Parsing Japanese Honorifics in Unification-Based Grammar

This paper presents a unification-based approach to Japanese honorifics based on a version of HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar)ll]121. Utterance parsing is based on lexical specifications of each lexical item, including honorifics, and a few general PSG rules using a parser capable of unifying cyclic feature structures. It is shown that the possible word orders of Japanese honori f ic predicate constituents can be automatically deduced in the proposed f ramework w i thou t independent ly specifying them. Discourse Information Change Rules (DICRs) that a l low resolving a class of anaphors in honorific contexts are also formulated.