Abstract

Previous work on light verb constructions (e.g. chorii kar ‘theft do; steal’) in Hindi describes their syntactic formation via co-predication (Ahmed et al., 2012, Butt, 2014). This implies that both noun and light verb contribute their arguments, and these overlapping argument structures must be composed in the syntax. In this paper, we present a co-predication analysis using Tree-Adjoining Grammar, which models syntactic composition and semantic selectional preferences without transformations (deletion or argument identification). The analysis has two key components (i) an underspecified category for the nominal and (ii) combinatorial constraints on the noun and light verb to specify selectional preferences. The former has the advantage of syntactic composition without argument identification and the latter prevents over-generalization, while recognizing the semantic contribution of both predicates. This work additionally accounts for the agreement facts for the Hindi LVC.

Highlights

  • Light verb constructions have been defined as “two predicational elements that each contribute to a joint predication” (Butt, 2010)

  • We describe the design for the elementary trees in Tree-Adjoining Grammar (TAG) and conclude with a summary and discussion of our work

  • Lexicalized TAG enhanced with feature structures is known as Lexicalized Featurebased Tree-Adjoining Grammar (LF-TAG)

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Summary

Introduction

Light verb constructions have been defined as “two (or more) predicational elements that each contribute to a joint predication” (Butt, 2010). Mohan.m.sg=erg Shyam.m.sg=gen talaash.f.sg do-prf.f.sg ‘Mohan made a search for Shyam’ This ‘division of labour’ problem, where the correct roles mapped to correct grammatical functions must eventually surface in a monoclausal structure is precisely the reason for the plethora of operations required for LVC analysis. Further arguments for monoclausality have shown that light verb constructions have a single subject in the clause (Butt, 1995) This implies that the syntactic representation must allow the representation of the argument structures of both the light verb and the predicating noun. Another fallout of the monoclausality problem is the treatment of the light verb as a theta marker of arguments, which contributes nothing at all to the event description. Before we turn to our Tree-Adjoining Grammar analysis, we examine an existing analysis of LVCs in LexicalFunctional Grammar

Previous work
Introduction to lexicalized Tree-Adjoining Grammar
The TAG proposal
Category underspecification for the nominal
Feature-values for selectional preferences
Feature-values for agreement
An example
An example with alternations
Summary
Discussion
Full Text
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