Complex Predicates in Telugu: A Computational Perspective

Complex predicates raise the question of how to encode them in computational lexicons. Their computational implementation in South Asian languages is in its infancy. This paper examines in detail the variety of complex predicates in Telugu revealing the syntactic process of their composition and the constraints on their formation. The framework used is First Phase Syntax (Ramchand 2008). In this lexical semantic approach that ties together the constraints on the meaning and the argument structure of complex predicates, each verb breaks down into 3 sub-event heads which determine the nature of the verb. Complex predicates are formed by one verb subsuming the sub-event heads of another verb, and this is constrained in principled ways. The data analysed and the constraints developed in the paper are of use to linguists working on computational solutions for Telugu and other languages, for design and development of predicate structure functions in linguistic processors.