Advanced Topics in HPSG

This chapter presents a survey of some of the major topics that have received attention from an HPSG perspective since the publication of Pollard and Sag (1994). In terms of empirical coverage (of English and other languages) and analytical and formal depth, the analyses summarized here go well beyond the original theory as defined in Pollard and Sag (1987) and (1994), although these naturally remain an indispensable point of reference.1 We will have to make a biased choice among the possible topics to cover here, and the presentation will of course be colored by our own point of view, but we hope that this chapter will give the reader a reasonable idea of current research efforts in HPSG, and directions for further exploration of the literature. In keeping with HPSG’s emphasis on rich lexical descriptions, the first section (§2) concentrates on the licensing of dependents by lexical heads. We begin with a discussion of the conceptual separation between argument structure and valence in current HPSG work. We examine how the the traditional distinction between arguments and adjuncts fits into this model, and then we turn to the highly influential idea of argument composition as a mechanism for dynamically determining argument structure. In §3, we concentrate on issues of linear order, beginning with lexicalist equivalents of configurational analyses and then considering more radical departures from the notion of phrase structure. The topics covered in §4 all have to do with ‘syntactic abstractness’. On the one hand, most work in HPSG avoids the use of empty categories in syntactic structure, preferring concrete, surface-based analyses. On the other hand, there is a current trend towards construction-based approaches, in which analyses are no longer driven only by detailed lexical information, but rely crucially on the definition of phrasal types, or constructions. One of the distinctive design features of HPSG is its integrated view of grammar. Information about syntax, semantics, morphology/phonology, and (potentially) all other components of the grammar represented in a single structure, with the possibility of complex interactions. In §5 we discuss a number of recent developments in the analysis of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface, in particular the treament of scope and illocutionary force, as well as information structure and the representation of speakers’ beliefs and intentions. The discussion of grammatical