Workshop on the formal foundations of LFG and HPSG

University of Essex

18.-21. November 1999


The first CLAIRE workshop was held on 18.-21. November 1999 in Colchester at the University of Essex.

Here is some information on the event, taken from an email that Paul King sent to the participants of the workshop:

Here is some suggested reading for the first Claire workshop. It is far from exhaustive, but I think it will give us a reasonable idea of the foundations of the earliest incarnations of LFG and HPSG. I have concentrated for the moment on the origins of LFG and HPSG.

For SfS people, I've included Brechtbau library numbers where I know them. Please let me know if you find any errors in these references, or have suggestions for reading I have missed. Please bear in mind that I am less interested in papers dealing with mathematical technicalities and more in those dealing with the underlying ideas those technicalities are supposed to formalise.

An Overview
===========

[Wasow 1985] Thomas Wasow, "Postscript", pages 193 to 205 of Peter
	Sells, *Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories*, CSLI
	Lecture Notes Number 3, CSLI Publications, Stanford,
	California, USA, 1985. ISBN 0-937073-13-X (hardback) and
	0-937073-14-8 (paperback).
A strange choice, perhaps, since it compares GB, LFG and GPSG, and barely mentions HPSG. However, I think that much of what Wasow says of GPSG applies to HPSG. In any case, the paper is nicely written, easy to read, and a nice, provocative scene setter.

LFG Precursors
==============

LFG grew out of two distinct lines of research, Bresnan's work on Lexical-Interpretative Grammar and Kaplan's work on Augmented Transition Networks. The influence of this early work on LFG is clear, and I therefore think it would be advisable to study some of it.

[Bresnan 1978] Joan Bresnan, "A Realistic Transformational Grammar",
	chapter 1, pages 1 to 59 of Morris Halle, Joan Bresnan and
	George A. Miller (editors) *Linguistic Theory and
	Psychological Reality", MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
	USA, 1978.  ISBN 0-262-08095-8 (hardback) 0-262-58043-8
	(paperback).  Library GU 110.303.
I found this a really nice paper, and you certainly see where the "Lexical" comes from in LFG. I strongly recommend reading this paper.
[Kaplan 1975a] Ronald M. Kaplan, "On Process Models for Sentence
	Analysis", chapter 5, pages 117 to 135 of Donald A. Norman and
	David E. Rummelhart (editors), *Explorations in Cognition*,
	W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, California, USA, 1975.
	ISBN 0-7167-0736-5.  Library GU 110.232.

[Wanner and Maratsos 1978] Eric Wanner and Michael Maratsos, "An ATN
	Approach to Comprehension", chapter 3, pages 119 to 161 of
	Morris Halle, Joan Bresnan and George A. Miller (editors)
	*Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality", MIT Press,
	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1978.  ISBN 0-262-08095-8
	(hardback) 0-262-58043-8 (paperback).  Library GU 110.303.
These are both nice papers. The Kaplan paper is shorter, but the Wanner and Maratsos paper makes the stronger psycholinguistic claims. Note that the Wanner and Maratsos paper is in the same volume as [Bresnan 1978]. I would have liked to read
[Kaplan 1975b] Ronald M. Kaplan, *Transient Processing Load in
	Relative Clauses*, doctoral dissertation, Harvard University,
	1975.
which deals with some of the same issues the Wanner and Maratsos paper covers, but the Tuebingen library doesn't have a copy. Note also that both [Kaplan 1975a] and [Wanner and Maratsos 1978] manifest a drift of ATN research away from Transformational Grammar (TG) without really signalling it.

Classical LFG
=============

By "Classical LFG" I mean the LFG of

[Kaplan and Bresnan 1982] Ronald M. Kaplan and Joan Bresnan,
	"Lexical-Functional Grammar: A Formal System for Grammatical
	Representation", chapter 4, pages 173 to 281 of Joan Bresnan
	(editor) *The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations*,
	MIT Press Series on Cognitive Theory and Mental
	Representation, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA,
	1982.  ISBN 0-262-02158.  Library GH 320.102.
and reprinted as
	chapter 2, pages 29 to 130 of Mary Dalrymple, Ronald
	M. Kaplan, John T. Maxwell III and Annie Zaenen (editors),
	*Formal Issues in Lexical-Functional Grammar*, CSLI Lecture
	Notes number 47, CSLI Publications, Stanford, California, USA,
	1995.  ISBN 1-881526-37-2 (hardback) 1-881526-36-4
	(paperback).  Library GH 510.553.
This paper is huge, really a small book. On the other hand, I suspect that most of us are familiar with it to some degree. There are also a few other papers that are both smaller and throw a few insights into LFG. These include
[Bresnan and Kaplan 1982] Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan,
	"Introduction: Grammars as Mental Representations of
	Language", pages xvii-lii, of Joan Bresnan (editor) *The
	Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations*, MIT Press
	Series on Cognitive Theory and Mental Representation, MIT
	Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1982.  ISBN 0-262-02158.
	Library GH 320.102.
and
[Kaplan 1995] Ronald M. Kaplan, "The Formal Architecture of
	Lexical-Functional Grammar", chapter 1, pages 7 to 27 of Mary
	Dalrymple, Ronald M. Kaplan, John T. Maxwell III and Annie
	Zaenen (editors), *Formal Issues in Lexical-Functional
	Grammar*, CSLI Lecture Notes number 47, CSLI Publications,
	Stanford, California, USA, 1995.  ISBN 1-881526-37-2
	(hardback) 1-881526-36-4 (paperback).  Library GH 510.553.
These papers deal respectively with the "whys" and "hows" of LFG. Another, extremely short but well-worth-reading paper is
[Anonymous 1995] "Formal Architecture", introduction to Part I, pages
	1 to 5 of Mary Dalrymple, Ronald M. Kaplan, John T. Maxwell
	III and Annie Zaenen (editors), *Formal Issues in
	Lexical-Functional Grammar*, CSLI Lecture Notes number 47,
	CSLI Publications, Stanford, California, USA, 1995.  ISBN
	1-881526-37-2 (hardback) 1-881526-36-4 (paperback).  Library
	GH 510.553.
This gives a nice, concise picture of how the LFG precursors came together to form LFG.

Classical HPSG
==============

By "Classical HPSG" I mean the HPSG of

[Pollard and Sag 1987] Carl J. Pollard and Ivan I. Sag
	*Information-Based Syntax and Semantics, Volume 1*, CSLI
	Lecture Notes number 13, CSLI Publications, Stanford,
	California, USA, 1987.
We don't need to read the whole of this book, just the first few chapters dealing with formal foundations and the like.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I have far fewer references for HPSG than I do for LFG. I only suggest looking at (but not necessarily studying)

[Gazdar et al 1985] Gerald Gazdar, Ewan Klein, Geoffrey Pullum and
	Ivan Sag, *Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar*, Basil
	Blackwell, Oxford, England, 1985.  ISBN 0-631-13206-6
	(hardback) 0-631-13459 (paperback).  Library GH 260.156.
and
[Pollard 1984] Carl J. Pollard, *Generalised Phrase Structure
	Grammars, Head Grammars, and Natural Language*, doctoral
	dissertation, Stanford University, 1984.  Library GH 260.146.


Frank Richter
Last modified: Fri Sep 21 15:58:27 MEST 2001