Appendix LRS Principles

On this page we collect all the principles from the textbook that relate to the values of CONTENT and LOGICAL form. The principles appear in alphabetic order.

Content Principle

Content Principle:
In any headed phrase, the SYNSEM | LOCAL | CONTENT value of the mother and the head daughter are identical.

Introduced in Chapter 5 (Simplified LRS)

Content-LF Principle

Content-LF Principle:
In any sign, the expressions in the SYNSEM | LOCAL | CONTENT | MAIN value and the SYNSEM | LOCAL | CONTENT | INDEX | VAR value must be elements of the sign's LF | PARTS list.

External Content Principle

External Content Principle

1. In every phrase, the EXTERNAL-CONTENT value of a non-head daughter is an element of its parts list.
2. In every utterance, every subexpression of the EXTERNAL-CONTENT value of the utterance is an element of its PARTS list, and every element of the utterance's PARTS list is a subexpression of its EXTERNAL-CONTENT value.

The clause on phrases is introduced in Chapter 6 (Quantifiers), the clause on utterances in Chapter 5 (Basic LRS).

LRS Projection Principle

LRS Projection Principle (final version going back to Penn and Richter (2004)):
In every headed phrase,

1. The EXTERNAL-CONTENT value of the mother and the head daughter are identical.
2. The INTERNAL-CONTENT value of the mother and the head daughter are identical.
3. The PARTS list of a phrase is the concatenation of the PARTS lists of its daughters.

The final version of this principle is introduced in Chapter 6 of the textbook.

Internal Content Raising Principle

Internal Content Raising Principle === In a head-complement structure, if the INTERNAL-CONTENT value of the head is not a member of the head's PARTS list, then

1. it is a component of the semantic argument of the head's MAIN value, and
2. if the INDEX | VAR value of a nonhead daughter occurs inside this argument slot, then the nonhead's INTERNAL-CONTENT and the head's INTERNAL-CONTENT are identical.

This principle is introduced in Chapter 6 of the textbook and further illustrated with examples in Chapter 7.

Semantics Principle

In every headed phrase,

1. If the nonhead is a determiner with an INTERNAL-CONTENT of the form Qx(φ:ψ), then
   the INTERNAL-CONTENT of the head is a component of φ
   and the head and the nonhead have identical EXTERNAL-CONTENT values.
2. If the nonhead is a quantified NP with an EXTERNAL-CONTENT value of the form Qx(φ:ψ),
   then the INTERNAL-CONTENT of the head is a component of ψ.

Clauses 1 and 2 are introduced in Chapter 6 of the textbook.