Stefan Müller - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Stefan Müller

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2025

This paper discusses the claim that Large Language Models (LLMs) are the best linguistic theory w... more This paper discusses the claim that Large Language Models (LLMs) are the best linguistic theory we currently have. It discusses claims that LLMs are wrong linguistic theories and concludes that they are not linguistic theories at all. It is pointed out that Chomsky's claims about innateness, about transformations as underlying mechanisms of the language faculty and about plausible representations of linguistic knowledge have been known to be flawed for quite some time by now and that we would not have needed LLMs for this. Chomsky's theories are not refuted by LLMs in their current form since LLMs are different in many aspects from human brains. However, the tremendous success of LLMs in terms of applications makes it more plausible to linguists and laymen that the innateness claims are wrong. It is argued that the use of LLMs is probably limited when it comes to typological work and cross-linguistic generalizations. These require work in theoretical linguistics.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres ... more This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres to them. The discussion includes surface orientation, language acquisition without UG, and inheritance networks and shows how HPSG (and other frameworks) are positioned along these dimensions. Formal variants of CxG will be briefly discussed and their relation to HPSG will be pointed out. It is argued that lexical representations of valence are more appropriate than phrasal approaches, which are assumed in most variants of CxG. Other areas of grammar seem to require headless phrasal constructions (e.g. the NPN construction and certain extraction constructions) and it is shown how HPSG handles these. Derivational morphology is discussed as a further example of an early constructionist analysis in HPSG.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter compares work done in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar with work done under the ... more This chapter compares work done in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar with work done under the heading Minimalist Program. We discuss differences in the respective approaches and the outlook of the theories. We have a look at the procedural/constraint-based views on grammar and discuss the differences in complexity of the structures that are assumed. We also address psycholinguistic issues like processing and language acquisition.

Head-Driven Phrase Structre Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter is an introduction to the Binding Theory assumed within HPSG. While it was inspired ... more This chapter is an introduction to the Binding Theory assumed within HPSG. While it was inspired by work on Government & Binding (GB), a key insight of HPSG's Binding Theory is that, contrary to GB's Binding Theory, reference to tree structures alone is not sufficient and reference to the syntactic level of argument structure is required. Since argument structure is tightly related to semantics, HPSG's Binding Theory is a mix of aspects of thematic Binding Theories and entirely configurational theories. This chapter discusses the advantages of this new view and its development into a strongly lexical binding theory as a result of shortcomings of earlier approaches. The chapter also addresses so-called exempt anaphors, that is, anaphors not bound inside of the clause or another local domain.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres ... more This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres to them. The discussion includes surface orientation, language acquisition without UG, and inheritance networks and shows how HPSG (and other frameworks) are positioned along these dimensions. Formal variants of CxG will be briefly discussed and their relation to HPSG will be pointed out. It is argued that lexical representations of valence are more appropriate than phrasal approaches, which are assumed in most variants of CxG. Other areas of grammar seem to require headless phrasal constructions (e.g. the NPN construction and certain extraction constructions) and it is shown how HPSG handles these. Derivational morphology is discussed as a further example of an early constructionist analysis in HPSG.

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2021

Since Abney (1987), the DP-analysis has been the standard analysis for nominal complexes, but in ... more Since Abney (1987), the DP-analysis has been the standard analysis for nominal complexes, but in the last decade, the NP analysis has experienced a revival. In this spirit, we provide an NP analysis for German nominal complexes in HPSG. Our analysis deals with the fact that relational nouns assign case and theta role to their arguments. We develop an analysis in line with selectional localism (Sag 2012: 149), accounting for the asymmetry between prenominal and postnominal genitives, as well as for the complementarity between higher arguments and possessives, providing a syntactic and semantic analysis.

Language under Discussion, 2019

This paper is a reply to Timothy Osborne's paper Tests for constituents: What they really reveal ... more This paper is a reply to Timothy Osborne's paper Tests for constituents: What they really reveal about the nature of syntactic structure that appeared 2018 in Language under Discussion. This paper discusses how constituent tests work and why it is no problem if they are not applicable. It is argued that Osborne's claims regarding simplicity of Dependency Grammar (DG) in comparison to Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG) are unwarranted and that DG models that include semantics make use of auxiliary structure that is equivalent to the nodes assumed in PSG. A final section of the paper discusses the general validity of counting nodes for theory evaluation and the assumption of empty elements vs. specialized phrasal rules.

Constructions and Frames, 2017

Van Trijp (2013, 2014) claims that Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) and Head-Driven Phrase ... more Van Trijp (2013, 2014) claims that Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) are fundamentally different from Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). He claims that the former approaches are generative ones while the latter is a cognitive-functional one. I argue that it is not legitimate to draw these distinctions on the basis of what is done in FCG. Van Trijp claims that there are differences in the scientific model, the linguistic approach, formalization, the way constructions are seen and in terms of processing. This paper discusses all these alleged differences. Van Trijp also claims that his cognitive-functional approach is superior in terms of completeness, explanatory adequacy, and theoretical parsimony. In order to facilitate a discussion and comparison, I introduce the reader to basic assumptions made in FCG and the analyses suggested by Van Trijp: I first deal with the representations that are used in FCG, talk about argument structure constructions, the combination operations fusion and merging that are used in FCG, I than discuss the analysis of nonlocal dependencies and show that the suggested FCG analysis is not explanatory adequate since it is not descriptively adequate and that a full for-malization of approaches with discontinuous constituents is not more parsimonious than existing HPSG analyses either. After the discussion of specific analyses, I then provide a detailed comparison of FCG and SBCG/HPSG and discuss questions like the competence/performance distinction, mathematical formalization vs. computer implementation, fuzziness and fluidity in grammars, and permissiveness of theories. I conclude that HPSG, SBCG and FCG belong to the same family of theories and that all claims to the contrary are unjustified.

From Semantics to Dialectometry: Festschrift in Honor of John Nerbonne, 2017

This paper is a contribution to the discussion whether argument structure constructions should be... more This paper is a contribution to the discussion whether argument structure constructions should be treated phrasally or lexically. While lexical models can explain the interaction between arguments structure constructions and derivational morphology in a straightforward way, the analysis of this interaction is a desideratum for phrasal analyses. This paper deals with the question whether type hierarchies together with default inheritance can be used to describe derivational morphology. Given the challenges provided by Krieger and Nerbonne (1993) it seems impossible to do derivation without embedding (that is something like morphological phrase structure rules with mother/daughter relations or lexical rules/constructions with an input/daughter and an output/mother) and as will become clear the price for doing derivation with default inheritance is very high indeed.

This paper discusses recent LFG proposals on resultative and benefactive constructions. I show th... more This paper discusses recent LFG proposals on resultative and benefactive constructions. I show that neither resultative nor benefactive constructions are fully fixed and that this flexibility requires traces or a stipulation of con-structional templates at several unrelated places in the grammar, something that is not necessary in lexical approaches. A second part of the paper deals with the active/passive alternation and shows that language-internal generalizations are missed if constraints are assumed to be contributed by phrase structure rules. A third part examines the parallel constructions in German and shows that cross-linguistic generalizations are not captured by phrasal approaches.

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten war die Frage, ob linguistisches Wissen eher lexikalisch oder phra... more In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten war die Frage, ob linguistisches Wissen eher lexikalisch oder phrasal zu beschreiben ist, ein Dauerbrenner. Viele Aspekte der jeweiligen Analysevorschläge lassen sich problemlos in andere Ansätze übertragen, ich bin jedoch der Meinung, dass alle Phänomene, die mit Valenz und Valenzalternationen zu tun haben, lexikalisch analysiert werden müssen. Es stellt sich dann die Frage, wie sich die Analyse der verschiedenen Satztypen mit einer entsprechenden lexikalischen Analyse verbinden lässt.

In diesem Aufsatz werde ich gewisse Daten diskutieren, die für eine rein oberflächenorientierte phrasale Analyse problematisch sind. Ich werde zeigen, dass die syntaktische Grundanalyse lexikalisch möglich ist. Für die Ausdifferenzierung der Satztypen ist es jedoch nötig, auf die konkrete syntaktische Konfiguration Bezug zu nehmen, in der eine Lexikoneinheit realisiert wird. Ich zeige, wie sich so ein hybrider Ansatz im Rahmen der Kopfgesteuerten Phrasenstrukturgrammatik (HPSG) umsetzen lässt.

This paper describes the CoreGram project, a multilingual grammar engineering project that develo... more This paper describes the CoreGram project, a multilingual grammar engineering project that develops HPSG grammars for several typologically diverse languages that share a common core. The paper provides a general motivation for doing theoretical linguistics the way it is done in the CoreGram
project and therefore is not targeted to computational linguists exclusively. I argue for a constraint-based approach to language rather than a generative-enumerative one and discuss issues of formalization. Recent advantages in the language acquisition research are mentioned and conclusions
on how theories should be constructed are drawn. The paper discusses some of the highlights in the implemented grammars, gives a brief overview of central theoretical concepts and their implementation in TRALE and compares the CoreGram project with other multilingual grammar engineering projects.

Theoretical Linguistics, Jul 8, 2014

This paper is a reply to our respondents (Alishahi, Asudeh & Toivonen, Boas, Goldberg, Kálmán, Ka... more This paper is a reply to our respondents (Alishahi, Asudeh & Toivonen, Boas, Goldberg, Kálmán, Kay, Kobele), who replied to our target paper on argument structure. We address arguments regarding rule ordering, coordination, morphology, language acquisition, probabilistic grammars, weighted constraints, and computational complexity of formalisms.

The conclusion of the paper is - as it was in the target article - that phenomena that interact with valence should be treated lexically and not phrasally.

Proceedings of Formal Grammar 2004, Feb 3, 2014

This paper shows that there exist various constructions that allow topological fields to be empty... more This paper shows that there exist various constructions that allow topological fields to be empty without having any effect on the sentence type. Therefore a purely surface-based view of syntax seems to be not sufficient.

In a second part of the paper I argue for the use of (language internally motivated) empty elements since they allow for a better representation of the observable facts.

"This paper compares various approaches to argument structure. We start out presenting the lexica... more "This paper compares various approaches to argument structure. We start out presenting the lexical proposal that we want to defend in this paper. We then introduce phrasal proposals that are common in Construction Grammar. A historical section describes the oscillation between early lexical proposals in Categorial Grammar, phrasal approaches in phrase structure grammar (early Transformational Grammar, GPSG) back to lexical approaches in HPSG and Minimalism. We argue that there were good reasons for returning to lexical models and that the respective issues are not addressed in phrasal approaches. We go on discussing approaches that assume that sematnically compatible verbs are inserted into phrasal constructions and point out that lexical specification of valence plays an important role in various levels of description and that phrasal models can not account for this. A similar criticism applies to so-called Neodavidsonian approaches, which are discussed in a separate section.

We will show that certain relations between constructions cannot be captured with inheritance or unification but require transformations or lexical rules, and hence in non-transformational syntax the lexical approach is the only option.

Three sections are devoted to arguments from language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and statistics. We show that contrary to frequent claims the respective experiments do not provide evidence for phrasal constructions.

We conclude that argument structure properties should be represented together with lexical items. "

Pro­ceed­ings of PACLIC 27

This paper de­scribes an im­ple­ment­ed, com­put­er-​pro­cess­able frag­ment of Man­darin Chi­nes... more This paper de­scribes an im­ple­ment­ed, com­put­er-​pro­cess­able frag­ment of Man­darin Chi­nese that shares a com­mon core with sev­er­al other lan­guages.

In Denys Duchi­er and Yan­nick Par­men­tier, ed­i­tor(s), Pro­ceed­ings of the Work­shop on High-​lev­el Method­olo­gies for Gram­mar En­gi­neer­ing (HMGE 2013), Düssel­dorf. 93–104., Jul 2013

This paper describes the CoreGram project a multilingual grammar engineering project that develop... more This paper describes the CoreGram project a multilingual grammar engineering project that develops HPSG grammars for several typologically diverse languages that share a common core. The paper provides a brief overview of the grammars and gives some motivation for doing theoretical linguistics the way it is done in the CoreGram project.

It was often noted that the core/periphery distinction made by Chomsky, 1981 is arbitrary. This p... more It was often noted that the core/periphery distinction made by Chomsky, 1981 is arbitrary. This paper suggests a way to determine a core in a non-stipulative way. Constraints are organized in sets that are relevant for a single language or for several languages. While the core is a set of constraints that holds for all languages and is probably very small, there are various constraint sets that hold for many but not all languages (for instance V2, SOV, SVO, ...). So belonging to the core is seen as a relative property of constraints. Those constraint sets that cover a lot of languages are more corey than others, that is, they are more central when it comes to characterize human language as such or the properties of specific language classes.

I do not make any claims about the constraints that hold for various languages to be part of an innately specified Universal Grammar (UG).

This paper compares several current linguistic theories: at the extreme ends of the current views... more This paper compares several current linguistic theories: at the extreme ends of the current views are Minimalist theories, which restrict themselves to the binary branching operations Move and Merge, and Simpler Syntax, which assumes flat structures and a surface oriented mapping between syntactic structures and grammatical functions.

I show that purely surface-oriented theories have problems in accounting for the relatedness of syntactic and morphological structures and for the iteration of valence changing processes and argue for a lexical analysis, as it can be found in current Minimalist theories, HPSG, and Categorial Grammar. I furthermore show that the Chomskian view on label computation is problematic for several reasons and should be given up in favour of explicit accounts like the one used in HPSG. I discuss problems for the analysis of complements and specifiers in Minimalist theories with special focus on
Stabler's Minimalist Grammars. I argue that once all problems are fixed the resulting combinatorial rules are rather similar to what HPSG does.

As various proponents of more surface-oriented theories like Construction Grammar, Simpler Syntax, and HPSG pointed out, two types of binary branching, headed rules are not sufficient to account for the entirety of language, which leads to the conclusion that both research directions are right to a
certain extend: there is need for (constraint-based versions of) Move and Merge and there is need for special phrasal constructions.

Ms. Freie Universität Berlin

This paper discusses copula constructions in English, German, and Danish and argues that a unifor... more This paper discusses copula constructions in English, German, and Danish and argues that a uniform analysis of all copula constructions is inappropriate. We provide evidence from German that there should be a raising variant of the copula in addition to an identificational copula. The raising version of the copula does not contribute semantically contrary to Montague and Van Eynde. Rather a unary schema is provided that maps referential NPs that can be used as arguments onto predicational NPs. Data from Danish shows that predicational NPs can be subjects in specificational structures. An account for such specificational structures is provided and the different behaviour of predicational and specificational structures with regard to question tags is explained. A similar contrast can be found in German left dislocation structures, which follows from the assumptions made in this paper.

A modified treatment of complex predicate formation allows for a reduction of selectional features in HPSG (that is abolishing of XCOMP or VCOMP) and for a uniform treatment of predicational phrases in copula constructions and resultative secondary predicates. This yields an account for constituent order variants that remained unexplained by earlier analyses.

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2025

This paper discusses the claim that Large Language Models (LLMs) are the best linguistic theory w... more This paper discusses the claim that Large Language Models (LLMs) are the best linguistic theory we currently have. It discusses claims that LLMs are wrong linguistic theories and concludes that they are not linguistic theories at all. It is pointed out that Chomsky's claims about innateness, about transformations as underlying mechanisms of the language faculty and about plausible representations of linguistic knowledge have been known to be flawed for quite some time by now and that we would not have needed LLMs for this. Chomsky's theories are not refuted by LLMs in their current form since LLMs are different in many aspects from human brains. However, the tremendous success of LLMs in terms of applications makes it more plausible to linguists and laymen that the innateness claims are wrong. It is argued that the use of LLMs is probably limited when it comes to typological work and cross-linguistic generalizations. These require work in theoretical linguistics.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres ... more This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres to them. The discussion includes surface orientation, language acquisition without UG, and inheritance networks and shows how HPSG (and other frameworks) are positioned along these dimensions. Formal variants of CxG will be briefly discussed and their relation to HPSG will be pointed out. It is argued that lexical representations of valence are more appropriate than phrasal approaches, which are assumed in most variants of CxG. Other areas of grammar seem to require headless phrasal constructions (e.g. the NPN construction and certain extraction constructions) and it is shown how HPSG handles these. Derivational morphology is discussed as a further example of an early constructionist analysis in HPSG.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter compares work done in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar with work done under the ... more This chapter compares work done in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar with work done under the heading Minimalist Program. We discuss differences in the respective approaches and the outlook of the theories. We have a look at the procedural/constraint-based views on grammar and discuss the differences in complexity of the structures that are assumed. We also address psycholinguistic issues like processing and language acquisition.

Head-Driven Phrase Structre Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter is an introduction to the Binding Theory assumed within HPSG. While it was inspired ... more This chapter is an introduction to the Binding Theory assumed within HPSG. While it was inspired by work on Government & Binding (GB), a key insight of HPSG's Binding Theory is that, contrary to GB's Binding Theory, reference to tree structures alone is not sufficient and reference to the syntactic level of argument structure is required. Since argument structure is tightly related to semantics, HPSG's Binding Theory is a mix of aspects of thematic Binding Theories and entirely configurational theories. This chapter discusses the advantages of this new view and its development into a strongly lexical binding theory as a result of shortcomings of earlier approaches. The chapter also addresses so-called exempt anaphors, that is, anaphors not bound inside of the clause or another local domain.

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook, 2021

This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres ... more This chapter discusses the main tenets of Construction Grammar (CxG) and shows that HPSG adheres to them. The discussion includes surface orientation, language acquisition without UG, and inheritance networks and shows how HPSG (and other frameworks) are positioned along these dimensions. Formal variants of CxG will be briefly discussed and their relation to HPSG will be pointed out. It is argued that lexical representations of valence are more appropriate than phrasal approaches, which are assumed in most variants of CxG. Other areas of grammar seem to require headless phrasal constructions (e.g. the NPN construction and certain extraction constructions) and it is shown how HPSG handles these. Derivational morphology is discussed as a further example of an early constructionist analysis in HPSG.

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2021

Since Abney (1987), the DP-analysis has been the standard analysis for nominal complexes, but in ... more Since Abney (1987), the DP-analysis has been the standard analysis for nominal complexes, but in the last decade, the NP analysis has experienced a revival. In this spirit, we provide an NP analysis for German nominal complexes in HPSG. Our analysis deals with the fact that relational nouns assign case and theta role to their arguments. We develop an analysis in line with selectional localism (Sag 2012: 149), accounting for the asymmetry between prenominal and postnominal genitives, as well as for the complementarity between higher arguments and possessives, providing a syntactic and semantic analysis.

Language under Discussion, 2019

This paper is a reply to Timothy Osborne's paper Tests for constituents: What they really reveal ... more This paper is a reply to Timothy Osborne's paper Tests for constituents: What they really reveal about the nature of syntactic structure that appeared 2018 in Language under Discussion. This paper discusses how constituent tests work and why it is no problem if they are not applicable. It is argued that Osborne's claims regarding simplicity of Dependency Grammar (DG) in comparison to Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG) are unwarranted and that DG models that include semantics make use of auxiliary structure that is equivalent to the nodes assumed in PSG. A final section of the paper discusses the general validity of counting nodes for theory evaluation and the assumption of empty elements vs. specialized phrasal rules.

Constructions and Frames, 2017

Van Trijp (2013, 2014) claims that Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) and Head-Driven Phrase ... more Van Trijp (2013, 2014) claims that Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) are fundamentally different from Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). He claims that the former approaches are generative ones while the latter is a cognitive-functional one. I argue that it is not legitimate to draw these distinctions on the basis of what is done in FCG. Van Trijp claims that there are differences in the scientific model, the linguistic approach, formalization, the way constructions are seen and in terms of processing. This paper discusses all these alleged differences. Van Trijp also claims that his cognitive-functional approach is superior in terms of completeness, explanatory adequacy, and theoretical parsimony. In order to facilitate a discussion and comparison, I introduce the reader to basic assumptions made in FCG and the analyses suggested by Van Trijp: I first deal with the representations that are used in FCG, talk about argument structure constructions, the combination operations fusion and merging that are used in FCG, I than discuss the analysis of nonlocal dependencies and show that the suggested FCG analysis is not explanatory adequate since it is not descriptively adequate and that a full for-malization of approaches with discontinuous constituents is not more parsimonious than existing HPSG analyses either. After the discussion of specific analyses, I then provide a detailed comparison of FCG and SBCG/HPSG and discuss questions like the competence/performance distinction, mathematical formalization vs. computer implementation, fuzziness and fluidity in grammars, and permissiveness of theories. I conclude that HPSG, SBCG and FCG belong to the same family of theories and that all claims to the contrary are unjustified.

From Semantics to Dialectometry: Festschrift in Honor of John Nerbonne, 2017

This paper is a contribution to the discussion whether argument structure constructions should be... more This paper is a contribution to the discussion whether argument structure constructions should be treated phrasally or lexically. While lexical models can explain the interaction between arguments structure constructions and derivational morphology in a straightforward way, the analysis of this interaction is a desideratum for phrasal analyses. This paper deals with the question whether type hierarchies together with default inheritance can be used to describe derivational morphology. Given the challenges provided by Krieger and Nerbonne (1993) it seems impossible to do derivation without embedding (that is something like morphological phrase structure rules with mother/daughter relations or lexical rules/constructions with an input/daughter and an output/mother) and as will become clear the price for doing derivation with default inheritance is very high indeed.

This paper discusses recent LFG proposals on resultative and benefactive constructions. I show th... more This paper discusses recent LFG proposals on resultative and benefactive constructions. I show that neither resultative nor benefactive constructions are fully fixed and that this flexibility requires traces or a stipulation of con-structional templates at several unrelated places in the grammar, something that is not necessary in lexical approaches. A second part of the paper deals with the active/passive alternation and shows that language-internal generalizations are missed if constraints are assumed to be contributed by phrase structure rules. A third part examines the parallel constructions in German and shows that cross-linguistic generalizations are not captured by phrasal approaches.

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten war die Frage, ob linguistisches Wissen eher lexikalisch oder phra... more In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten war die Frage, ob linguistisches Wissen eher lexikalisch oder phrasal zu beschreiben ist, ein Dauerbrenner. Viele Aspekte der jeweiligen Analysevorschläge lassen sich problemlos in andere Ansätze übertragen, ich bin jedoch der Meinung, dass alle Phänomene, die mit Valenz und Valenzalternationen zu tun haben, lexikalisch analysiert werden müssen. Es stellt sich dann die Frage, wie sich die Analyse der verschiedenen Satztypen mit einer entsprechenden lexikalischen Analyse verbinden lässt.

In diesem Aufsatz werde ich gewisse Daten diskutieren, die für eine rein oberflächenorientierte phrasale Analyse problematisch sind. Ich werde zeigen, dass die syntaktische Grundanalyse lexikalisch möglich ist. Für die Ausdifferenzierung der Satztypen ist es jedoch nötig, auf die konkrete syntaktische Konfiguration Bezug zu nehmen, in der eine Lexikoneinheit realisiert wird. Ich zeige, wie sich so ein hybrider Ansatz im Rahmen der Kopfgesteuerten Phrasenstrukturgrammatik (HPSG) umsetzen lässt.

This paper describes the CoreGram project, a multilingual grammar engineering project that develo... more This paper describes the CoreGram project, a multilingual grammar engineering project that develops HPSG grammars for several typologically diverse languages that share a common core. The paper provides a general motivation for doing theoretical linguistics the way it is done in the CoreGram
project and therefore is not targeted to computational linguists exclusively. I argue for a constraint-based approach to language rather than a generative-enumerative one and discuss issues of formalization. Recent advantages in the language acquisition research are mentioned and conclusions
on how theories should be constructed are drawn. The paper discusses some of the highlights in the implemented grammars, gives a brief overview of central theoretical concepts and their implementation in TRALE and compares the CoreGram project with other multilingual grammar engineering projects.

Theoretical Linguistics, Jul 8, 2014

This paper is a reply to our respondents (Alishahi, Asudeh & Toivonen, Boas, Goldberg, Kálmán, Ka... more This paper is a reply to our respondents (Alishahi, Asudeh & Toivonen, Boas, Goldberg, Kálmán, Kay, Kobele), who replied to our target paper on argument structure. We address arguments regarding rule ordering, coordination, morphology, language acquisition, probabilistic grammars, weighted constraints, and computational complexity of formalisms.

The conclusion of the paper is - as it was in the target article - that phenomena that interact with valence should be treated lexically and not phrasally.

Proceedings of Formal Grammar 2004, Feb 3, 2014

This paper shows that there exist various constructions that allow topological fields to be empty... more This paper shows that there exist various constructions that allow topological fields to be empty without having any effect on the sentence type. Therefore a purely surface-based view of syntax seems to be not sufficient.

In a second part of the paper I argue for the use of (language internally motivated) empty elements since they allow for a better representation of the observable facts.

"This paper compares various approaches to argument structure. We start out presenting the lexica... more "This paper compares various approaches to argument structure. We start out presenting the lexical proposal that we want to defend in this paper. We then introduce phrasal proposals that are common in Construction Grammar. A historical section describes the oscillation between early lexical proposals in Categorial Grammar, phrasal approaches in phrase structure grammar (early Transformational Grammar, GPSG) back to lexical approaches in HPSG and Minimalism. We argue that there were good reasons for returning to lexical models and that the respective issues are not addressed in phrasal approaches. We go on discussing approaches that assume that sematnically compatible verbs are inserted into phrasal constructions and point out that lexical specification of valence plays an important role in various levels of description and that phrasal models can not account for this. A similar criticism applies to so-called Neodavidsonian approaches, which are discussed in a separate section.

We will show that certain relations between constructions cannot be captured with inheritance or unification but require transformations or lexical rules, and hence in non-transformational syntax the lexical approach is the only option.

Three sections are devoted to arguments from language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and statistics. We show that contrary to frequent claims the respective experiments do not provide evidence for phrasal constructions.

We conclude that argument structure properties should be represented together with lexical items. "

Pro­ceed­ings of PACLIC 27

This paper de­scribes an im­ple­ment­ed, com­put­er-​pro­cess­able frag­ment of Man­darin Chi­nes... more This paper de­scribes an im­ple­ment­ed, com­put­er-​pro­cess­able frag­ment of Man­darin Chi­nese that shares a com­mon core with sev­er­al other lan­guages.

In Denys Duchi­er and Yan­nick Par­men­tier, ed­i­tor(s), Pro­ceed­ings of the Work­shop on High-​lev­el Method­olo­gies for Gram­mar En­gi­neer­ing (HMGE 2013), Düssel­dorf. 93–104., Jul 2013

This paper describes the CoreGram project a multilingual grammar engineering project that develop... more This paper describes the CoreGram project a multilingual grammar engineering project that develops HPSG grammars for several typologically diverse languages that share a common core. The paper provides a brief overview of the grammars and gives some motivation for doing theoretical linguistics the way it is done in the CoreGram project.

It was often noted that the core/periphery distinction made by Chomsky, 1981 is arbitrary. This p... more It was often noted that the core/periphery distinction made by Chomsky, 1981 is arbitrary. This paper suggests a way to determine a core in a non-stipulative way. Constraints are organized in sets that are relevant for a single language or for several languages. While the core is a set of constraints that holds for all languages and is probably very small, there are various constraint sets that hold for many but not all languages (for instance V2, SOV, SVO, ...). So belonging to the core is seen as a relative property of constraints. Those constraint sets that cover a lot of languages are more corey than others, that is, they are more central when it comes to characterize human language as such or the properties of specific language classes.

I do not make any claims about the constraints that hold for various languages to be part of an innately specified Universal Grammar (UG).

This paper compares several current linguistic theories: at the extreme ends of the current views... more This paper compares several current linguistic theories: at the extreme ends of the current views are Minimalist theories, which restrict themselves to the binary branching operations Move and Merge, and Simpler Syntax, which assumes flat structures and a surface oriented mapping between syntactic structures and grammatical functions.

I show that purely surface-oriented theories have problems in accounting for the relatedness of syntactic and morphological structures and for the iteration of valence changing processes and argue for a lexical analysis, as it can be found in current Minimalist theories, HPSG, and Categorial Grammar. I furthermore show that the Chomskian view on label computation is problematic for several reasons and should be given up in favour of explicit accounts like the one used in HPSG. I discuss problems for the analysis of complements and specifiers in Minimalist theories with special focus on
Stabler's Minimalist Grammars. I argue that once all problems are fixed the resulting combinatorial rules are rather similar to what HPSG does.

As various proponents of more surface-oriented theories like Construction Grammar, Simpler Syntax, and HPSG pointed out, two types of binary branching, headed rules are not sufficient to account for the entirety of language, which leads to the conclusion that both research directions are right to a
certain extend: there is need for (constraint-based versions of) Move and Merge and there is need for special phrasal constructions.

Ms. Freie Universität Berlin

This paper discusses copula constructions in English, German, and Danish and argues that a unifor... more This paper discusses copula constructions in English, German, and Danish and argues that a uniform analysis of all copula constructions is inappropriate. We provide evidence from German that there should be a raising variant of the copula in addition to an identificational copula. The raising version of the copula does not contribute semantically contrary to Montague and Van Eynde. Rather a unary schema is provided that maps referential NPs that can be used as arguments onto predicational NPs. Data from Danish shows that predicational NPs can be subjects in specificational structures. An account for such specificational structures is provided and the different behaviour of predicational and specificational structures with regard to question tags is explained. A similar contrast can be found in German left dislocation structures, which follows from the assumptions made in this paper.

A modified treatment of complex predicate formation allows for a reduction of selectional features in HPSG (that is abolishing of XCOMP or VCOMP) and for a uniform treatment of predicational phrases in copula constructions and resultative secondary predicates. This yields an account for constituent order variants that remained unexplained by earlier analyses.

Headedness and/or grammatical anarchy?

Freywald, Ulrike, Horst J. Simon & Stefan Müller (eds.). 2022. Headedness and/or grammatical anarchy? Berlin: Language Science Press (Empirically Oriented Theoretical Morphology and Syntax 11), 2022

Grammatiktheorie

The book can be downloaded from my webpage. See URL. "This book introduces formal grammar theori... more The book can be downloaded from my webpage. See URL.

"This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistics or contributed tools that are relevant for current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar,
Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the
object language.

In a final chapter the approaches are compared with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The Nativism hypothesis that assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge is examined critically and
alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. In addition this chapter addresses issues that are discussed controversially in current theory building as for instance the question whether flat or binary branching structures are more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in
syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses that are suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a section that shows how properties that are common to all languages or to certain language classes can be captured."

Grammatiktheorie

This book in­tro­duces for­mal gram­mar the­o­ries that play a role in cur­rent lin­guis­tics or ... more This book in­tro­duces for­mal gram­mar the­o­ries that play a role in cur­rent lin­guis­tics or con­tribut­ed tools that are rel­e­vant for cur­rent lin­guis­tic the­o­riz­ing (Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar, Trans­for­ma­tion­al Gram­mar/Gov­ern­ment & Bind­ing, Gen­er­al­ized Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar, Lex­i­cal Func­tion­al Gram­mar, Cat­e­go­ri­al Gram­mar, Head-​Driv­en Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar, Con­struc­tion Gram­mar, Tree Ad­join­ing Gram­mar). The key as­sump­tions are ex­plained and it is shown how the re­spec­tive the­o­ry treats ar­gu­ments and ad­juncts, the ac­tive/pas­sive al­ter­na­tion, local re­order­ings, verb place­ment, and fronting of con­stituents over long dis­tances. The anal­y­ses are ex­plained with Ger­man as the ob­ject lan­guage.

In a final chap­ter the ap­proach­es are com­pared with re­spect to their pre­dic­tions re­gard­ing lan­guage ac­qui­si­tion and psy­cholin­guis­tic plau­si­bil­i­ty. The Na­tivism hy­poth­e­sis that as­sumes that hu­mans poss­es ge­net­i­cal­ly de­ter­mined in­nate lan­guage-​spe­cif­ic knowl­edge is ex­am­ined crit­i­cal­ly and al­ter­na­tive mod­els of lan­guage ac­qui­si­tion are dis­cussed. In ad­di­tion this chap­ter ad­dress­es is­sues that are dis­cussed con­tro­ver­sial­ly in cur­rent the­o­ry build­ing as for in­stance the ques­tion whether flat or bi­na­ry branch­ing struc­tures are more ap­pro­pri­ate, the ques­tion whether con­struc­tions should be treat­ed on the phrasal or the lex­i­cal level, and the ques­tion whether ab­stract, non-​vis­i­ble en­ti­ties should play a role in syn­tac­tic anal­y­ses. It is shown that the anal­y­ses that are sug­gest­ed in the re­spec­tive frame­works are often trans­lat­able into each other. The book clos­es with a sec­tion that shows how prop­er­ties that are com­mon to all lan­guages or to cer­tain lan­guage class­es can be cap­tured.
Out­line

In­tro­duc­tion
Phrase Struc­tur Gram­mar
Trans­for­ma­tion­al Gram­mar – Gov­ern­ment & Bind­ing
Gen­er­al­ized Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar
Fea­ture De­scrip­tions
Lex­i­cal Func­tion­al Gram­mar
Cat­e­go­ri­al Gram­mar
Head-​Driv­en Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar
Con­struc­tion Gram­mar
Tree Ad­join­ing Gram­mar
Inate­ness, Uni­ver­sal Gram­mar and the Ar­gu­men­ta­tion for Anal­y­ses

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: Eine Einführung

This book is a self-​con­tained in­tro­duc­tion into the frame­work of Head-​Driv­en Phrase Struc... more This book is a self-​con­tained in­tro­duc­tion into the frame­work of Head-​Driv­en Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar. An in­tro­duc­tionary chap­ter mo­ti­vates the use of com­plex fea­ture struc­tures in com­par­i­son to sim­ple phrase struc­ture rules. The sec­ond chap­ter dis­cuss­es the for­mal un­der­pin­nings of HPSG in a rather in­for­mal way, that should be un­der­stand­able for ev­ery­body. The re­main­ing chap­ters in­tro­duce sev­er­al gram­mar com­po­nents in a phe­nomenon-​ori­ent­ed way. The anal­y­ses are de­vel­oped for Ger­man. Most of the chap­ters deal with syn­tac­tic phe­nom­e­na (con­stituent struc­ture, con­stituent order, case, pas­sive, agree­ment, ver­bal com­plex and par­ti­cle verbs), but mor­phol­o­gy (in­flec­tion and deriva­tion) is dis­cussed as well, and it is shown how the mean­ing of mor­pho­log­i­cal and syn­tac­tic con­struc­tions can be de­ter­mined com­po­si­tion­al­ly.

The sec­tions that pre­sent the anal­y­ses do not dis­cuss al­ter­na­tives. I hope that this helps the read­er who is new to gram­mar the­o­ry not to get lost in de­tailed and dif­fi­cult dis­cus­sions. In­stead of dis­cussing al­ter­na­tives in the main text, this is done in a spe­cial sec­tion in each chap­ter. This sec­tion is in­tend­ed for the ad­vanced read­er. The sug­gest­ed anal­y­ses are com­pared to al­ter­na­tive HPSG pro­pos­als, but also to pro­pos­als in the frame­works of Con­struc­tion Gram­mar (CxG), Lex­i­cal Func­tion­al Gram­mar (LFG) and Vari­ants of the Gov­ern­ment & Bind­ing The­o­ry (GB). The dis­cus­sion fo­cus­es both on for­mal prop­er­ties of the re­spec­tive the­o­ries and on em­pir­i­cal facts from Ger­man and other lan­guages.
Out­line

In­tro­duc­tion
The For­mal­ism
Va­lence
Head Fea­tures, Head Fea­ture Prin­ci­ple, Head Ar­gu­mente Struc­tures
Se­man­tics
Ad­junc­tion and Spec­i­fi­ca­tion
The Lex­i­con
A Topo­log­i­cal Fields Mod­ell of the Ger­man Clause
Po­si­tion of Ar­gu­ments and Ad­juncts in the Mit­telfeld and Verb Move­ment
Non­lo­cal De­pen­den­cies: Fronting
Rel­a­tive Claus­es
Lo­cal­i­ty of Se­lec­tion (SYNSEM)
Agree­ment
Case
Ver­bal Clus­ter
Co­her­ence, In­co­her­ence, Rais­ing, and Con­trol
Pas­sive
Par­ti­cle Verbs
Mor­phol­o­gy
How to Argue for a The­o­ry or against other The­o­ries

Com­plex Pred­i­cates: Ver­bal Com­plex­es, Re­sul­ta­tive Con­struc­tions, and Par­ti­cle Verbs in Ger­man

"This book ex­am­ines var­i­ous lin­guis­tic phe­nom­e­na and de­ter­mines that cer­tain con­stru... more "This book ex­am­ines var­i­ous lin­guis­tic phe­nom­e­na and de­ter­mines that cer­tain con­struc­tions should be treat­ed as com­plex pred­i­cates. Specif­i­cal­ly, the book ex­plores aux­il­iary and verb com­bi­na­tions in fu­ture, per­fect, and pas­sive con­struc­tions; causative con­struc­tions, verb com­plex con­struc­tions with rais­ing and con­trol verbs; sub­ject and ob­ject pred­ica­tives; de­pic­tive sec­ondary pred­i­cates (1); re­sul­ta­tive con­struc­tions (2); and par­ti­cle verb com­bi­na­tions. The prop­er­ties of all these con­struc­tions are stud­ied on a broad em­pir­i­cal basis, main­ly with data from Ger­man.

(1) Er ißt das Fleisch roh.

(2) Er fährt das Auto kaputt / zu Schrott.

Scram­bling and fronting data are used to argue that all these con­struc­tions-​ex­cept the de­pic­tive sec­ondary pred­i­cates, which are treat­ed as ad­junct-​should be treat­ed as com­plex pred­i­cates. The po­ten­tial for a verb to enter a re­sul­ta­tive con­struc­tion or to form a par­ti­cle verb that fol­lows a pro­duc­tive pat­tern is li­censed by lex­i­cal rules. Base verb and re­sul­ta­tive pred­i­cate and base verb and par­ti­cle are com­bined in syn­tax by the same rule that li­cences ver­bal com­plex­es in Ger­man.

In the part about par­ti­cle verbs it is ar­gued that par­ti­cles should be treat­ed as parts of the pred­i­cate com­plex. They are se­ri­al­ized in the right sen­tence brack­et (3)–(4) and they can be front­ed like ad­jec­tives or verbs (5).

(3) Karl kommt abends in Berlin an.

(4) Karl kommt abends in der Stadt an, in der ich wohne.

(5) Fest steht, daß Karl nicht der Mörder war.

So it seems rea­son­able to treat the pre­verb-​verb-​con­struc­tions in the same way as other pred­i­cate com­plex con­struc­tions. Frontings as (5) then can be de­scribed as in­stances of Par­tial Verb Phrase Fronting.

Ar­gu­ments that have been put for­ward in order to show that par­ti­cle verbs have to be treat­ed in the mor­phol­o­gy com­po­nent are dis­cussed and re­fut­ed. An anal­y­sis of in­flec­tion and deriva­tion is pro­vid­ed that is com­pat­i­ble with the syn­tac­tic anal­y­sis of par­ti­cle verbs. As a byprod­uct this anal­y­sis solves the brack­at­ing para­dox with re­gard to par­ti­cle verbs that was often dis­cussed in the lit­er­a­ture."

Deutsche Syntax Deklarativ. Head-​Driv­en Phrase Struc­ture Gram­mar für das Deutsche

"The book de­scribes a large frag­ment of Ger­man in terms of the HPSG paradime. On a broad em­pi... more "The book de­scribes a large frag­ment of Ger­man in terms of the HPSG paradime. On a broad em­pir­i­cal basis it de­vel­ops a for­mal­ly ex­plic­it the­o­ry with spe­cial em­pha­sis on var­i­ous word-​or­der phe­nom­e­na: the rel­a­tive­ly free po­si­tion of con­stituents in the Mit­telfeld also con­sid­er­ing co­her­ent con­struc­tions, po­si­tion­ing in the ver­bal com­plex, fronting, and ex­tra­po­si­tion. The anal­y­sis of these phe­nom­e­na is em­bed­ded in a gen­er­al the­o­ry of sen­tence struc­ture and a dis­cus­sion of rel­e­vant for­mal mech­a­nisms.

This book is writ­ten in Ger­man. It is a de­tailed doc­u­men­ta­tion of the lin­guis­tic the­o­ry of the Ba­bel-​Sys­tem."

This paper discusses how constituent tests work and why it is no problem if they are not applicab... more This paper discusses how constituent tests work and why it is no problem if they are not applicable. It is argued that Osborne's claims regarding simplicitiy of Dependency Grammar in comparison to Phrase Structure Grammar are unwarranted and that DG models that include semantics make use of auxiliary structure that is equivalent to the nodes assumed in PSG. A final section of the paper discusses the general validity of counting nodes for theory evaluation and the assumption of empty elements vs. spezilaized phrasal rules.