Elamur Research⌕
☰
home / papers / 2017 / English partitives in Functional Discourse Grammar: types and constraints

English partitives in Functional Discourse Grammar: types and constraints

Paper · 2017 · Evelien Keizer

Summary

The paper asks why some English partitives (one of the boxes, some of the cake) are acceptable while others (one of both books, many of objections) are not. It also asks how these restrictions relate to the construction's internal structure. Earlier work treated those two questions separately. Keizer instead sorts partitives along two dimensions: whether the matrix NP denotes a set, and whether the heads of the matrix and embedded NPs are co-denotational. This yields four subtypes. Using authentic examples from BNC, COCA and the Internet, she shows that the well-known restrictions on the embedded NP affect only the two co-denotational subtypes, and that the restrictions follow from that shared-head relation. Partitives therefore need no special syntax: they are ordinary "N + of-PP" noun phrases with a particular head relation. The analysis is formalised in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), whose separate pragmatic, semantic and morphosyntactic levels can encode each subtype. This matters because it replaces a long series of ad hoc constraints with one principled explanation.

Key points

  • The four partitive subtypes are subset-set, submass-mass, member-collection (one of the couple/crowd) and portion-entity (some of the book). They are defined by the ±set and ±co-denotational parameters.
  • Earlier constraints all proved too strong or too weak when checked against corpus data:
    • Selkirk's (1977) Partitive Recursion Constraint required a definite, non-partitive embedded NP.
    • Ladusaw (1982) required specific reference.
    • Reed proposed discourse-pragmatic accounts.
  • Attested examples such as one of only a few middle-class… students and one of any possible environmental ethics show that non-specific indefinite embedded NPs occur naturally.
  • In FDG, the contrast between one of both books (bad) and one of the two books (fine) is handled by explicit marking. Both carries a distributive operator in underlying structure. With the two, distributivity is only a matter of interpretation.
  • An abstract, lexically empty head is used for several cases:
    • impersonal one;
    • the split between anyone (+Hum) and anything (–Anim);
    • the split between the pronoun anyone and the quantifier-plus-pronoun any one;
    • pronominal partitives like many of us, where no noun can be restored because the embedded pronoun assigns no property.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Classify a construction by a small set of binary features, then test whether a known restriction holds only within certain feature cells; this localises constraints instead of patching a global rule.
  • I2. Treat partitives as ordinary N + of-PP phrases and locate the difference in the head relation rather than in special syntax; this keeps the grammar small.
  • I3. Distinguish distributivity that is coded in the form (both) from distributivity that is merely inferred (the two); this explains acceptability contrasts that semantic similarity alone cannot.
  • I4. Represent pronouns as abstract heads carrying only coarse features (+Hum, –Anim) and an operator; this separates anyone from any one and explains why many of us has no restorable head noun.
  • I5. Use attested corpus examples to test constraints that earlier work justified with invented starred sentences; claimed ungrammatical forms (one of the crowd) often turn out to be acceptable.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (tree): Partitive "N of NP" attachments could carry a subtype label from these two features, so the parser or a repair rule applies determiner checks only to co-denotational cases.
  • I2 (world): When building entities, one of the boxes can create a new entity linked by a subset relation to the set entity "the boxes", reusing the same machinery as other of-PPs.
  • I3 (frames): Frame and coreference logic can keep a "coded distributive" flag separate from an "inferred distributive" one, which helps decide plural-versus-individual readings of predicates.
  • I4 (world): Indefinite and partitive pronouns can map to entity templates with feature restrictions instead of lexical types, making their resolution explainable.
  • I5 (learn): Evaluation sets with negative controls should draw "bad" cases from data-checked judgments, so the system is not trained to reject real usage.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of ViennaVienna · Austria16 works · 38,729 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 4The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 16,039 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 15,891 worksPsychology · 1,552 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 499 works

🧭 Topics 2Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 2,263 worksDiscourse analysis · 466 works

Cite

Cite as Evelien Keizer. 2017. English partitives in Functional Discourse Grammar: types and constraints. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.5334/gjgl.11

@article{keizer2017english,
  title = {{English partitives in Functional Discourse Grammar: types and constraints}},
  author = {Evelien Keizer},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2017},
  doi = {10.5334/gjgl.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.11}
}

References

40 references, 3 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. Abbott, Barbara. 1996. Doing without a Partitive Constraint. In Jack Hoeksema (ed.), Partitives: studies on the syntax and semantics of partitive and related constructions, 26–56. Berlin: Mouton the Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110908985.25 ↗
  2. Barker, Chris. 1998. Partitives, double genitives and anti-uniqueness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 16. 679–717. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005917421076 ↗
  3. Barwise, John & Cooper Robin. 1981. Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguistic Philosophy 4(2). 159–220. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00350139 ↗
  4. Brown, Richard. 1985. Term operators. In A. Machteld Bolkestein, Casper de Groot & J. Lachlan Mackenzie (eds.), Predicates and terms in Functional Discourse Grammar, 127–145. Dordrecht: Foris. de Hoop, Helen. 1997. A semantic reanalysis of the partitive constraint. Lingua 103. 151–174. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(97)00018-1 de Hoop, Helen. 2003. Partitivity. In Lisa Cheng & Rint Sybesma (eds.), The second Glot International State-of-the Article book: The latest in Linguistics, 179–212. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ↗
  5. Dik, Simon C. 1978. Functional Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. find
  6. Givón, Talmy. 1988. The pragmatics of word order: Predictability, importance and attention. In Michael Hammonds, Edith A. Moravcsik & Jessica Wirth (eds.), Studies in syntactic typology, 234–284. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ↗
  7. Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: a functional typological introduction, Vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. find
  8. Günther, Christine. 2013. The elliptical Noun Phrase in English: Structure and use. London: Routledge. find
  9. Hawkins, John A. 1978. Definiteness and indefiniteness. London: Croom Helm. find
  10. Hengeveld, Kees & J Lachlan Mackenzie. 2008. Functional Discourse Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278107.001.0001 ↗
  11. Hoeksema, Jack. 1984. Partitives. Ms. University of Groningen. find
  12. Hoeksema, Jack. 1996. Introduction. In Jack Hoeksema (ed.), Partitives: studies on the syntax and semantics of partitive and related constructions, 1–25. Berlin: Mouton the Gruyter. find
  13. Jackendoff, Ray J. 1981. X’ Syntax. 2nd printing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. find
  14. Janssen, Maarten. 2014. Half and other unique words: Corpus patterns and lexicalist syntax. In Raffaele Simone & Francesca Masini (eds.), Word Classes: Nature, typology and representations (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 332), 263–282. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ↗
  15. Keenan, Edward L. & Jonathan Stavi. 1986. A semantic characterization of natural language determiners. Linguistics and Philosophy 9. 253–326. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF00630273 Keizer, Evelien. in preparation. Partitives with coordinated plural embedded NPs Keizer, Evelien. 2007. The English Noun Phrase: the nature of linguistic categorization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511627699 ↗
  16. Keizer, Evelien. 2011. English proforms: an alternative account. English Language and Linguistics 15(2). 303–334. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674311000050 ↗
  17. Keizer, Evelien. 2012. Proforms in Functional Discourse Grammar. Language Sciences 34(4). 400–420. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2012.02.009 ↗
  18. Keizer, Evelien & Wim Honselaar. 2009. A Functional Discourse Grammar account of set nouns in Dutch and its implications for lexicography. International Journal of Lexicography 22(4). 361–397. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecp023 ↗
  19. Ladusaw, William A. 1982. Semantic constraints on the English partitive construction. In Daniel P. Flickinger, Marlys Macken & Nancy Wiegand (eds.), Proceedings of the First West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 231–242. Stanford, CA: Linguistics Department Stanford. find
  20. Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. find
  21. Lyons, John 1977. Semantics, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  22. Milsark, Gary L. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis 3. 1–30. find
  23. Partee, Barbara. 1972. Opacity, coreference and pronouns. In Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds.), Semantics of natural language, 415–441. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2557-7_13 ↗
  24. Payne, John, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Barbara C. Scholz & Eva Berlage. 2013. Anaphoric one and its implications. Language 89(4). 794–829. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ lan.2013.0071 Payne, John & Rodney Huddleston. 2002. Nouns and Noun Phrases. In Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 323–523. ↗
  25. Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of Given-New. In Peter Cole (ed.), Radical pragmatics, 223–255. New York: Academic Press. find
  26. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. find
  27. Reed, Ann. 1988. Semantic Groups and Discourse Groups. In Joyce Powers & Kenneth de Jong (eds.), Proceedings of the fifth Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, 416–427. Columbus: The Ohio State University. find
  28. Reed, Ann. 1991. On interpreting partitives. In Donna Jo Napoli & Judy Kegl (eds.), Bridges between linguistics and psychology: a Swathmore Festschrift for Lila Gleitman, 207– 224. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. find
  29. Reed, Ann. 1996. Partitives, existentials and partitive determiners. In Jack Hoeksema (ed.), Partitives: studies on the syntax and semantics of partitive and related constructions, 143–178. Berlin: Mouton the Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110908985.143 ↗
  30. Rijkhoff, Jan. 2002. The Noun Phrase. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237822.001.0001 Schütze, Carson. 2001. Semantically empty lexical heads as a last resort. In Norbert Corver & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Semi-lexical categories, 127–188. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110874006.127 ↗
  31. Selkirk, Elisabeth O. 1977. Some remarks on Noun Phrase structure. In Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow & Adrian Akmajian (eds.), Formal syntax, 285–316. New York, NY: Academic Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110874006.127 ↗
  32. Sleeman, Petra. 1996. Licensing empty nouns in French. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam dissertation. find
  33. Stirling, Lesley & Rodney Huddleston. 2002. Deixis and Anaphora. In Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), The Cambridge grammar of the English language, 1449–1566. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ↗
  34. Stockwell, Robert, Paul Schachter & Barbara Partee. 1973. The major syntactic structures of English. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. find
  35. Taylor, John R. 1996. Possessives in English: An exploration in cognitive grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. find
  36. Westerstahl, Dag. 1984. Determiners and context sets. In Johan van Betthem & Alice ter Meulen (eds.), Generalized quantifiers in natural language, 45–71. Dordrecht: Foris. find
  37. Corpora Davies, Mark. 2004. BYU-BNC: The British National Corpus (1980s–1993). Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc. ↗
  38. Davies, Mark. 2008. COCA: The Corpus of Contemporary American English (1990–2015). Available online at http://www.americancorpus.org. ↗
  39. How to cite this article: Keizer, Evelien. 2017. English partitives in Functional Discourse Grammar: types and constraints. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 16. 1–40, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.11 ↗
  40. Copyright: © 2017 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS ↗

Updated

↑ back to top

This page in Markdown → https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/keizer-2017-english-partitives-functional-discourse-grammar/