Head (linguistics)

About: Head (linguistics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2540 publications have been published within this topic receiving 29023 citations. The topic is also known as: nucleus.

On the discourse impact of subordinate clauses

Abstract: The present article investigates the discourse status of subordinate sentences, i.e., it considers the context change potential of dependent clauses. It is argued that (subordinate) clauses are associated with certain grammatical phenomena that mark them as anaphoric (i.e., familiar) or as focal, introducing new information into the discourse. As with noun phrases, these phenomena are: (i) morphological marking on the head (choice of verbal mood), (ii) phonological stress pattern, and most importantly syntactic position (iii), in the sense that discourse-old and discourse-new clauses are associated with different positions, an idea that comes close to a Mapping Hypothesis, as originally proposed for noun phrases by Diesing (1992). The claim is that dependent indicative verb second clauses in German undergo extraposition which is not semantically vacuous. This movement step places them into a quasi-paratactic position from which the relevant clauses act as assertions. Thus in contrast to complementizercontaining verb-final, i.e., canonical, subordinate clauses, these dependent verb second clauses have illocutionary force and mark new information. It is furthermore argued that related phenomena can be observed in other languages: for example, the Romance languages signalize the new information–givenness distinction and the presence vs. absence of illocutionary force (partly) by the use of verbal mood – a factor which plays an important role in German(ic) as well.

Head-Driven Bidirectional Parsing: A Tabular Method

Abstract: Tabular methods for context-free language analysis [Graham and Harrison, 1976, Graham et al., 1980], and in particular Earley's Algorithm [Earley, 1970], can be considered a major reference for natural language parsing. Even if independently conceived, Earley's Algorithm constitutes the basis for Chart parsing [Kay, 1980, Kaplan, 1973]. One basic aspect o f known tabular methods, i.e. that the analysis proceedes m onodirectionally, is a relevant limitation, that, although reasonable for artificial languages, seems reductive for natural language. A strong reason for a bidirectional approach within natural language analysis is that modem theories o f grammar emphasize the role o f a particular element inside each constituent (phrase), called the head; this element carries categorial as well as thematic information about other elements within the constituent. It turns out that the acceptability and the general skeleton of each constituent, crucially depend on such information. More concretely, a number o f possible partial interpretations would be pruned out earlier, on the basis o f functional information attached to the head, resulting in greater efficiency. Some recent works in the framework o f Chart parsing [Steel and De Roeck, 1987, Stock et al., 1989] have pointed out the importance of bidirectionality for natural language analysis. Another work that deals with some form of bidirectionality [Bossi et a l ., 1983] can be found in the formal language literature, though the analysis given there presupposes Chomsky normal form grammars. In this paper we shall introduce a tabular method coinceived for bidirectional contextfree parsing, discuss some o f its relevant properties and through an example give an idea o f how the algorithm works.

An overview of theories of the syntax-phonology interface

Abstract: This article is intended as a critical survey of the phonological theories of the syntax-phonology interface. These theories can be divided into two main groups, according to the role they attribute to syntactic representations in creating phonological domains. On the one hand there is the Direct Reference Theory, which claims that phonological operations are directly sensitive to syntactic information, in terms of relations of c-command or m-command (i.e., government) holding between the elements participating in phonological processes. On the other, there is the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory of Prosodic Phonology, which defends the view that syntactic and phonological representations are not isomorphic and that there is a distinct level of representation called Prosodic Structure which contains a hierarchically organized set of prosodic constituents. These constituents are built from syntactic structure by a finite set of parameterized algorithms, and phonological processes refer to prosodic constituents rather than to syntactic constituents. Elordieta (1997, 1999) proposes that certain phonological phenomena may be specified to apply in the domains or constituents formed by functional and lexical heads related by feature checking. Seidl’s (2001) Minimal Indirect Reference Theory claims that syntactic relationships such as theta-domains determine phonological constituency at the phrasal level. Another important, more recent view is the one that maintains that spellout domains (that is, all the material included in a syntactic phase except for the head of the phase and elements in the specifier of that phase) are interpreted as phonological constituents in PF.