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Papers by Patrick M Murphy

Research paper thumbnail of Topicality, Predicate Prototypes, and Conceptual Space

Journal of Universal Language, 2005

This paper has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category 'passive' a... more This paper has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category 'passive' and cross-linguistic comparison of constructions, 'passive' and otherwise. Topicality measures were collected from the Uppsala Corpus of Russian for passive and active uses of the Russian verbs pisat'/napisat' 'to write,' davat'/dat' 'to give,' and zabyvat'/zabyt' 'to forget.' Croft's (2001) notion of plotting constructions in 'conceptual space' is exploited as a means of cross-linguistic comparison using these topicality measures. Examining the conceptual space of various voice constructions with these Russian verbs, Croft's generalizations are upheld, their position being consistent whether Referential Distance or Topic Persistence is used as a measure. Finally, data from other typological discourse studies is plotted, noting where various voice constructions pattern, and how this data fits into Croft's model.

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Research paper thumbnail of Passive Prototypes, Topicality and Conceptual Space

PhD thesis, 2004

Passive constructions are perhaps the most widely studied grammatical phenomena within generative... more Passive constructions are perhaps the most widely studied grammatical phenomena within generative grammar. Typological studies describe the wide variety of features of passive constructions cross-linguistically, and both typological and acquisition studies offer insight into the relative markedness of these constructions. This dissertation has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category “passive” and cross-linguistic comparison of constructions, “passive” and otherwise.
Amodel of universal passive typeswithin the framework ofHead-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is presented. This is accomplished by proposing a set of type definitions, characterizing both the relatively unmarked and relatively marked features of passive constructions. This provides some granularity in the passive’s characterization, but does not model the markedness of these features with respect to each other. To that end, preference principles in the construction of passive type matrices in HPSG are introduced: a metagrammar provided by Universal Grammar describing the markedness of each type with respect to its supertype. The resulting system models a passive prototype within HPSG.
Topicality measures were collected from the Uppsala Corpus of Russian for passive and active uses of the Russian verbs pisat’/napisat’ ‘to write,’ davat’/dat’ ‘to give,’ and zabyvat’/zabyt’ ‘to forget.’ Croft’s (2001) notion of plotting constructions in “conceptual space” is exploited as a means of cross-linguistic comparison using these topicality measures.
Examining the conceptual space of various voice constructions with these Russian verbs, Croft’s generalizations are upheld, their position being consistent whether Referential Distance or Topic Persistence is used as a measure. Finally, data from other typological discourse studies is plotted, noting where various voice constructions pattern, and how this data fits into Croft’s model.

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Conference Presentations by Patrick M Murphy

Research paper thumbnail of Prototypical Predicate Constructions: Evidence from Slavic

36th Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference for Slavic Studies, 1998

While attempting to capture systematic relations between form and meaning, transformational gramm... more While attempting to capture systematic relations between form and meaning, transformational grammar has relied upon several tools for analysis. Though the generative enterprise has promised to capture linguistically significant generalizations and in doing so provide an explanatory account of linguistic phenomena, some of these generalizations are impossible to capture in terms of these tools. This is primarily due to a fundamental shortcoming of the mechanisms employed most often in transformational approaches; that is, that many linguistically significant generalizations cannot be expressed by means of a derivational relationship. This paper attempts to lay the groundwork for the analysis of prototypical transitive predicates, in which syntactic and functional equivalency of constructions is captured in terms of direct surface relationships as opposed to derived equivalencies. This is accomplished by means of a 'fuzzy' evaluation metric on the topicality of signs, based upon data from Polish word order in Siewierska's (1993) study.

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Research paper thumbnail of Discourse, Themes and Word Order in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Spring Linguistics Colloquium, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995

The framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) boasts many elegant analyses of synt... more The framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) boasts many elegant analyses of syntactic and semantic phenomena. However, little emphasis to date has been placed on syntactic structures when influenced by semantic or pragmatic considerations, such as that of theme and rheme in languages like Russian. Clearly, Russian grammar follows other principles, but the role of contextual information is crucial to determining word order and intonational patterns; these are facts which are hard to reconcile with generative frameworks which have no account of pragmatics. This paper seeks to lay the foundation for an analysis of pragmatic concerns in HPSG, building from analyses by Pollard and Sag (1987, 1994), and concentrating on the ‘simplest’ examples of literary Russian.

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Research paper thumbnail of Topicality, Predicate Prototypes, and Conceptual Space

Journal of Universal Language, 2005

This paper has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category 'passive' a... more This paper has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category 'passive' and cross-linguistic comparison of constructions, 'passive' and otherwise. Topicality measures were collected from the Uppsala Corpus of Russian for passive and active uses of the Russian verbs pisat'/napisat' 'to write,' davat'/dat' 'to give,' and zabyvat'/zabyt' 'to forget.' Croft's (2001) notion of plotting constructions in 'conceptual space' is exploited as a means of cross-linguistic comparison using these topicality measures. Examining the conceptual space of various voice constructions with these Russian verbs, Croft's generalizations are upheld, their position being consistent whether Referential Distance or Topic Persistence is used as a measure. Finally, data from other typological discourse studies is plotted, noting where various voice constructions pattern, and how this data fits into Croft's model.

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Research paper thumbnail of Passive Prototypes, Topicality and Conceptual Space

PhD thesis, 2004

Passive constructions are perhaps the most widely studied grammatical phenomena within generative... more Passive constructions are perhaps the most widely studied grammatical phenomena within generative grammar. Typological studies describe the wide variety of features of passive constructions cross-linguistically, and both typological and acquisition studies offer insight into the relative markedness of these constructions. This dissertation has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category “passive” and cross-linguistic comparison of constructions, “passive” and otherwise.
Amodel of universal passive typeswithin the framework ofHead-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is presented. This is accomplished by proposing a set of type definitions, characterizing both the relatively unmarked and relatively marked features of passive constructions. This provides some granularity in the passive’s characterization, but does not model the markedness of these features with respect to each other. To that end, preference principles in the construction of passive type matrices in HPSG are introduced: a metagrammar provided by Universal Grammar describing the markedness of each type with respect to its supertype. The resulting system models a passive prototype within HPSG.
Topicality measures were collected from the Uppsala Corpus of Russian for passive and active uses of the Russian verbs pisat’/napisat’ ‘to write,’ davat’/dat’ ‘to give,’ and zabyvat’/zabyt’ ‘to forget.’ Croft’s (2001) notion of plotting constructions in “conceptual space” is exploited as a means of cross-linguistic comparison using these topicality measures.
Examining the conceptual space of various voice constructions with these Russian verbs, Croft’s generalizations are upheld, their position being consistent whether Referential Distance or Topic Persistence is used as a measure. Finally, data from other typological discourse studies is plotted, noting where various voice constructions pattern, and how this data fits into Croft’s model.

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Research paper thumbnail of Prototypical Predicate Constructions: Evidence from Slavic

36th Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference for Slavic Studies, 1998

While attempting to capture systematic relations between form and meaning, transformational gramm... more While attempting to capture systematic relations between form and meaning, transformational grammar has relied upon several tools for analysis. Though the generative enterprise has promised to capture linguistically significant generalizations and in doing so provide an explanatory account of linguistic phenomena, some of these generalizations are impossible to capture in terms of these tools. This is primarily due to a fundamental shortcoming of the mechanisms employed most often in transformational approaches; that is, that many linguistically significant generalizations cannot be expressed by means of a derivational relationship. This paper attempts to lay the groundwork for the analysis of prototypical transitive predicates, in which syntactic and functional equivalency of constructions is captured in terms of direct surface relationships as opposed to derived equivalencies. This is accomplished by means of a 'fuzzy' evaluation metric on the topicality of signs, based upon data from Polish word order in Siewierska's (1993) study.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Discourse, Themes and Word Order in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Spring Linguistics Colloquium, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995

The framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) boasts many elegant analyses of synt... more The framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) boasts many elegant analyses of syntactic and semantic phenomena. However, little emphasis to date has been placed on syntactic structures when influenced by semantic or pragmatic considerations, such as that of theme and rheme in languages like Russian. Clearly, Russian grammar follows other principles, but the role of contextual information is crucial to determining word order and intonational patterns; these are facts which are hard to reconcile with generative frameworks which have no account of pragmatics. This paper seeks to lay the foundation for an analysis of pragmatic concerns in HPSG, building from analyses by Pollard and Sag (1987, 1994), and concentrating on the ‘simplest’ examples of literary Russian.

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