Head Promotion and Obliqueness in a Multimodal Grammar

This paper describes a framework for multimodal categorial systems, i.e. systems that allow different modes of logical behaviour to be displayed within a single system. From a linguistic point of view, this characteristic amounts to making available multiple modes of linguistic description within a single formalism. A key advantage is that when it comes to treating a given phenomenon, the multimodal approach allows that a level of description be exploited that encodes only those aspects of linguistic structure that are relevant to the phenomenon. This advantage is illustrated in relation to the analysis of binding phenomena. The treatment of command asymmetries in binding is based on adopting an approach where grammatical hierarchy is encoded via categorial argument order. This treatment of grammatical hierarchy is itself made possible by adapting a proposal for the treatment of English in which observed word order may result from local verb movement, called head promotion.