2 April: DCLRS -- Friday, April 5, 4pm. Davis LT -- Anette Frank
Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar: Index of April 2002 | Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of year: 2002 | Full index
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| Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar |
| DCLRS 2001/2002 |
| DCU TCD UCD |
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venue: Davis Lecture Theatre (Arts Building Room 2043)
Trinity College
time: 4:00-6:00, Friday, April 5
speaker: Anette Frank
DFKI, Saarbruecken
title: A (Discourse) Functional Analysis of Asymmetric
Coordination
abstract:
A long-standing puzzle in coordination is the
so-called SGF-coordination (Subject Gap in Finite/Fronted
constructions) in German (1), first discussed b y (Hoehle 1983). Its
syntactic analysis is challenging, since the subject (Jaeger, man) is
realised in the middle field in the left conjunct, and is thus -
under standard analyses of constituent coordination - not accessible
from within the second conjunct, which is missing a subject (hence
"subject gap").
(1) a. In den Wald ging der Jaeger und fing einen Hasen.
Into the forest went the hunter and caught a rabbit
The hunter went into the forest and caught a rabbit
(1) b. Nimmt man den Deckel ab und ruehrt die Fuellung um, steigen Daempfe auf.
Takes one the cover off and stirrs the stuffing, steam rises.
If one takes the cover off and stirrs the stuffing, steam will rise.
SGF constructions have been analysed in terms of asymmetrically
embedded conjuncts (Wunderlich 1988, Hoehle 1990, Heycock and Kroch
1993, Buering und Hartmann 1998) or symmetric conjuncts (Steedman
1990, Kathol 1995,1999). Asymmetric embedding is problematic as it
involves extraction asymmetries, or a doubtful analysis of
coordination as adjunction. Symmetric analyses assume special
licensing conditions which are not independently motivated. Especially
the word order conditions of Kathol's analysis lack any independent
syntactic motivation, and fail to account for related asymmetric
coordinations of verb-last and verb-fronted (VL/VF) sentences (2).
(2) Wenn Du in ein Kaufhaus kommst und (Du) hast kein Geld, kannst Du nichts kaufen.
if you in a shop come and you have no money can you nothing buy
If you enter a shop and (you) don't have any money, you can't buy anything.
We present a multi-factorial LFG analysis of asymmetric constructions (1) and
(2), which relies on independently motivated principles of the correspondences
between c-structure, f-structure, and i-structure (information structure).
SGF coordination is analysed as symmetric coordination in c-structure. Binding
of the (prima facie) inaccessible subject of the first conjunct is enabled, at
the level of f-structure, by asymmetric projection of a "grammaticalised
discourse function GDF", a topic or subject function (Bresnan, 2001).
"Asymmetric GDF projection" is motivated by relating the semantic and
discourse-functional properties of asymmetric coordination to well-known
discourse subordination effects of modal subordination. In conjunction with
word order constraints in the optimality model of (Choi 1999, 2001), our
analysis explains some mysterious word order constraints as well as some
puzzling scoping properties.
The Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar series is run
jointly by DCU (Dublin City University), TCD (Trinity College Dublin)
and UCD (University College Dublin).
The 2001/2002 seminar series is hosted by Trinity College with the
support of the Department of Computer Science, the Centre for Language
and Communication Studies, the Department of Germanic Studies, the
School of Irish, the Department of French and the Centre for Computing
and Language Studies.
For an indication of parts of recent seminar contents, see:
http://www.cs.tcd.ie/research_groups/clg/DCLRS.html
Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of April 2002 | Index of year: 2002 | Full index