A Grammar Combining Phrase Structure and Field Structure

A graanmar tbrmalism, Field and Category Grammar ar (FCG), is described, which beside constituent structure and functional structure recognizes a level of field structure. It is argued that the formalism offers descriptive and computational advantages for the analysis of Scandinavian and other languages that distinguish clause types topologically. It is also argued that the clear distinction between fields and constituents makes FCGs theoretically sounder than other proposed field grammars. A comparison is made of the word order rules and assumptions of FCGs with the partial orderip, gs employed by G PSG and other models. 1 Motivations for field structure Descriptive grammatical works on Germanic languages often refer to notions such as field and .schema, some early, major works being [Dider46] and [Drach373. Recently, [H.ue87] and ['Ibgeby88] have argued that field grammars in Diderichsen's tradition are useful for the computational analysis of Dan-. ish. If they are right, the same is obviously true for the other Scandinavian languages and possibly other Germanic languages as well. A major motivation for field structure in the Scan-dinavian languages is the correlation between the position era constituent and grammatical flmction. For instance, a NP occuring after the finite verb but before: the sentence adverbs, i.e. in the field that Diderichsen termed Ncksusfclt, is a subject, while NPs appearing after the sentence adverbs, in the In-dholdsfelt (content field) are objects. As main clauses have no surface VP-node consisting solely of the verb and its complements, a configurational definition of subject,; and objects is less appealing. There is a correlation also between positions and thematic functions, the classical example being Diderichsen's l'~undament (foundation), the position before the finite verb which holds thematically prominent constituents of various kinds. A second motivation is that the word order regularities of' clause types are better described if we haw: access to field structure. In a phrase st, ruct, m'e grammar we either have to write a separate rt~le, or rule schema, for each clause type, or else introduce pew-erflfl rules such as transforn-mtions or recta-rules to, capture differences and similarities. Field st.rtact.ure can be used to express the common traits directly: the schema in figure 1 apply to virtually all Swedish clause types.* Moreover, variation can be accounted for in terms of constraints on what may occur i' ,~ the fields and such constraints may be expressed Ly regular expressions. 'Fhvs, the il~corporation of field structure to a formalism does not …