Licensing complex prepositions via lexical constraints

Abstract

In this paper, we will investigate a cross-linguistic phenomenon referred to as complex prepositions (CPs), which is a frequent type of multiword expressions (MWEs) in many languages. Based on empirical data, we will point out the problems of the traditional treatment of CPs as complex lexical categories, and, thus, propose an analysis using the formal paradigm of the HPSG in the tradition of (Pollard and Sag, 1994). Our objective is to provide an approach to CPs which (1) convincingly explains empirical data, (2) is consistent with the underlying formal framework and does not require any extensions or modifications of the existing description apparatus, (3) is computationally tractable.

Cloze probability does not only affect N400 amplitude: The case of complex prepositions

“…Specifically, complex prepositions are arbitrary combinations of constituents usually formed by a preposition (P 1 ), a noun (N), and another preposition (P 2 ). These fixed-order constituents are lexical bundles with a prepositional function (Trawinski, 2003). The fixed nature of complex prepositions makes the last preposition highly predictable given a sufficient fragment (e.g., P 1 -N).…”

Introduction to the special issue on multiword expressions: Having a crack at a hard nut

“…Research on MWE has been done on many languages, including Basque (Alegria et al, 2004), Italian (Calzolari et al, 2002), German (Trawiński, 2003;Neumann et al, 2004), Japanese (Uchiyama and Ishizaki, 2003;Tanaka and Baldwin, 2003;Baldwin and Tanaka, 2004;Fujita et al, 2004), Portuguese (Dias, 2003;Villavicencio et al, 2004a;Baptista et al, 2004), Russian (Sharoff, 2004) and Turkish (Oflazer et al, 2004). Efforts have also been made to investigate MWEs from a multilingual perspective (Calzolari et al, 2002;Villavicencio et al, 2004a), since languages differ as to what subtypes of MWEs they have, and how they are realised in other languages.…”