Search

The author proposes an abstract form for the base categorial component of a transformational grammar--a form which represents categories and relations (functions) in a way that holds reasonable promise for resolving certain very broad problems of the interplay between linguistic form and function. The problems are so broad that almost everything in syntax is relevant to them. The phenomena selected by the author to illustrate the problems and indicate the reasons for proposing a particular solution are: (1) prepositions and functions, (2) case relations, (3) relations and category labels, (4) relations and configurations, (5) relations of heads and complements, (6) cases and features, (7) case and the embedding of sentences, (8) case features and categories, and (9) form and function. (DO)

In this paper the author shows that dependency grammars are not only equivalent to structure-free phrase-structure grammars (i.e., equally adequate), but are even more informative: they express both the "is a" relation which phrase-structure grammars express and the "governs" relation which phrase-structure grammars obscure. It is shown that dependency theory with its concept of "governor" succeeds where phrase-structure theory fails and in addition resolves some of the knotty problems left unresolved by other formulations of the concept of "head" in part endocentric terms. The problem of designating a "governor-head" for exocentric constructions of the base component is discussed in terms of selecting among distinctive categories of a structure-free analysis either in phrase structure or dependency terms. As in all transformational grammars, considerations of the results of applying transformations to obtain appropriate structures for derived sentences plays a key role in making the decision. Since a dependency grammar has a unique restatement as a dependency-phrase grammar, the transformation rules defined on its structures can be stated in the phrase-structure form now used (labelled bracketings with variables) or solely in dependency form. The latter eliminates the need for "tree-pruning." (DO)