Linguistics LNGS3004 -- Modern Formal Theories of Grammar: Lexical Functional Grammar

March Semester, 1998
Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney
Christopher Manning

Lecturer: Chris Manning
Transient Building, 243B
Phone: 9351-7516
Email: cmanning@mail.usyd.edu.au
Office Hours: See the sign on the door.

Lecture times: Thursday 2-4, (13 weeks)
Lecture location: Transient Room 203

Overview

Who is this course for?

• People who like syntax!
• People who want to learn about modern syntax in greater depth than in LNGS2002.
• People who are interested in how formal tools can be used to model syntax.

Aims

• To give greater experience with a formal syntactic theory.
• To discuss a variety of important syntactic structures found in the world's languages.
• To provide students with an understanding of a particular version of syntax, Lexical Functional Grammar, so that they can use this to analyze the syntax of typologically diverse languages.
• To present the underlying research program of generative grammar.
• To develop skills for the collection and analysis of syntactic data.

Prerequisites

LNGS2002 (formerly Linguistics 211GL), Introduction to Syntax and Morphology, or permission of the instructor.

Assessment

• Roughly weekly problem sets. 60%
• Short end of semester paper. 40%

Assessment will be based on assignments and a final paper. There will usually be weekly assignments due in class the week after they are handed out, some of which will be marked (others are for practice). The lowest mark will be dropped, and the rest will contribute equally to the final mark. Assignments not handed in on time will be penalized unless an extension is negotiated (for medical or religious reasons, etc.). Assignments will not be accepted after their solutions have been discussed. The essay should be short (1500-2000 words), but cogently discuss the application of ideas discussed in the course to some syntactic problem.

Textbook

There is no official textbook. The main reading for the course will be available in a reader from University Printing Services (now at the Noel Martin Recreation Centre). [However, due to my slackness in giving them the materials for the reader, the earliest date to go asking for it is 9 March.]

I have already put a couple of books in Fisher Special Reserve, and may add others as time progresses. In addition, I will hand out various handouts and put articles in the departmental office (where they may be borrowed for a couple of hours).

The following books are all useful. Bresnan (1982) is the classic "bible" but long, heavy, and now rather dated. Sells (1985) and Horrocks (1987) are both useful intros to the theory of LFG (but also now somewhat dated). They're the best place to start when you are confused about the basics. Abeille (1993) is more recent, but written in French. (Incidentally, there is more than one LFG textbook in preparation, but not currently available, unfortunately.) While covering "classical" LFG, we will spend much of the time looking at more modern LFG approaches, and so we will use various articles and so on.

• Joan Bresnan (ed.). The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. MIT Press, 1982.
• Peter Sells. Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories. CSLI, 1985.
• Geoffrey Horrocks. Generative Grammar. Longman, 1987.
• Anne Abeille. Les nouvelles syntaxes : grammaires d'unification et analyse du francais. Armand Colin, 1993.

Syllabus

1. 5 Mar. Bureaucracy. Introduction to the linguistic issues that motivate LFG: nonconfigurationality and predicate argument structure; paradoxes of movement and category mismatches. (Do all languages look like English underlyingly? do things move in syntax?) No assignment.
   • J. Bresnan. The Design of Grammar. Paper presented at the Interdisciplinary Conference Women on the Frontiers of Research. 1988.
   • K. Hale. On the position of Walbiri in a typology of the base. Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1981.
   • K. Hale. 1983. Warlpiri and the Grammar of Non-configurational Languages. NLLT, 1:5-47.
   • J. M. Sadock. 1980. Noun Incorporation in Greenlandic: A Case of Syntactic Word Formation. Language, 56:300-319.
   • M. Speas. 1990. Phrase structure in natural language. Dordrecht: Kluwer, Ch.1-3.
   • J. Bresnan. Category Mismatches. 1995. In A. Akinlabi (ed), Theoretical Approaches to African Languages, Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 19-46.
   • P. Austin and J. Bresnan. 1996. Non-configurationality in Australian Aboriginal languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 14:215-268.
2. 12 Mar. Modern and not so modern syntactic theories. An impressionistic survey of syntactic theories from 2000 B.C.E. to the present day, focusing particularly on "modern" syntactic work following in the wake of Chomsky (1957). (There are a lot of syntactic theories out there -- where does this one fit in?) LFG Exercise 1.
3. 19 Mar. LFG: formal architecture. Design properties of the theory. The solution algorithm. (This is the technical part which explains how LFG is a formally precise theory which can be used predictively and computationally -- but it's good to know so you can use it correctly too.) LFG Problem Set 1: Sections 1.1--1.3.
   • P. Sells. Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories. Ch. 4
   • Michael Wescoat. Practical Instructions for Working with the Formalism of Lexical Functional Grammar. 1985.
4. 26 Mar. Universal theories of phrase structure (can the phrase structure of languages vary arbitrarily, or do all human languages have common elements in their design?). Constraints on mappings between phrase structure and functional structure (grammatical relations). Various cases: English, Welsh, German, etc. LFG Problem Set 1: Problem 1.4.
   • J. Bresnan. 1997. Mixed Categories as Head Sharing Constructions. Proceedings of the LFG97 Conference, San Diego.
   • L. Travis. 1989. Parameters of Phrase Structure. In M. R. Baltin and A. S. Kroch (eds), Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure, pp.263-279.
   • Jan Koster. 1975. Dutch as an SOV Language. Linguistic Analysis, 1:111-136.
5. 2 Apr. Grammatical relations. What kind of typology of grammatical relations are motivated in a theory of syntax?
6. 9 Apr. Argument structure and Linking theory (how do we know what the syntax of a verb will be like given its meaning?). The basic Bresnan and Moshi (1990) theory and more recent developments (Alsina 1996, etc.). LFG Problem on German.
   • J. Bresnan and A. Zaenen. Deep unaccusativity in LFG. Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Conference on Grammatical Relations. 1990.
   • W. A. Foley. 1998. A Typology of Information Packaging in the Clause (extracts). To appear in T. Shopen (ed) Language Typology and Linguistic Description.
7. 23 Apr. Morphology and phrase structure (what do languages with complex morphology look like and how can we analyze them?). Pronoun incorporation and agreement (some languages let you not mention the participants in an event but have verbal endings that tell you about them -- what does that mean syntactically?). Problem set 2, 1.2-1.3.
   • Avery Andrews. Unification and morphological blocking. NLLT 8:507-557.
   • Joan Bresnan and Sam Mchombo. 1987. Topic, pronoun, and agreement. Language, 63:741--782.
   • J. Bresnan. 1998. The Emergence of the Unmarked Pronoun II. Paper presented at the Hopkins Optimality Theory Workshop/Maryland Mayfest 1997.
8. 30 Apr. Sentential complements (how do we deal with complex sentences in this theory?). (X)COMP and (X)ADJ, raising vs. control and the theory of functional control. Exercise 3.
   • J. Bresnan. Control and Complementation. In Bresnan (ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, 1982.
9. 7 May. Long distance movement, Topicalization and Scrambling (how do we get movement like effects in a theory with none?). LFG Problem Set 2, Part 2.
   • R. M. Kaplan and A. Zaenen. Long-Distance Dependencies, Constituent Structure, and Functional Uncertainty. In Baltin and Kroch (eds), Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure.
10. 14 May. Binding theory and weak crossover (determining possibilities for and restrictions on coreference). Where should binding theory be defined? Reasons for defining binding on argument-structure. LFG Problem Set 3, Part 2.
    • C. D. Manning. 1996. Argument structure as a locus for binding theory. 1st LFG Conference.
11. 21 May. Causatives, complex predicates (some languages have these neat constructions where multiple actions get packed into a single event). Alsina, Butt, T. Mohanan. LFG Problem Set 3, Part 3.
    • A. Alsina and S. Joshi. 1991. Parameters in Causative Constructions. CLS 27.
12. 28 May. Complex predicates and Serial verbs.
    • M. Durie. 1997. Grammatical Structures in Verb Serialization. In A. Alsina, J. Bresnan, and P. Sells (eds), Complex Predicates. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
    • A. D. Andrews and C. D. Manning. 1998. Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG.
13. 4 Jun. Optimality Theory in Syntax and LFG (why you might want to apply optimality theoretic ideas to an LFG-like syntax).
    • Geraldine Legendre, William Raymond, and Paul Smolensky. 1993. An Optimality-Theoretic Typology of Case and Grammatical Voice Systems. BLS 19.464--78. [available on Rutgers Optimality Archive (ROA)]
    • Joan Bresnan. 1997. Optimal Syntax. Written for Optimality Theory: Phonology, Syntax and Acquisition, edited by Joost Dekkers, Frank van der Leeuw and Jeroen van de Weijer, to be published by Oxford University Press.