Appendix Signature of the basic fragment
sign
This is the basic linguistic type. A sign is a combination of (at least) form and meaning, i.e., phonological and semantic representation.
Features:
- PHON list(phonstring)
The PHON list contains the phonological representation of a sign. For convenience, the orthographic form is used here. The PHON list of a word typically contains just one element. In a sentence, it contains as many elements as there are words in the sentence. We may have words with empty PHON lists, such as traces or some phonologically empty function words. In the text book, all words have a non-empty phonology. - SYNSEM synsem
The SYNSEM value contains the core syntactic and semantic (and pragmatic) information of a sign.
word
Features:
- ARG-ST list(synsem)
phrase
Features:
- DTRS list(sign)
headed-phrase
Features:
- H-DTR sign
head-subject-phrase
The combination of a head and its subject is encoded in a head-subject-phrase. The Head-Subject Schema constraints what counts as a well-formed head-subject combination.
head-specifier-phrase
head-complement-phrase
Features:
- H-DTR word
head-modifier-phrase
(not discussed in the textbook)
nonheaded-phrase
synsem
Features:
local
Features:
nonlocal
category
Features:
context
The sort encodes pragmatic information. This is not dealt with in the textbook.
head
We only use a very limited number of subsorts of head and only very few head features in the textbook, compared to more syntactically oriented HPSG publications.
verb
Features:
noun
Features:
- CASE case
determiner
preposition
Features:
- PFORM pform
adjective
Features:
- PRED boolean
valence
Features:
vform
There are the following subsorts of vform:
- fin(ite): for finite forms
- inf(initival): for infinitival to
- base: for the base form, as occurring in Alex might snore.
- prog(ressive): -ing form as in Alex was snoring
- ger(und): -ing form
- past-participle: active past participle as in Alex has snored.
- passive: passive participle as in The book was read.
case
English has only two case forms: nominative and accusative.
- nom(inative)
- acc(usative)
pform
Each preposition that can occur as an argument-marking preposition has one particular subsort of pform:
- to: as in talk to someone
- on: as in rely on someone
- for: as in wait for someone
- by: as in the passive: written by someone
- of: as in the destruction of the city
boolean
There are two subsorts of boolean:
- plus
- minus
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