A Minimalist Head-Corner Parser

A Minimalist Head-Corner Parser Mettina Veenstra vakgroep Alfa-informatica, University of Groningen Postbus 716 NL-9700 AS Groningen Mettina@let.rug.nl Abstract In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1992) it is assumed that there are different types of projections (lexical and functional) and therefore different types of heads. This paper explains why functional heads are not treated as head-corners by the mini- realist head-corner parser described here. 1 Introduction In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1992) 'sur- face' word order is determined in a very indirect way. Word order is no longer a property of phrase struc- ture, because phrase structure is universal. Fur- thermore movements are universal. This implies in principle that when we parse comparable sen- tences in different languages, we always build the same tree. Word order differences are distinguished by the choice of the moment of Spell Out (SO). SO is the point in the derivation where instructions are given to an interface level called PF (Phonetic Form). Thus SO yields what was formerly called surface structure. SO determines in which position in the tree a certain constituent becomes visible and consequently it determines the relative order of the constituents of a sentence. This is illustrated in the simplified tree in figure 1. Note that each cluster of co-indexed positions (i.e. a chain) in the figure has only one visible constituent. This is the position in which the constituent is represented at the moment of SO. This moment is not universal. The verb chain of our English example gives instructions to the in- terface level PF when the verb is adjoined to AgrS (head of the agreement phrase of the subject). The verb chain of a comparable sentence in Dutch 'spells out' when the verb is in V. Thus in Dutch subor- dinate clauses the movement of the verb to AgrO (head of the agreement phrase of the object) and CP u I /\ C AgrSP I /\ that~ DP AgrS I /\ she~ AgrS AgrOP /\ V AgrS ej AorO I /\ likesk AgrO VP o(; I V AgrO /\ ek V DP [ L ek catsj Figure 1: A simplified tree for a transitive subordinate clause in English subsequently AgrS happens 'covertly'. The motiva- tion for covert movement can be found in (Chomsky, 1992, pages 38-40). In the following sections we will show that the structure building operations of the Minimalist Pro- gram are bidirectional operations. Because head- corner parsing is a bidirectional strategy, this type of parser seems more favorable for minimalist pars- ing, than the usual left to right parsing algorithms. 2 GT and Move-c~ The central operations of the Minimalist Program are Generalized Transformation (GT) and Move- ~. GT is a structure-building operation that builds trees in a bottom-up way as is illustrated in figure 2. 338 w V V /\ /\ V e V DP YYl II ~e her ~e see her Figure 2: GT applied to V and DP yielding ~'. Two phrase markers (V and DP) are combined into one. One of these two …

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