A New Dependency Based Specification of Underlying Representations of Sentences

Abstract

A new approach to the formal description of the semantics of a natural language within the Prague group's functional generative description of language is presented. Our approach represents the semantics and the process of the speaker's formulation of a sentence by a pushdown store generator framework comprising three principal features: dependency relations, coordination (apposition) and the topic-focus articulation. The interplay of these semantic components during the generation of a sentence is shown along with the possibility of an easy refinement of the framework in case special linguistic phenomena be described.Brought to you by | University of Arizona Authenticated Download Date | 7/17/15 2:31 AM We do not suppose that a real speaker produces a sentence by means of such a sequential procedure and that he clearly distinguishes the representations of the sentence on the individual levels just described. In the formulation of a sentence by the speaker these levels seem rather to be interlaced and running parallel. Brought to you by | University of Arizona Authenticated Download Date | 7/17/15 2:31 AM Brought to you by | University of Arizona Authenticated Download Date | 7/17/15 2:31 AM

On the Scoping Properties of Negation, Focusing Particles and Sentence Adverbials

“…This representation of the scope of negation by Hajicova, where NEG stands immediately before the material in its scope (which is intuitively plausible), differs from her proposal of the representation of negation in TRs (as formally described in Petkevic 1987), where NEG stands after the material in its scope, having a seemingly 'backward' scope (which is intuitively implausible).…”

“…esp. Sgall et al 1973, Sgall et al 1986, Petkevic 1987. This account is based on the dependency approach to syntax and on a conception of the topic-focus articulation, or 'given-new' structuring, of the sentence, being opposed especially to constituency/ configurationality based approaches.…”

“…In this paper, I shall be concerned mainly with tectogrammatical representations of sentences (henceforth, TRs). 1 TRs are generated by means of the generative component, the newest version of which is described in Petkevic 1987. The generative component has the form of a pushdown store generator G, which is equivalent to the sextuple (K, V 0 , V s , K 0 , K, F), where K is the set of inner states of G, V Q is the output vocabulary, V a is the pushdown store vocabulary, K Q is the initial state of G", K is the set of final states, and F is the defining function of G", consisting of 14 rules (cf.…”

“Free” Word Order Described Without Unnecessary Complexity

“…It follows then that terminal representations, as defined (or more or less tacitly assumed) by these approaches, do not find many occasions to be actually used as representations. P-markers and other representations which are used constitute shortened versions of the derivational history of the nonefTective terminal A brief survey of the basic issues of dependency syntax was presented by Sgall and Panevova (1988-89); a systematic discussion of the approach we prefer and of the motivation for this choice can be found in Sgall, Hajicova and Panevova (1986), and a formal specification of the underlying representations based on this approach was described by Petkevic (1987 representations. The conceptual apparatus of a theory of linguistic descriptions certainly would be more economical, and thus less complex, if derivational history were present only within the description of terminal representations, and if the latter fulfilled the role their name indicates: to represent the structure of a sentence on the given level.…”