Mixed Categories in the Hierarchical Lexicon

Mixed category constructions like the English verbal gerund involve words that seem to be central members of more that one part of speech and so pose a problem for the standard view of syntactic categories. This book presents a novel analysis of this and similar mixed category constructions in languages including Quechua, Tibetan, Arabic, Fijian, Dagaare, and Jacaltec. Under this analysis, verbal gerunds share the selectional properties of verbs and the distributional properties of nouns. Since different dimensions of grammatical information can vary independently, the behavior of mixed categories creates no paradox. But, while these dimensions are in principle independent, in fact certain types of mixed categories are quite common in the world's languages, while others are rare or nonexistent. The cross-linguistic variation can best be accounted for by means of a lexical categorial prototype. Specifically, nouns prototypically denote objects and verbs prototypically denote actions. By stating these prototypes as default constraints in a hierarchy of lexical information, we can bring insights from cognitive and functional approaches to linguistics into a formal analysis, thus building on the strengths of both approaches.

Robert P. Malouf was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Humanities Computing, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Acknowledgements

1 Introdution

1.1 Overview
1.2 Background
1.3 HPSG preliminaries

1.3.1 Goals of linguistic theory

1.4 An outline of the theory

1.4.1 X-bar theory
1.4.2 Construction types
1.4.3 Valence Principle
1.4.4 Why HPSG?

1.5 Universals in HPSG

2 English Verbal Gerunds

2.1 Properties of verbal gerunds

2.1.1 Verbal gerunds as nouns
2.1.2 Verbal gerunds as verbs
2.1.3 Subtypes of verbal gerund phrases

2.1.3.1 Coordination
2.1.3.2 Quantifier scope
2.1.3.3 Extraction
2.1.3.4 Pied Piping
2.1.3.5 Ellipsis
2.1.3.6 Summary

2.2 Previous analyses

2.2.1 Methodological principles
2.2.2 No head
2.2.3 Ing as head

2.2.3.1 Baker (1985)
2.2.3.2 Abney (1987)

2.2.4 Gerund as head

2.2.4.1 Pullum (1991)
2.2.4.2 Lapointe (1993)
2.2.4.3 Wescoat (1994)
2.2.4.4 Summary

2.3 A mixed category analysis

2.3.1 Some examples
2.3.2 Coordination
2.3.3 Gerunds and control
2.3.4 Pied piping

2.4 Postscript: Archaic gerunds

3 Coherent Nominalizations

3.1 The Deverbalization of Hierarchy
3.2 Explaining the cross-linguistic pattern
3.3 Comparing the PCH and the LCH

3.3.1 Gerunds in VSO languages
3.3.2 Analytic tense/aspect marking
3.3.3 Mixed word order languages
3.3.4 Mixed modifiers

3.4 Deriving the LCH

3.4.1 The semantic basis for syntactic categories
3.4.2 Prototypes in the lexical hierarchy
3.4.3 Bringing it together
3.4.4 Geruns in ergative languages
3.4.5 Explaining the LCH

4 Conclusions and Consequences

4.1 A look back
4.2 A look forward

4.2.1 Univerals in HPSG
4.2.2 Lexical integrity
4.2.3 Language change

4.3 Conclusions

References
Index

8/15/2000

ISBN (Paperback): 1575861909 (9781575861906)
ISBN (Cloth): 1575861917 (9781575861913)
ISBN (Electronic): 1575869691 (9781575869698)

Mixed Categories in the Hierarchical Lexicon

Contents