Locality and the argument-adjunct distinction:Structure-building vs. structure-enrichment

语法在一定程度上与结构构建有关：将单词组合成短语，将短语组合成句子。但它也与句子中不同元素之间的依赖关系有关。我们的目标是比较不同语言中不同类型的语法依赖的“局部”程度（也就是说，它们可以遍历多少语法结构），并建立一个理论来解释我们发现的不同局部性模式。例如，在印地语句子“Vivek-ne kitab parh-nii chaah-ii”（“Vivek想要读这本书”）中，“parh-nii”（“读”）和“chaah-ii”（“想要”）表现出女性化的变化，因为它们与女性宾语“kitab”（“书”）一致。这种“远距离协议”（从句的宾语影响多个动词形式的形状）是句法依赖的一个例子。另一个非局部依赖是“控制”，其中一个子句中的名词短语决定了另一个子句中隐式参数的解释。在上面的同一个印地语例子中，“Vivek”不仅被解释为“want”的主语，也被解释为“read”的主语。同样，这种依赖关系是经过语法调解的。不同的语法依赖关系允许不同数量的非局部性。我们比较不同的依赖关系类型，并询问它们是否可以跨越附语边界，其中附语是句子中未选择的可选短语（如“I was walking in the garden”中的“in the garden”）。控制依赖关系明显可以跨越附语边界：在“They left after eating”中，附语是可选修饰语“after eating”，“eating”的隐含主语由“They”控制。然而，跨越辅助边界的远距离一致似乎是不可能的：据我们所知，没有一种语言允许像“Vivek left”这样的模式。FEM后购买。对这本书进行分析。，其中“左”和“书”之间的长距离协议跨越了辅助边界。其他类型的语法依赖显示出更复杂的模式，对特定类型的辅词和与依赖关系相关的元素的性质很敏感。我们的目的是描述和解释这些模式。目前，还没有理论解释为什么不同类型的依赖会以这些不同的方式与附加作用相互作用。我们认为，这些不同的模式可以用两种新的观点来解释：(1)一种特定的概念，即形容词与主词之间的关系，以及它与动词和宾语之间的关系有何不同；(2)从结构构建机制如何决定何时可以发生一致和控制的角度来解释不同类型句法依赖之间相互作用的理论。

Syntax is partly about structure-building: the combination of words into phrases and phrases into sentences. But it's also about dependencies between different elements in a sentence. We aim to compare how "local" different types of syntactic dependencies are in a range of languages (that is, how much syntactic structure they can traverse), and build a theory to explain the different locality patterns that we uncover.For example, in the Hindi sentence "Vivek-ne kitab parh-nii chaah-ii" ("Vivek wanted to read the book"), "parh-nii" ("read") and "chaah-ii" ("want") show feminine inflection, because they agree with the feminine object "kitab" ("book"). This "long-distance agreement" (where the object of a subordinate clause influences the shape of multiple verb forms) is an example of a syntactic dependency.Another nonlocal dependency is "control", where a noun phrase in one clause determines the interpretation of an implicit argument in another clause. In the same Hindi example above, "Vivek" is interpreted not only as the subject of "want" but also as the subject of "read". Again, this dependency is syntactically mediated.Different syntactic dependencies permit different amounts of nonlocality. We compare different dependency types and ask whether they can cross adjunct boundaries, where an adjunct is an unselected optional phrase within the sentence (like "in the garden" in "I was walking in the garden"). Control dependencies clearly can cross adjunct boundaries: in "They left after eating", the adjunct is the optional modifier "after eating", and the implicit subject of "eating" is controlled by "they". However, long-distance agreement appears to be impossible across an adjunct boundary: to our knowledge, no language allows a pattern like "Vivek left.FEM after buying.FEM the book.FEM", where long-distance agreement between "left" and "book" crosses an adjunct boundary. Other types of syntactic dependency show more complex patterns, sensitive to the specific type of adjunct and the nature of the elements that the dependency relates.Our aim is to describe and explain these patterns. Currently, no theory explains why different types of dependency interact with adjunction in these different ways. We believe that the different patterns can be explained in terms of two new ideas: (1) a particular conception of the way that adjuncts relate to their hosts, and how it differs from e.g. the relationship between a verb and its object; (2) a theory that accounts for interactions between different types of syntactic dependencies in terms of how the structure-building mechanism determines when agreement and control can take place.