Open AccessAn approach to English comparative correlatives
Author(s) -
Robert D. Borsley
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
proceedings of the international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1535-1793
DOI - 10.21248/hpsg.2004.4
Subject(s) - correlative , phrase , head (geology) , head driven phrase structure grammar , computer science , linguistics , natural language processing , dependent clause , determiner phrase , noun phrase , artificial intelligence , sentence , philosophy , geology , noun , geomorphology , generative grammar
Recent syntactic theory has highlighted the importance of peripheralconstructions such as the comparative correlative construction. Thisconstruction involves a pair of filler-gap constructions with unusualproperties. The first is a subordinate clause and the second a main clause. Theconstruction has a number of related constructions. A version of HPSG, whichassumes hierarchies of phrase types, can provide satisfactory analyses both forthe comparative correlative constructions and for the relatedconstructions. The two clauses in the comparative-correlative construction canbe analysed as non-standard head-filler phrases differing from standardheadfiller phrases in certain respects. The construction as a whole can beanalyzed as a non-standard head-adjunct phrase, in which the head and thephrase have different categories.