existence: semantics and syntax - Institut für Linguistik/Germanistik ...

TOWARDS ADYNAMIC ACCOUNT OF BE IN ENGLISH 25
Tn(a), ?Ty(t) ↦→ ?Ty(t)
〈↑ * 〉Tn(a), ?Ty(e), ?∃x.T n(x)
Figure 5. Introducing an unfixed node
Tn(0), ?Ty(t)
〈↑ *
〉Tn(0),Ty(e),
Fo(Mary ′ )
Ty(e),Fo(John ′ ) ?Ty(e → t)
?Ty(e), ♦
Ty(e → e → t),
Fo(Dislike ′ )
Figure 6. Parsing Mary, John dislikes
Analysing the string Mary, John dislikes in these terms is illustrated in Figure
2 with an initially projected unfixed node and the pointer at the object position. At
the point in the parse at which all words in the string have been processed, there
remains outstanding an unfixed node and a requirement to construct a node of type
e. In this environment, a process of MERGE may take place which identifies the
unfixed treenode with the node currently under construction. 17 MERGE is defined
as a process that unifies the descriptions (sets of labels) of two nodes, the unfixed
node and the current node. The process is therefore successful just in case no contradictory
decorations result from the combination of the descriptions of the two
nodes. 18 MERGE (indicated by a dashed curved line) applied to Figure 6 satisfies
the outstanding requirements on the fixed and unfixed nodes: the unfixed node provides
the necessary type and formula decorations, while the fixed node provides
the appropriate treenode address for the unfixed tree. Ultimately, completion of the
tree yields a Ty(t) Formula value, Dislike ′ (Mary ′ )(John ′ ) decorating the topnode,
with all requirements fulfilled.
In Dynamic Syntax, the interaction of computational, lexical and pragmatic
processes determines the interpretation of a string. A wellformed string is one for
17 Note that this process is not the same, technically or conceptually, as the process of the same name
in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995).
18 Well-formed treenode descriptions are thus rather like the categories of Generalised Phrase Structure
Grammar which are defined as partial functions from attributes to values (Gazdar et al. 1985).