Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:37:10.904Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An HPSG approach to Welsh1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Robert D. Borsley
Robert D. Borsley
Affiliation:
University College of North Wales, Bangor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Welsh differs from English in a number of ways. The most obvious point is that it is a VSO language, but it also has distinctive agreement phenomena and clitics. For this reason, it is natural to ask of any theory of syntax that has been developed primarily on the basis of English: how can it handle Welsh? Welsh has had fairly extensive attention within the Government-Binding theory (see, for example, Harlow, 1981; Sproat, 1985; Sadler, 1988, and Hendrick, 1988). It has also had some attention within Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) (see Harlow, 1983; Borsley, 1983; 1988a). In this paper, I will consider how some of the central features of Welsh can be accommodated within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). This is a framework developed over the last few years by Carl Pollard, Ivan Sag and others, which seeks to combine the insights of GPSG, categorial grammar and certain other theories (see Pollard, 1985, 1988; Sag & Pollard, 1987, and Pollard & Sag, 1988). In fact, I will be mainly concerned with the version of HPSG developed in Borsley (1986, 1987, 1988 b), but I will also have something to say about standard HPSG.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , September 1989 , pp. 333 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ades, A. E. & Steedman, M. J. (1982). On the order of words. Linguistics and Philosophy 4. 517–558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (1983). A Welsh agreement process and the status of VP and S. In Gazdar, G., Klein, E. & Pullum, G. K. (eds) Order, concord and constituency. Dordrecht: Foris. 57–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (1984). VP complements: evidence from Welsh. JL 20. 277–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (1986). A note on HPSG. Bangor Research Papers in Linguistics 1.Google Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (1987). Subjects and complements in HPSG. CSLI Report No. 107.Google Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (1988a). GPSG and Welsh clause structure. Linguistics 26. 365–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (1988b). Subjects, complements and specifiers in HPSG. Unpublished paper, U.C.N.W.Google Scholar
Borsley, R. D. (forthcoming). Welsh passives. To appear in Ball, M., Fife, J., Poppe, E. & Rowland, J. (eds) Festschrift for T. Arwyn WatkinsGoogle Scholar
Gazdar, G., Pullum, G. K. & Sag, I. A. (1982). Auxiliaries and related phenomena in a restrictive theory of grammar. Lg 58. 591–638.Google Scholar
Gazdar, G., Klein, E., Pullum, G. K. & Sag, I. A. (1985). Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harlow, S. (1981). Government and relativization in Celtic. In Heny, F. (ed.) Binding and filtering, London: Croom Helm. 213–254.Google Scholar
Harlow, S. (1983). Celtic relatives. York Papers in Linguistics 10. 77–121.Google Scholar
Harlow, S. (forthcoming). Syntax of Welsh soft mutation. To appear in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.Google Scholar
Hendrick, R. (1988). Anaphora in Celtic and Universal Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, J. & Chung, S. (1987). Government, barriers and small clauses in Modern Irish. LIn 18. 173–239.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. J. (1985). Phrase structure grammar without metarules. Proceedings of the Fourth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Stanford: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. J. (1988). Categorial grammar and phrase structure grammar: an excursion on the syntax–semantics frontier. In Oehrle, R., Bach, E. & Wheeler, D. (eds) Categorial grammars and natural language structures. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. J. & Sag, I. A. (1988). Information-based syntax. Vol. 1: Fundamentals. CSLI Lecture Notes Series No. 13. CSLI, Stanford.Google Scholar
Sadler, L. (1988). Welsh syntax: a Government-Binding approach. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Sag, I. A. & Pollard, C. J. (1987). HPSG: an informal synopsis. CSLI Report No. 79.Google Scholar
Sproat, R. (1985). Welsh syntax and VSO structure. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3. 173–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tallerman, M. O. (1987). Mutation and the syntactic structure of modern colloquial Welsh. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hull.Google Scholar