Productive Encoding of Urdu Complex Predicates in the ParGram Project

Complex Predicates are a crosslinguistically general phenomenon, but are more pervasive in South Asian than in European languages. This paper describes an LFG solution for Urdu/Hindi complex predication in terms of a RESTRICTION OPERATOR. The solution is theoretically well motivated and can be extended straightforwardly to related phenomena in European languages such as German, Norwegian, and French. 1 The ParGram Project In this paper, we report on the implementation of complex predicates (CP) for Urdu in the Parallel Grammar (ParGram) project (Butt et al., 1999; Butt et al., 2002). The ParGram project originally focused on three European languages: English, French, and German. Three other languages were added later: Japanese, Norwegian, and Urdu. The ParGram project uses the XLE parser and grammar development platform (Maxwell and Kaplan, 1993) to develop deep grammars, i.e., grammars which provide an in-depth analysis of a given sentence (as opposed to shallow parsing or chunk parsing, where a relatively rough analysis of a given sentence is returned). All of the grammars in the ParGram project use the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) formalism, which produces c(onstituent)-structures (trees) and f(unctional)-structures (attribute-value matrices) as syntactic analyses. LFG assumes a version of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar hypothesis, namely that all languages are governed by similar underlying structures. Within LFG, f-structures encode a language universal level of analysis, allowing for crosslinguistic parallelism. ParGram aims to see how far parallelism can be maintained across languages. In the project, analyses for similar constructions across languages are held as similar as possible. This parallelism requires the formulation of a rigid standard for linguistic analysis. This standardization has the computational advantage that the grammars can be used in similar applications, and it can simplify cross-language applications such as machine translation (Frank, 1999). The conventions developed within the ParGram grammars are extensive. The ParGram project dictates not only the form of the features used in the grammars, but also the types of analyses chosen for constructions. The integration of new languages into the project has so far proven successful, including the adoption of the standards that were originally designed for the European languages (Butt and King, 2002b). As the new languages also contain constructions not necessarily found in the original European languages, the integration of new languages has contributed to the formulation of new standards of analysis. One such example is furnished by complex predicates in Urdu. 2 South Asian Complex Predicates South Asian languages are known for the extensive and productive use of CPs. CPs combine a light verb with a verb, noun or adjective to produce a new verb. For example, Urdu has a large class of “aspectual” CPs which combine with verbs to change the aktionsart properties of the event. Examples are shown in (1b,c), cf. (1a). (1) a. nAdyA AyI Nadya-NOM came ‘Nadya came.’ b. nAdyA A gayI Nadya-NOM come went ‘Nadya arrived.’ c. nAdyA A paRI Nadya-NOM come fell ‘Nadya came (suddenly, unexpectedly).’ The addition of a light verb modulates the event predication in subtle ways: beyond expressing defeasible meanings such as benefaction, suddenness, inception, or responsibility, the CP expresses a different aktionsart in comparison to the simple main verb. For example, in (1b) Nadya is in the result state of having arrived. The aktionsart effects of the light verbs on the event predication are quite complex and continue to be the subject of on-going theoretical research (Butt and Ramchand, 2003). The general effect is the encoding of a result state (a song is in the state of having been sung, a person is in the state of having arrived). However, a result state can be interpreted in two differing ways depending on whether one wants to consider the event to come (inception), or the event that has passed (completion). The precise interpretation is lexically determined by the light verbs. For the purposes of the Urdu grammar, we mark light verbs like ‘go’ as signifying completion of an action, whereas light verbs like ‘fall’ signify inception. Although these aspectual CPs do not alter the subcategorization frame of the verb, they change the resulting functional structure of the sentence, providing new information about the kind of event/action that is being described. The light verb also determines case marking on the subject: light verbs based on intransitive main verbs like paR ‘fall’ require a nominative subject. Light verbs like lE ‘take’ or dE ‘give’, which are based on (di)transitives main verbs, require an ergative subject. For example, transitive main verbs in the perfect tense usually require an ergative subject, as in (2a). When combined with a light verb like paR ‘fall’, the subject must be nominative as in (2b). Case marking in Urdu is governed by a combination of structural and semantic factors which we do not go into here (Butt and King, 2001). The light verb facts present an extension of the basic pattern. (2) a. nAdyA nE gAnA gayA Nadya-ERG song sang ‘Nadya sang a song.’ b. nAdyA gAnA gA paRI Nadya-NOM song sing fell ‘Nadya burst into song. c. nAdyA nE gAnA gA lIyA Nadya-ERG song sing took ‘Nadya sang a song (completely).’ As already mentioned, these CPs are extraordinarily productive in Urdu: most verbal predication involves complex predicate formation of the kind in (1) and (2). A light verb is in principle compatible with any main verb; however, (mostly semantic) selectional restrictions do apply so that some combinations are ruled out completely, whereas others are subject to considerable dialectal variation. Furthermore, the CPs are not formed within the lexicon, but are the result of the syntactic composition of two predicational elements (Alsina, 1996; Butt, 1995). Within LFG (as well as other syntactic frameworks), predicational elements play a special role: it is over these that argument saturation is checked. The difficulties involved with CP formation are better illustrated by means of another type of CP, the Urdu permissive, which alters the argument structure of the verb (Butt, 1995). The permissive light verb adds a new subject and “demotes” the other verb’s subject to a dative-marked indirect object, as in (3b), cf. (3a). (3) a. nAdyA sOyI Nadya-NOM slept ‘Nadya slept.’ b. yassin nE nAdyA kO sOnE dIA Yassin-ERG Nadya-DAT sleep-INF gave ‘Yassin let Nadya sleep.’ Since CPs are productive and occur frequently, an implementation that is both scalable and efficient is necessary. Most verbs can occur with several light verbs, and a given light verb can in principle occur with any verb of a given class (e.g., agentive verbs). So, it is not feasible to have multiple lexical entries for each verb depending on which light verb they occur with. This is especially true since the CPs combine with auxiliaries and other light verbs in predictable ways.