THE CROSS-LINGUISTIC RELEVANCE OF HEAD-DRIVEN
PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR CONSTRAINTS IN
REGARD TO BULGARIAN1
Assistant professor Tzvetomira Venkova, PhD
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
Abstract: The paper discusses the issue of cross-linguistic relevance of HPSG
constraints as a relation between universal and language-specific. Some basic aspects
of linguistic universality within HPSG are investigated and problematic issues are
distinguished. Some Bulgarian specific aspects in regard to their licensing by the
universal HPSG constraints are presented.
Key words: HPSG theory, contrastive studies of Bulgarian, formal syntax
The application of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
framework to the study of languages other than English has been an active research
area in recent years. Such comprehensive HPSG studies as Slavic in HPSG (Borsley
and Przepiórkowski 1999), German in HPSG (Nerbonne et al 1994) and Romance
and HPSG (Balari and Dini 1998) have gained broad popularity in the linguistic
community. The investigation of formal-syntactic phenomena in Bulgarian language
within HPSG is a development which deserves further attention and which motivates
the need of a systematic investigation of the cross-linguistic relevance of HPSG
constraints.
1. Universal-language specific in HPSG theory
The development of a conception of universal grammar, which is rich enough
to permit simpler descriptions of particular languages, is considered to be a central
goal in modern syntactic theory, and HPSG in particular, cf. Sag et al 2003: 296
 Innateness of universal grammar
HPSG follows the generativist tradition to pay special attention to the issues
of universal grammar and its formal-theoretic representation. As is well-known, the
issues of linguistic universals in syntactic theory were brought into focus by N.
Chomsky, who discussed the problem of the ‘condition of generality’, posed by
syntactic theory’ (Chomsky 1957:50) and since 1960s developed this line by
analyzing the issues of Universal Grammar, defined by him as a ‘set of parameters,
conditions, or whatever that constitute the initial state of the language learner, hence
the basis on which knowledge of language develops (Chomsky 1980:69). The
distinction between universal and language-specific determining the Principles and
Parameters distinction in Chomsky’s Government and Binding (GB) theory
(Chomsky 1981) where differences among grammatical subsystems result from
different parameter settings for the various languages. Chomsky’s treatment of
1
The research work in this paper has been carried with the assisstnace of the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation.
linguistic universality is predominantly motivated by biological necessity, i.e. it is
innate (Newmeyer 1986:72).
In general, HPSG follows Chomsky’s innateness claim. C. Pollard and I. Sag
define universal grammar as ‘what every linguistically mature human being knows
by virtue of being a linguistic creature” and they argue that to characterize universal
grammar is the central goal of linguistic theory (Pollard and Sag 1994:14). They
distinguish it from a theory of a particular language – a grammar - which
characterizes ‘what linguistic knowledge (beyond universal grammar) is shared by
the community of speakers of the language’ (ibid).
 universal character of grammatical relations and their hierarchy
Furthermore, HPSG shares a different perspective in the treatment of the
issues of universality in language with the relationally-based and lexicalist
frameworks.
In contrast to Chomsky’s treatment of grammatical relations as derivative
relations between categories, Relational grammar posited the universal character of
grammatical relations, taken as primitives, and produced universal rule inventory, cf.
Perlmutter and Postal 1977. The accessibility hierarchy of grammatical relations,
postulated by Keenan and Comrie 1977, was later adopted and developed by C.
Pollard and I. Sag for HPSG, cf. Pollard and Sag 1987, Chapt.7.
The idea of universality of grammatical relations, referred to as ‘grammatical
functions’ HPSG shares with Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), cf. Bresnan and
Kaplan 1982: i-iii. They postulated that functional structure attributes are considered
to be universal. The notion of ‘nonderivationality’, the important role of the lexicon
and the predicate-argument structures were to a great extent adopted by HPSG in its
system of universal constraints.
 Formal precision of metalanguage
In HPSG, similar to Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG), many
universals of language follow from the basic architecture of the grammar, in contrast
to other frameworks, which have to particularly stipulate them, (cf. Gazdar et al
1985 and Newmeyer 1986:214 for a discussion of this aspect in GPSG). The
universals are stated within the metalanguage, due to the very structure of the theory.
HPSG further develops GPSG’s insistence on mathematical precision, with respect
to the formal expression. Universal Grammar is viewed as a ‘mental computational
system shared by members of a linguistic community’ (Pollard and Sag 1994:58).
 Reference to the task-specificity controversy
Sag et al 2003 argue that HPSG provides an explicit semantic and syntactic
analysis, that makes it possible to formalize more precisely what is at issue in the
debate over the so called task-specificity, i.e. whether human capacity for language is
specialized and distinct in its organization and functioning from other cognitive
abilities or it is a side-effect of our general intelligence or other abilities, cf. Sag et al
2003:296. They argue that the grammatical constructs, developed by them, are wellsuited to a theory of Universal Grammar, whether or not that theory turns out to be
highly task-specific. By providing formal representations of data structures and their
interactions, HPSG permits to see the analogues in other cognitive domains. To
justify the claim that the explicitness of HPSG proposals can be helpful in resolving
the task-specificity question, Sag et al 2003 consider various components of HPSG
theory and find that most of them have elements that are likely to be universal, cf.
Sag et al 2003:297. They believe that the increasingly precise linguistic descriptions,
developed by HPSG theory, will help to clarify the nature of task-specificity
controversy. In this respect, they treat learnability as a criterion for theory
evaluation.
 Clear-cut distinction between universal and language-specific
A very positive aspect of HPSG is that it provides an attempt of a clear-cut
distinction between universal and language-particular constraints. In Pollard and Sag
1994 Universal Grammar is divided into linguistic ontology, schemata and universal
constraints, while Particular Grammar comprises lexicon, linguistic ontology
(selection from and further articulation of the universal ontology) and schemata
(selection from and further specification of the universal schemata), cf. Pollard and
Sag 1994:58. The licensing of expressions in a particular language depends on the
interaction among a complex system of universal and language-specific constraints.
Both types of constraints must be ultimately realized in a computable form in the
minds of the speakers of that language.
In Sag et al 2003, the distinctions between universal and language-specific is
reflected in the analysis of the various components of this theory development,
namely the phrase-structure rules, the features and their values, the type hierarchy
with its feature declarations and constraints, the definition of phrasal satisfaction, the
binding theory and the lexical rules. The authors argue that these components contain
many elements, e.g. the grammar rules, the definition of Well-Formed Structure, the
features and their types, that are plausible candidates for playing a role in the theory
of universal grammar, cf. Sag et al 2003:298.
In regard to the system of constraints HPSG posits the criterion of
decidability, i.e., using its formalized version as a hypothesis about the structure of
human linguistic knowledge to develop integrated models of language processing.
2. Problematic aspects of HPSG in regard to cross-linguistic relevance
The issue of linguistic universality and cross-linguistic relevance within
HPSG framework poses problems that need further investigation and research.
Firstly, the authors of HPSG do not provide a comprehensive discussion of
the formal relations between universal and language-specific constraints. Their
attitude towards the consideration of language-specific principles as parameterized
version of universal ones is not sufficiently consistent. On the one hand, parameterbased accounts of cross-linguistic variation, termed ‘highly speculative’, cf. Pollard
and Sag 1994:31, are rejected, since they do not meet a number of requirements,
such as a list of parameters with their range of settings, worked-out fragments of
languages with specifications of settings etc. (ibid). On the other hand, ‘from time to
time’ as the authors put it, they justify the proposal of ‘certain variants of universal
principles which might be regarded as parameterized forms of universal principles,
in response to the empirical demands of particular languages’. These somehow
controversial theses need to be further specified as they pose theoretical problems to
the HPSG analysis for languages other than English.
The HPSG analysis of Bulgarian should be based on a mechanism of
enriching the theory with new language-specific constraints without falsifying or
weakening the posited universal ones and on a consistent account of disjunctive
language-specific constraints within an integrated HPSG grammar.
Secondly, another problematic aspect is that in general most HPSG
constraints are English-based. An advantage of the basic HPSG books, such as
Pollard and Sag 1987, 1994, Ginsburg and Sag 2000, Sag et al 2003 is that they
provide examples from other languages and suggest variants for their licensing.
However, the inclusion of other languages seems not enough in respect to
systematicity, range and effect when universal principles are posited.
3. Other methodological sources for the cross-linguistic application of
HPSG
Promising directions for the solution of the above mentioned problems can be
sought in the employment of a shared grammar, cf. Avgustinova, Skut and
Uszkoreit 1999, Avgustinova and Uszkoreit 2000 and the theory of grammatical
archetypes cf. Ackerman and Webelhuth 1998. As methodological sources these two
theoretical approaches are especially suitable for cross-linguistic applications of
HPSG, including for licensing Bulgarian phrases.
 Shared grammar - Avgustinova, Skut and Uszkoreit 1999,
Avgustinova and Uszkoreit 2000
The notion of shared grammar, introduced in Avgustinova, Skut and Uszkoreit
1999, suggests a formal basis for the analysis of the cross-linguistic reference of the
HPSG description. The authors argue that HPSG is well-suited for formal description
of differences and commonalities among sets of languages and explore the
opportunities to apply HPSG to cross-linguistic studies. The notion of shared
grammar is defined as a formal specification of the shared components of two
grammars. The authors claim that this aim is attainable in HPSG because the
universal and language specific principles are presented declaratively as a uniform
formalism and can be encoded as principles of typed-feature logic. Their approach is
based on two principles: abstracting over language-specific morphological
realization and breaking down grammatical constructions into a number of primitives
common to the languages in question.
Moreover, the fact that they develop the idea of shared HPSG grammar in
regard to the variation of verb diathesis system across Slavic languages deserves
attention in regard to the formal analysis of Bulgarian.
 Theory of predicates based on grammatical archetypes Ackerman and Webelhuth 1998
Another solution, particularly concerning the VP, is the notion of
grammatical archetypes, proposed within a theory of predicates in Ackerman and
Webelhuth 1998. One of the main hypotheses they formalize in the book is that
Universal Grammar defines predicate types in a type hierarchy which the grammars
of individual languages can import as whole chunks. The archetypes are universal
elementary types that are available for incorporation into individual grammars. The
individual grammars benefit from importing them, as it keeps the overall degree of
markedness low. Two sorts of archetypes: content-theoretic and form-theoretic are
introduced, together with major arrangement types that can be found in languages.
The thorough discussion of the interaction between archetypes and arrangement
types suggests consistent basis for a cross-linguistic research.
.4. Bulgarian-specific aspects and the relevance of HPSG constraints
The application of HPSG to Bulgarian presupposes an investigation of the
constraints, developed for English
and hypothesized as universal. Some
methodological difficulties are discussed below based on a particular Bulgarianspecific formal-syntactic feature of the verb phrase (VP).
In principle, the existing feature-structure descriptions of the English VP can
be posited as a source for the development of corresponding descriptions for the
Bulgarian VP. The basic Bulgarian-specific VP constraints have to be distinguished
and ways to formally interpret them within HPSG should be sought. Thus, the
application of HPSG to Bulgarian should focus on the balance between universal and
language-specific constraints and their interaction. Special attention is to be paid to
tracing the idea of universality despite the difference of grammatical traditions.
The results reported for languages other than English, especially for the
Slavic ones, can also be adopted as a methodological basis for the research of
Bulgarian VP, particularly with respect to those features that they have in common
with Bulgarian. As a feedback, the results of the investigation of the Bulgarianspecific features and their formal representations, will provide further insights into
the VP structure within HPSG in general.
Bulgarian VP feature-structures relevance can be tested and verified on some
existing treebanks and corpora, such as BulTreeBank (Simov et al 2003), The
Tuebingen VERMOBIL Treebank of English and German, cf. Hinrichs et al 1999)
and PSDB – The Parallel syntactic Database of English and Bulgarian, cf. Venkova
2002.
In order to exemplify some specific problems, a discussion of a Bulgarianspecific aspect – doubled verb complements2 is presented below, focusing mainly on
the specific problems they pose to HPSG theory and the direction for their
methodological solution.
4.1. Doubled verb complements - examples
In Bulgarian verb arguments can be expressed twice in the sentence. In these
cases, the subject or object position is represented by two non-coordinated NPs. The
doubling element is always a short personal pronoun3, cf. (1) – (3):
 Subject
(1a) Toj chicho trygna.
He uncle left-3p, sg.
(1b)
Toj trygna
chicho.
He left-3p, sg uncle.
‘Uncle left’.
2
3
Similar phenomena occur in some other languages, e.g. some Romance languages
The doubled possessive phrases are not discussed here as they concern NP structure.
 Direct object
(2a) Az Petar go pitah
veche.
I Petar him asked-1p, sg already.
(2b)
Pitah
go az veche Petar.
Asked-1p,sg him I already Petar.
‘I aksed Peter already’.
 Indirect object
(3a) Na tebe utre
shte ti kazha
kakvo da pravish.
To you tomorrow will you tell-1p,sg what to do.
(3b)
Utre
shte ti kazha na tebe kakvo da pravish.
Tomorrow will you tell-1p, sg to you what to do.
‘I will tell you tomorrow what to do’.
Argument doubling is an element of the syntactic inventory of social markers,
as discussed in Videnov 1998:181. Its syntactic interpretation concerns some basic
principles of formal-theoretic description.
4.2. Doubled verb complements as problems to an HPSG grammar
In relation to the HPSG formalization, doubled verb complements are
problematic. For example, the indirect object argument can be expressed in three
possible ways - by short dative pronoun, PP or combined, cf. 4 a-c.
(4a)
Kazhi mu istinata.
Tell him the truth.
(4b)
Kazhi istinata na choveka.
Tell the truth to the man.
(4c)
Kazhi mu istinata na choveka.
Tell him the truth to the man.
The main issue to solve is how to reflect in the VALENCE features of the
verb the fact that in 4a-c it combines with one or with two indirect objects and in
both cases it forms grammatical sentences.
A further issue to solve in respect to the VALENCE features is to analyze the
formal differences between subject doubling and object doubling and to decide if
they should follow identical or different language-specific constraints in respect to
the HPSG theory, so as not to undermine the universal constraints concerning verb
complementation mechanism.
Also, the issues of the distinction between doubling and dislocation,
concerning this phenomenon, suggested within GB in Bojadzhiev et al 1998:565, and
the expression of this distinction in HPSG terms has to be considered.
Moreover, the formal distinction between doubling and apposition, as well as
the issues of structural obligatoriness, cf.5a-c below, from optionality, cf. 4a-c,
closely concern the relevance of HPSG architecture of VP to Bulgarian:
(5a) Na deteto mu se spi
To the child him refl sleep
‘The child feels like sleeping’
(5b) * Na deteto se spi
To the child refl sleep
4.3. Directions for problems’ solution
Different approaches for the solution of formal-structural problems, presented
by doubled verb complements. are possible.
Firstly, both mu ‘him’ and na choveka ‘to the man’ in 4c can be considered as
representing two separate complements. This, however, if not further constrained,
would entail that in 4a and 4b there is still one unrealized complement, which is not
true.
An alternative approach, suggested in the GB analysis of J. Penchev (Penchev
1993:122), is to consider the pronominal object mu ’him’ as clitic specifier of the
verb in 4c, cf. Fig.1 below.
In a more recent analysis (Bojadzhiev et al 1998:564-568) the doubling
pronoun in 4c is defined as pronominal adjunct which is a VP sister, dominated by
an upper VP segment, cf. Fig. 2:
Figure 1
Figure 2
VP
VP
ClP
V
V
PP1
VP
PP
V
PP1
Cl dat
V
mu
him
kazhi
tell
NP
istinata na choveka
the truth to the man
V
mu kazhi
him tell
NP
istinata na choveka
the truth to the man
These generativist contributions to the analysis of double verb complements
in Bulgarian deserve serious consideration and re-interpretation into a feature
structure consistent with the HPSG framework.
When exploring the cross-linguistic relevance of the structural aspects of
argument doubling, the analyses of similar structures in other Balkan languages
(Barbu 2001, Mladenov 1968 ) and French and Spanish (Simeonov 1971 and
Kynchev 1972) should also be taken into account.
Special attention in regard to verb complementation mechanism in Bulgarian
deserves the analysis of the usage of pronominal arguments that do not satisfy the
illocution conditions, as presented by M. Videnov (Videnov 1990:383) These cases
refer to the con-situational semantics and pose problems to the logical-semantic
grounds of the HPSG theory.
The interpretations of verb argument doubling in Bulgarian in terms of themerheme relations, as discussed in Ro Hauge 1999:207-210 provide interesting
pragmatic insights and some traditional analyses, such as (Popov 1979), treat them in
their historical and empirical aspect.
5. Basic methodological principles of seeking Bulgarian-specific relevance
in HPSG
By providing empirical cross-language analyses based on certain
hypothesized universal constraints of HPSG theory, the application of HPSG to
Bulgarian language tests their universal relevance. It provides feedback, based on
bringing HPSG constraints into action cross-linguistically, that facilitates theory
evaluation. The systematic verification of the universality hypothesis to particular
syntactic domains provides useful data and support the basic principles of the theory.
The structure of the results of the HPSG analysis of Bulgarian should be
based on consistent logical principles that will make possible their further
implementation in HPSG-based computational systems, such as Trale and ConTroll.
The formal analysis structures can be tested and evaluated on parallel
syntactic databases.
The HPSG analysis of Bulgarian can provide useful comments and eventual
revisions of some universal and parochial principles of English, enriching them with
a cross-language perspective.
However, the evaluation of the HPSG constraints should not aim at simply
rejecting or confirming their relevance to Bulgarian in contrast to English and other
languages, but would rather seek refinement of constraints’ claim and ways to
incorporate language–specific variations. Thus, the analysis is to be based on the
investigation of the formal syntactic mechanism of sharing common components and
the addition (or deletion) of language-specific ones consistent with a logic
formalism.
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