Two Functional Approaches For Interpreting D-Tree Grammar Derivations

Abstract

D-Tree Grammar (DTG) is a grammatical formalism whose basic derivational units are lexicalized partial tree descriptions. This chapter addresses the problem of interpreting DTG derivations, i.e. computing meaning representations for analysed sentences. The standard approach to interpreting DTG derivations is based on the derivation tree, which is a record of the composition steps made during the process of derivation. This method requires the derivation process to be subject to certain constraints, that both complicate the framework and rule out certain accounts of phenomena that could otherwise be formulated. The chapter presents two alternative interpretation approaches, which are both ‘functional’ in that they associate lambda term meaning expressions with lexical items. These expressions are combined in a manner that is determined by the derived tree of the analysis, which takes the form of a standard phrase structure. As such, the new interpretation approaches allow the constraints on the derivation process, required by the standard approach, to be eliminated, and we present a linguistic analysis, of PP pied-piping, that this change makes possible.