Paul John King
An expanded logical formalism for head-driven phrase structure grammar
Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340, Bericht Nr. 59 (1994), 24pp.
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Abstract
Though [Pollard and Sag 1994] assumes that an unspecified variant of
the formal logic of [Carpenter 1992] will provide a formalism for
HPSG, a precise formulation of the envisaged formalism is not
immediately obvious, primarily because a principal tenet of [Carpenter
1992], that feature structures represent partial information, seems to
conflict with a principal tenet of [Pollard and Sag 1994], that
feature structures represent abstract linguistic entities. This has
caused many HPSGians to be mistakenly concerned with
partial-information specific notions, such as subsumption, that are
appropriate for the [Carpenter 1992] logic but inappropriate for the
formalism [Pollard and Sag 1994] envisages. This paper hopes to allay
this concern and the confusion it engenders by substituting [King
1989] for [Carpenter 1992] as the basis of the envisaged formalism. It
demonstrates that the formal logic of [King 1989] provides a formalism
for HPSG that meets all [Pollard and Sag 1994] asks of the envisaged
formalism. It further shows that the most credible variant of the
[Carpenter 1992] logic consistent with the aims of [Pollard and Sag
1994] is not only incompatible with the tenet that feature structures
represent partial information, but also an instance of the [King 1989] logic.
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