rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) (10/25/88)
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
and
GRADUATE RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES
PRESENT
ARNOLD ZWICKY
Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
1. TOWARDS A THEORY OF SYNTACTIC CONSTRUCTIONS
The past decade has seen the vigorous development of frameworks for syn-
tactic description that not only are fully explicit (to the point of
being easily modeled in computer programs) but also are integrated with
an equally explicit framework for semantic description (and, sometimes,
with equally explicit frameworks for morphological and phonological
description). This has made it possible to reconsider the _construc-
tion_ as a central concept in syntax.
Constructions are, like words, Saussurean signs--linkages of linguistic
form with meanings and pragmatic values. The technical problem is to
develop the appropriate logics for the interactions between construc-
tions, both with respect to their form and with respect to their
interpretation. I am concerned here primarily with the formal side of
the matter, which turns out to be rather more intricate than one might
have expected. Constructions are complexes of categories, sub-
categories, grammatical relations, conditions on governed features, con-
ditions on agreeing features, conditions on phonological shape, condi-
tions on branching, conditions on ordering, _and_ specific contributory
constructions (so that, for example, the subject-auxiliary construction
in English contributes to several others, including the information
question construction, as in `What might you have seen?'). The schemes
of formal interaction I will illustrate are overlapping, or mutual
applicability; superimposition, or invocation; and preclusion, or over-
riding of defaults.
Thursday, November 3, 1988
5:00 P.M.
Baldy 684, Amherst Campus
There will be an evening discussion on Nov. 3, 8:00 P.M.,
at the home of Joan Bybee, 38 Endicott, Eggertsville.
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2. INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY AS A (SUB)COMPONENT OF GRAMMAR
Friday, November 4, 1988
3:00 P.M.
Baldy 684, Amherst Campus
Wine and cheese to follow.
Call Donna Gerdts (Dept. of Linguistics, 636-2177) for further information.