Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

This book presents the most complete exposition of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG), introduced in the authors' Information-Based Syntax and Semantics. HPSG provides an integration of key ideas from the various disciplines of cognitive science, drawing on results from diverse approaches to syntactic theory, situation semantics, data type theory, and knowledge representation. The result is a conception of grammar as a set of declarative and order-independent constraints, a conception well suited to modelling human language processing.

This self-contained volume demonstrates the applicability of the HPSG approach to a wide range of empirical problems, including a number which have occupied center-stage within syntactic theory for well over twenty years: the control of "understood" subjects, long-distance dependencies conventionally treated in terms of wh-movement, and syntactic constraints on the relationship between various kinds of pronouns and their antecedents. The authors make clear how their approach compares with and improves upon approaches undertaken in other frameworks, including in particular the government-binding theory of Noam Chomsky.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Agreement
• 3 Complement Structures
• 4 Unbound Dependency Constructions
• 5 Relative Clauses
• 6 Binding Theory
• 7 Complement Control
• 8 Aspects of Interpretation

1/1/1994

Subject: Linguistics; Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)

Books by Ivan A. Sag

• Sign-Based Construction Grammar edited by Hans Boas and Ivan Sag (CSLI Lecture Note 193, Oct. 2012)
• Syntactic Theory, 2nd Edition Ivan A. Sag, Thomas Wasow, and Emily M. Bender (CSLI Lecture Note 152, April 2003)
• Interrogative Investigations: The Form, Meaning and Use of English Interrogatives Jonathan Ginzburg and Ivan A. Sag (CSLI Lecture Note 123, April 2001)
• Lexical Matters Ivan A. Sag and Anna Szabolcsi (CSLI Lecture Note 24, January 1992)
• Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Carl Pollard and Ivan A. Sag (January 1994)