Auxiliary Inversions and the Notion 'Default Specification'  

Oleh:

Green, Georgia M. ; Morgan, Jerry L.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Linguistics (Full Text & ada di PROQUEST & JSTOR) vol. 32 no. 1 (Mar. 1996), page 43-56.
Topik: Auxiliary
Fulltext: Vol. 32, No. 1,, pp. 43-56.pdf (367.71KB)

Isi artikel

It is commonly thought that (i) the description of English auxiliary inversions requires a feature with a default value, (2) that non-default values must be stipulated and learned as exceptions and (3) that when languages exhibit different values for a feature in different contexts, learning theory requires grammars to stipulate a default value. Distinguishing two perniciously confused uses of the term DEFAULT enables a demonstration that the first and third assumptions are incorrect. Consequently, any argument that depends on them is invalid, and the absence in a theory of a mechanism for default-value declarations is not a deficiency. It is then shown that a comprehensive account of inverted structures has to encompass considerably more diversity of structural types than is generally recognized, but is entirely possible in a constraint- based grammar with monotonic multiple-inheritance and no overridable default specifications. The existence of such an account demonstrates the expendability of default specifications for concise description. Because default specification is only a descriptive device in GPSG, and not a strictly essential part of its basic architecture, its unavailability in HPSG does not constitute a significant difference from GPSG. The learnability of HPSG grammars is an intriguing issue, but it does not depend on the availability of arbitrary default-value statements in HPSG.

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