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Title:
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An HPSG account of Bangla Compound Verbs with LKB Implementation
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Author:
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Soma Paul
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Hyderabad
, Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies
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Degree Date:
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2004
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Computational Linguistics
Semantics
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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Bengali
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Director(s):
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Gautam Sengupta
Probal Dasgupta
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Abstract:
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This thesis attempts to present a constraint-based and semantically-grounded account of the composition of Bangla Compound Verbs (CV) within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). A Bangla CV is a two-member construction in which the first member (V1) chooses between the usual conjunctive participial form –e and the (rare, for this construction) infinitive form –te while the second member (V2) bears the inflection.
1. mee-Ta heš-e uTh-lo
girl-cl laugh-cp rise-3 pt
‘The girl burst into laughter’
I have identified fifteen frequently used V2s in Bangla. A V1 does not combine with every V2. The combinatorial well-formedness between a V1 and a V2 depends on the semantic compatibility between the two verbs. In this thesis, I propose to impose a constraint on the semantic component of verbal lexical signs, which are arranged in a system of multiple inheritance hierarchy. This constraint controls the unification of a V1 with a V2 to ensure that the grammar licenses only well-formed CV sequences. I propose for a two-level representation of the semantic component of verbs:
1.A participant level contains “grammatically relevant” information that defines the relations among the participants involved in the situation denoted by the semantic type of the verb
2.A supra-lexical level includes information related to temporality and aspect.
I implement this proposal in HPSG by introducing two attributes THEM (representing participant level) and GRAM (representing supra-lexical level) as the values of the semantic feature SEM | PREDS. The postulation of the two levels for organizing the meaning of verbs is significant for constituting compound verb constructions. The semantic constraint that governs the unification of V1 with a particular V2 is declared on the value of THEM of the verb lexeme type, while the semantic compounding principle that builds the temporal and aspectual features of the resultant CV is operative on the value of GRAM. The GRAM value of V2 is inherited by the CV of which the V2 is a part.
The model that I propose in this thesis for the composition of the CV constructions essentially takes into consideration the following two premises:
1. CVs are the lexical variants of their V1 participant
2. CVs represent one functional-semantic unit – a predicate
I maintain that two lexical entities satisfy the constraint of lexical variance when they are semantically related and some principle (or lexical rule) can be formulated to regularize the formation of one form from another. In the course of this thesis it becomes evident that verbs in Bangla and other Indo-Aryan languages have a kind of lexical variant, the CVs, which are multi-word expressions. I argue that a predicate in Bangla and other Indo-Aryan languages can be expressed by both one-word verb forms and multi-verb expressions. The significance of shifting the focus of investigation from morphosyntactic representation of verbal expressions to their content is the following: instead of considering the verb to be the head of the projected phrasal structure, we can now assign the status of ‘head’ to a constituent that represents a predicate. Just like a simple verb, CVs project the sentences they head. I lay emphasis on the observation that morphosyntactic representation of predicates, either a one-word form or multi-word expressions, constitutes the head of a syntactic phrase. As far as constituting the phrasal structure of the CVs is concerned, I argue in favor of taking the V1 to be the head of the phrasal structure of its CV variant even though the V2 bears the categorial information for the whole construction. Finally I present an LKB-based implementation, mainly designed to test the analysis for the CV constructions proposed in this thesis.
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Page Updated: 26-Nov-2009
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