| Summary: | The aim of this work is show how certain aspects of Syrian phrases and clauses can be analyzed within the Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) framework. This is a framework developed and advanced by Carl Pollard, Ivan Sag and others. This approach draws on many recent theories such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Government and Binding. I will be mainly concerned in this work with the revised version of HPSG advanced in Borsley (1986,1987, forthcoming), on which ideas of this study are based. In chapter one, some theoretical matters will be discussed which are worth considering in relation to the topic of this study. I will more specifically be concerned with a brief description of distinguishing features of Phrase Structure Grammar. I will also introduce some ideas of Categorial Grammar which is one of the main influences on HPSG. In chapter two, I will discuss the important role verb phrases play in Syrian. I will also look at clitic facts. The analysis that I will propose will be based on the revised version of HPSG. Chapter three will be devoted to prepositional phrases. I will consider a variety of Syrian prepositions and argue in great length that they are heads of prepositional phrases. As in the verb phrases chapter, clitics will be a major concern. In chapter four, I will study adjective phrases and show that adjectives can be used predicatively and attributively. In chapter five, I will introduce some noun phrase data and investigate their internal structure. I will show that nouns in Syrian, unlike in English, can take noun phrases which always follow the head noun they modify. In other words, I will show that Syrian noun phrases have what might be called a 'subject' preceded by the head noun and followed by a complement. The reason for calling them 'subjects' is that they seem to occupy a similar position in noun phrases to subjects in verb initial clauses and are interpreted in the same way as a subject when the noun is derived from a verb. However, I will argue that they are not 'subjects', but in fact complements. I will also assume that the definite article is essentially a kind of clitic. That is, it can be analyzed as a realization, like clitics, of the clitic feature. As I did in the previous chapters, I will consider clitics. In chapter six, I will discuss the structure of Syrian clauses. I will look at ordinary clauses where I will argue that Syrian has two possible word order: subject-verb-object, which is the unmarked word order, and verb-subject-object which is also used very frequently. I will proceed to consider -v- English' small clauses and Syrian verbless clauses. It is not too surprising, perhaps, that some similarities and some differences will be found between the two languages. In chapter seven, I will study and analyze 'Unbounded Dependency Constructions'. This is a term introduced in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar during the last decade to refer to a class of constructions standardly analyzed by transformational grammarians as involving WH-Movement. For English, such constructions include Topicalization, Relative Clauses, wh- Questions, etc. It is used because it does not suggest that the correct analysis involves movement. I will also introduce Pollard and Sag's (forthcoming) approach to unbounded dependency constructions. Finally, in chapter eight, I will sum up this work and look at topics for further research.
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