|
|
Mark Baker
(Rutgers University)
Gerunds and the Theory of Categories
Close to the heart of a theory of lexical categories are
questions of what it is for a category to be nominal or verbal.
Such a theory could then be immediately
applicable to the question of whether or not it is possible for a
single
category to be both nominal and verbal simultaneously. In
Baker’s (2003) theory of lexical
categories, the answer is no: a “noun-verb” category is ruled out by
the
Reference Predication Constraint. However,
a range of theorists take the answer to be yes: in particular, they
claim that gerunds
like singing in Pat’s singing the
national anthem so passionately are lexical
categories that are simultaneously nouns and verbs (e.g. Malouf 2000,
Hudson 2003). In this talk, I will argue that
Baker’s answer was the correct one. Gerunds are not single syntactic nodes
that are simultaneously nouns and
verbs; rather they are the postsyntactic fusion of two distinct
nodes—an ordinary
verb and an Infl that is nominal. Moreover, the Reference Predication
Constraint plays a positive explanatory
role in inducing the correct typology of Infl-type nodes, accounting
for the
different properties of “verbal” Infls (in finite clauses) and
“nominal” Infls
(gerundive clauses) crosslinguistically. The theory will be illustrated
with examples from three typologically
distinct languages: English, Mapudungun, and Lokaa. The Reference
Predication Constraint explains
why gerunds cannot bear agreement in the polysynthetic language
Mapudungun, and
why gerunds with verb-final word order cannot appear in subject
position in the
West African language Lokaa. I
conclude that the features and principles that define the lexical
categories
according to Baker 2003 also apply to functional categories such as
Infl.
|
|
|
|
|
"Parsed Corpora: What, Why and How?"
Anthony Kroch, Beatrice Santorini, and Beth Randall
The aim of this workshop is to introduce researchers to the parsed corpora of historical English that are now available and to CorpusSearch, a computer program that allows users to search these corpora for lexical, morphological and syntactic information, as well as to code files of examples automatically for statistical analysis. The corpora to be discussed are the York Corpus of Old English and the Penn Corpora of Middle English and of Early Modern English. All three of these corpora are based on the Helsinki diachronic corpus of English but include more texts and larger text samples than the Helsinki corpus.
The following topics will be addressed:
1. Motivation: Why parsed corpora are useful. What parsed corpora allow us to find out about a language that simple text corpora would not.
2. Corpus structure: How corpora are annotated, and how the annotation facilitates searches.
3. Searching: How to use CorpusSearch. What the program can do, and how to get it to do what we want.
4. Corpus construction: A brief introduction to the process of corpus construction. Setting up annotation guidelines, using automated taggers and parsers, using software support for the process of correction and consistency checking.
Preview:
Some information about corpora and corpus tools.
|
|
|
|
LOCAL INFORMATION
Conference Location -- Jon M. Huntsman Hall
Campus Map
Philadelphia Information
Transportation
Accommodations
ABOUT PLC
The Penn Linguistics Colloquium is an annual conference organized by graduate students in the Department of Linguistics
at the University of Pennsylvania.
THE PLC 29 COMMITTEE
Lucas Champollion, Damien Hall, Lucy Lee, Laia Mayol, Maya Ravindranath (Co-Chair), Tatjana Scheffler (Co-Chair), Sandhya Sundaresan, Joel Wallenberg
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Email: plc29@ling.upenn.edu
Mailing Address: Penn Linguistics Colloquium, Department of Linguistics, 619 Williams Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
This event is supported by funding from the Graduate Student Association Council of the University of Pennsylvania.
|
|
