LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC RULES IN A 
TREE ADJOINING GRAMMAR 
Anne Abeill6* 
LADL and UFRL 
University of Paris 7-Jussieu 
abeille@zeta.ibp.fr 
ABSTRACT 
according to this definition 2. Each elementary 
tree is constrained to have at least one terminal 
at its frontier which serves as 'head' (or 'anchor'). 
Sentences of a Tag language are derived from the 
composition of an S-rooted initial tree with other 
elementary trees by two operations: substitution 
(the same operation used by context free 
grammars) or adjunction, which is more 
powerful. 
Taking examples from English and French idioms, this 
paper shows that not only constituent structures rules but 
also most syntactic rules (such as topicalization, wh-question, 
pronominalization ...) are subject to lexical constraints (on 
top of syntactic, and possibly semantic, ones). We show that 
such puzzling phenomena are naturally handled in a 
'lexJcalized' formalism such as Tree Adjoining Grammar. The 
extended domain of locality of TAGs also allows one to 
'lexicalize' syntactic rules while defining them at the level of 
constituent structures. 
1 INTRODUCTION TO 'LEXICALIZED' 
GRAMMARS 
1.1 Lexicalizing Phrase Structure rules 
In most current linguistic theories the 
information put in the lexicon has been increased 
in both amount and complexity. Viewing 
constituent structures as projected from the 
lexicon for example avoids the often noted 
redundancy between Phrase Structure rules and 
subcategorization frames. Lexical constraints on 
the well-formedness of linguistic outputs has also 
simplified the previous transformational 
machinery. 
Collapsing phrase-structure rules into the 
lexicon is the overt purpose of 'lexicali7ed' 
grammars as defmed by Schabes, Abeill6, Joshi 
1988 : a 'lexicallzed' grammar consists of a fmite 
set of elementary structures, each of which is 
systematically associated with one (or more) 
lexical item serving as 'head'. These structures are 
combined with one another with one or more 
combining operation(s). These structures specify 
extended domains of locality (as compared to 
CFGs) over which lexical constraints can be 
stated. The 'grammar' consists of a lexicon where 
each lexical item is associated with a finite 
number of structures for which that item is the 
'head'. 
We here assume familiarity with Tree Adjoining 
Grammars, which are naturally 'lexicalized' 
* The author wants to thank Yves Schabes, Aravind Joshi, 
Maurice Gro~, Sharon Cote and Tilman Becker for fruitful 
discussions, and Robert Giannasi and Beatrice Santorini for 
their help. 
Schabes, Abeill~, Jo~hl 1988 show that context 
free grammars cannot in general be lexicalized 
(using substitution only as the combining 
operation). They also show that lexicalized 
grammars are interesting from a computational 
point of view since lexicalization simplifies 
parsing techniques, because the parser uses only a 
relevant subset of the entire grammar: in a first 
stage, the parser selects a set of elementary 
structures associated with the lexical items in the 
input sentence, and in a second stage the 
sentence is parsed with respect to this set. As 
shown by Schabes, Joshi 1989, a parser's 
performances are thus improved. 
We show here that such 'lexicalization' should be 
extended to other components of the grammar as 
well, thus challenging the usual distinction 
between 'lexical' and 'syntactic' rules. Further 
parsing simplification is therefore expected. 
1.2 'Lexicalizing' lexicai rules 
As has often been noticed, rules (or transitivity 
alternations) such as passive, particle hopping, 
middle, dative-shift ... are subject to lexical 
idiosyncrasies. There are of course syntactic and 
semantic constraints governing such phenomena, 
but lexical ones seem to be at stake to. 
If one considers double objects constructions, 
passivation of the second NP is regularly ruled 
out on syntactic grounds. Passivation of the first 
NP, on the other hand is subject to lexical 
restrictions as the example of 'cost', opposed to 
'envy' or 'spare', shows: 
They envy John his new car. 
John is envied his new car. 
The mistake cost Mary a chance to win. 
?* Mary was cost a chance to win. 
The judge kindly spared John the ordeal. 
John was kindly spared the ordeal. 
One might argue that such differences may be 
due to some semantic constraints, but even verbs 
with similar meaning may exhibit striking 
differences. For example, in French, 'regarder' in 
292 2 Categorial grammars are also 'lexicalized'. 
its figurative readin£ (to concern) and 
'concerner', which is a true synonym in this 
context, behave differently:. 
Cette affaire regarde Jean 
* Jean est regard6 par cette affaire 
Cette affaire concerne Jean 
Jean est conceru~ par cette affaire (M. Gross 
1975) 
It also seems a lexical phenomenon that "change" 
but not "transform" allows for ergative alternation 
in English' 
The witch changed/transformed John into a wolf 
John changed into a wolf 
* John transformed into a wolf (G. Lakoff 1970) 
To take another example, dative shift (or there- 
insertion) is often thought of as applying to a 
semantically restricted set of verbs (eg verbs of 
communication or of change of possession, for 
dative), but this does not predict the difference 
between 'tell' that allows for it, and 'announce' or 
'explain' which do not3: 
John told his ideas to Mary 
John told Mary his ideas 
John explained his ideas to Mary 
* John explained Mary his ideas 
Lexicalist frameworks such as GPSG, which 
handles such phenomena by metarules (defined 
on 'lexical' PS rules), or LFG, which defmes them 
at the f-structure level (ie between 'lexical forms') 
could capture such restrictions. D. Flickin£er 
1987 handles them explicitly with a hierarchical 
lexicon in HPSG, considering such rules to hold 
between two word classes (verbs here) and to 
apply by default unless they are explicitly blocked 
in the lexicon. 
But all these representations rely on a clear-cut 
distinction between lexical and syntactic rules and 
it is not clear how they could be extended to the 
latter. 
2 LEXICAL CONSTRAINTS ON SYNTACTIC 
RULES 
The distinction between 'syntactic' rules 4 that do 
not usually change argument structure nor 
3 To dismiss 'announce' or 'explain' on the mere basis of 
their latin origin would not do, since 'offer', which comes 
from latin as well, does exhibit dative shift. 
4 Wc use the term 'rule' for conveniency. It does not matter 
for our pu~, whether these phenomena are captured by 
meaning of the sentence and are supposed to 
apply regularly on syntactic structures, and 
'lexical' rules that alter argument structure, may 
change the meaning of the predicate and may 
exhibit some lexical idiosyncrasies, usually 
overlooks the fact that both are subject to lexical 
constraints. 
There has often been discussions about whether 
certain rules, (eg passive or extraposition) should 
be considered of one kind or the other. But it has 
seldom been realized, to the best of our 
knowledge, how often 'syntactic' rules are 
prevented to apply on what seems purely lexical 
grounds5. 
Our discussion crucially relies on idiomatic or 
semi-idiomatic constructions. We believe that a 
sizable grammar of natural language, as well as 
any realistic natural language application, cannot 
ignore them, since their frequency is quite high in 
real texts (M. Gross 1989). We first present 
examples of such lexical constraints on 
topicalization, pronomi~aliTation and wh- 
question for both English and French idioms. We 
then show that similar constraints can be found in 
non idiomatic sentences. 
2.1 Flexibility of idiomatic constructions 
Idioms are usually divided into two sets (eg J. 
Bresnan 1982, T. Wasow et al. 1982): 'fLxed' ones 
(not subject to any syntactic rule) and flexible 
ones (presumably subject to all). However, there 
is quite a continuum between both. 
Let us take two French idioms usually considered 
as "fixed': 'casser la croflte' (to have a bite) and 
'demander ia lune' (to ask for the impossible). It 
is true that passivation or wh-question do not 
apply to either. But pronominalization for the 
former, cleft-extraction (c'est que) for the latter 
do6: 
Paul a casse la crotite (Paul had a bite) 
# Quelle crofite casse-t-il ? 
# C'est une petite cro0te qu'il a cassee. 
derivation rules as such or by constraints on the well- 
formedness of ou~ut structures. 
5 An interesting exception being Kaplan and Zaenen 1989's 
proposal that wh-movement and topicalization be 
constrained at the f-structure level, ie by LFG's 'lexical 
forms'. 
6 # marks that the sentence is not possible with the desired 
idiomatic interpretation. There may be some variations 
among speakers about acceptability judgements on such 
sentences (and on some of the following ones). Such 
variability is indeed a property of lexical phenomena. 
293 
? Paul est en train de casser une petite cro~te et 
j'en casserais bien une anssi. (Paul is having a 
little bite, I wouldn't mind having one too) 
Jeanne demande la lune 
# Ouelle lune demande-t-elle ? 
C'est la lune qu'clle demande ! 
# Jeanne demande la lune et Paule la demande 
aussi. (Jeanne is askin~ for the moon and i'm 
asking for it too) 
These idioms are thus not completely fixed (as 
opposed to idioms such as 'casser sa pipe' or 'kick 
the bucket'), and some grammatical function 
must be assigned to their frozen NPs. But the 
differences among them are somewhat 
unexpected: 'casser la cro~te' (where the noun 
can be modified and take several determiners) 
does not allow for more rules than 'demander la 
lune' (where the frozen NP is completely fixed). 
If one now takes an idiom usually considered as 
flexible, 'briser la glace' (to break the ice), which 
does passivize, we notice the same distribution as 
with 'casser la crof, e': 
Paul a bris6 la glace 
# Ouelle glace a-t-il bris6e ? 
# C'est la glace qu'il brise 
77 Jean a bris6 la glace hier et c'est ~ moi de la 
briser aujourd'hul. (Paul broke the ice yesterday 
and I have to break it today) 
Passive is allowed but not wh-question, nor 
cleft extraction. It is difficult to dismiss such 
phenomena as rare exceptions. Looking at 
numerous idioms shows that one combination of 
such rules is not more frequent than the other. It 
is also difficult to fred a clear semantic principle 
at work here. 
Similar restrictions seem to be at work in 
English. If one takes some English idioms usually 
considered as 'flexible' (or even not idiomatic at 
all): NP0 give hell/the boot to NP1. The main 
verb 'give' seems to behave syntactically and 
semantically as in non idiomatic constructions: 
Dative shift applies and we have the regular 
semantic alternation : NP1 get hell/the boot 
(from NP0), with identical meaning. But it is not 
the case that all expecte rules apply: passive is 
blocked, pronominalization on the object too: 
# Hell was given to Mary (by John) 
# The boot was given to Mary (by John) 
# Alice gave hell to Paul yesterday and she is 
giving it to Oscar now. 
# Oscar gave the boot to Mary, and he will give it 
to Bob too. 
294 
Syntactic rules may also apply differently to 
distinct 'flexible' idioms. It is easy to lind idioms 
which do passivize but don't allow for 
pronominaliTation or topicaliTation in the same 
way: 
They hit the bull's eye. 
The bull's eye, they hit. 
? John hit the bull's eye and Paul hit it too. 
They buried the hatchet. 
77 The hatchet, they buried. 
# John buried the hatchet and Paul buried it/one 
too. 
For relativation also, there might be similar 
differences: 
The strings that Chris pulled helped hime get the 
job (Wasow et al. 1982) 
# The bull's eye that John hit helped him get the 
job. 
# The hatchet that he buried helped him get the 
job. 
Distinguishing between fixed and flexible idioms 
is thus not sufficient. Because different rules 
apply to them differently, without a clear 
hierarchy (contrary to Fraser 1970), one should 
distinguish as many different types of flexibility as 
there are possible combinations of such rules. 
Similarly, if one wants to follow T. Wasow et al. 
1982 's suggestion that some kind of 
compositional semantics should be held 
responsible for the syntactic flexibility of idioms, 
as many degrees of compositionality should be 
defined as there are combinations of syntactic 
properties. Direct encoding of the latter is thus 
preferable, and such a semantic 'detour' does not 
seem to help. 
This does not mean that no regularities could 
be found for idioms' syntax but that they have to 
be investigated at a more lexical level. 
2.2 Some lexical constraints on non Idiomatic 
constructions 
Going back to non idiomatic constructions, it 
seems that their syntactic properties may be 
subject to similar lexical idiosyncrasies. 
If one considers double objects constructions, It 
seems a lexical phenomenon that wh-question on 
the second N-P is allowed with 'give' or 'spare', 
and not with 'envy' or 'cost', and that 
topicalization is allowed with 'spare' only: 
They envy John his new car 
* What/* Which car do they envy John 7 
* This brand new car, everyone envies John 
The mistake cost Mary a chance to win 
* What/ *Which chance did the mistake cost 
Mary ? 
* This unique chance, the mistake cost Mary 
The judge' spared John the ordeal 
What / Which ordeal did the judge spare John ? 
This ordeal, the judge kindly spared John 
If one now considers the first NP, topicMi-ation 
appfies differently to: 
* Mary, the mistake cost a chance to win 
.9 John, you have always envied his extraordinary 
luck 
John, the judge kindly spared the ordeal 
In French, as noted by M. Gross 1969, properties 
usually thought of as applying to aLl 'direct 
objects'(passivation, Que-question and Le- 
cliticizatlon) may apply in fact unpredictingiy. 
Although the objects of a verb like 'almer' (love) 
take objects undergoing the three of them, the 
object of 'valoir'(be worth) only allows for Que- 
question and Lc-¢llti¢i|TagiOiX, that of 'co~\]tter' 
(cost) only for Que-quesfion and that of 'passer' 
(spend (time)) only allows for Le-cliticization: 
Each elementary tree in a Tag is lexicalized in 
the sense that it is headed by (at least) one lexical 
item. The category of a word in the lexicon is the 
name of the tree it selects. We only consider here 
sentential trees for the sake of simpficity. 
What lexical heads select is in fact a set of 
such elementary trees called a "Tree Family ~ 
(Abeill~ 1988, Abeill~ et al. 1990), each tree 
correspondln~ to a certain constituent sructure 
(initial trees for wh-questions, auxiliary trees for 
relative clauses...). This is the level at which 
syntactic generMiTJtions can be stated, since each 
elementary tree may bear specific constraints 
independantly of any iexical items B. A Tree 
Family consists in fact of all the constituent 
structures trees which are possibly allowed for a 
given predicate 9. 
Examples of trees in the n0Vnl Family (verbs 
taking two NP arguments) are the followlngl0: 
II 
S a! S 
sP~ vl, A NPo~ VP 
VO NPI~ J v9 
Ce livre vaut cents francs. 
(This book is worth 100 francs) 
Ce livre les vaut. 
Que vaut ce fivre ? 
Ce Hvre coQte cent francs. 
(This book costs I00 francs) 
* Ce livre les co0te. 
Que coOte ce liwe ? 
11 a pass6 la nuit A travailler. (He spent the night 
working) 
II l'a pass6e t travailler. 
*Qu' a-t-il pass6 A travailler .97 
These differences are all the more surpri~in£ 
that 'cofiter' and 'valoir' are otherwise very dose 
verbs (same subcategorization frames, ~me 
selectional restrictions). 
Looking for some generalization principles with 
which to predict such restrictions should be 
pursued, but it seems that they will be of a lexlcal 
kind. 
3 LEXICALIZED RULES IN A TREE 
ADJOINING GRAMMAR 
3.1 Tree Families 
7 ? Quelle nuit a-t-ii pasrde i travailler ? would be better. 
295 
S al s t~ 
A NP,~t .,~tJ S NP0~ VP 
P NI~ I 
8 Further subdividing these Tree Families, similarly to M. 
Gross 1975's verb tables for French, and to D. Flickinger 
1987's wcqrd classes for English, will help reduce the number 
of features, and thus the amount of seemingly idiot~cratic 
information, associated with each verb. However, as noted by 
both authors, lexical idioayncrasies will never be eliminated 
altogether. 
9 Tree Family names (nOV, nOVnl...) are somewhat similar 
to 'lexical forms' in LFG in the sense that they capture both 
the predicate argument structure and the associated 
grammatical functions (which we note by indices: 0 for 
subject, l for first object...). Notice that the Tree Family name 
does not change when lexical rules apply. 
10~marks a substitution node,0marks the head. We use here 
standard TAG trees for commodity of extx~tion, although 
recent independent linguistic work suggests to slightly modify 
them, challenging for example the distinction between VP 
and V levels (see Abeill~, in preparation). 
Each tree is identified by a Tree family name 
associated to a feature bundle correspondin~ to 
the rules it involves. For example, a2, a3 and a4 
are respectively marked11: 
al (nOVnl) a2 (nOVnl) 
passive f- passive = + 
Wh-0--- Wh-1 -- - 
Wh-1--- Wh-0 ffi - 
erg =- 
a3 (n0Vnl) a4 (n0Vnl) 
passive=- passive ffi + 
Wh-l=- Wh-1 = + 
erg= + Wh-O = - 
A given tree can belong to several tree 
families at the same time, which helps factorizing 
the grammar in a parsing perspective. For 
example, a3 can also be considered as belon~n~ 
to the nOV Family (for verbs with one NI' 
argument) with a different feature bundle : 
passive =-; Wh-0 = -. The lexical items headin~ the 
tree constrain~ its interpretation, eg 'sleep' will 
interpret a3 as nOV, while 'bake' or 'walk' 
interpret it as n0Vnl. 
Lexical constraints on syntactic and lexical 
rules are handled by having the head select its 
own subset of trees in its tree family. 
For example, 'resemble' selects only active 
trees; 'rumored' only passive ones, and 'love' 
select both12:. 
\[love\],V : n0Vnl \[erg=-\] 
\[resemble\],V: n0Vnl \[passive =-; erg=-\] 
\[rumored\],V: n0Vnl \[part, lye = + \] 
\[donate\],V; to,P : n0VPnl \[dative =-;erg=-\] 
\[give\],V;to,P: n0VPnl \[erg=-\] 
\[spare\],V:n0Vnln2 
These features work as follows: when nothing 
is said about a feature, it means that the predicate 
selects trees with the feature being plus of minus; 
11 One might explicitly define materules, or links between 
such trees: a passive rule for example, changes the feature 
passive of the tree and intervert the features bearing on NO 
and N1. Work is being curretly done along this line with T. 
Becket, Y. Schabes and K. Vijay Shanker. 
12 We note with square \[I the set of inflected forms of a 
lexical item. For example, \[10ve\] = give, g~.s, gave, giving. 
given. We use a restriction principle to rule out erg= + 
whenever passive = + (or dativ~ = +), and vice vemh to the 
ergative feature does not have to appear in the lexicon for 
'rumored'. 
when a feature is marked plus, it means that only 
trees with this feature plus are selected (ie that 
the corresponding rule is 'forced' to apply). 
Such 'lexicallzation' of syntactic rules applies 
similarly in idiomatic and non idiomatic 
constructions. 
3.2 Idioms in a Lexlcalized Tree Adjoining 
Grammar 
Tags seem a natural framework to represent 
structures which at the same time are 
semantically non compositional and should be 
assigned regular syntactic structures (Abeill6 and 
Schabes 1989, 1990). Idioms are thus made fall 
into the same grammar as non idiomatic 
coustructious. The only specificity of idioms is 
that they are selected by a multicomponent head 
(called 'anchor') and may select elementary trees 
which are more extended than non idiomatic 
constructions. Here are some examples of 
elementary trees for 'kick the bucket', 'bury the 
hatchet' and 'take NI' into account': 
S i~ S ~t. 
A A NPo,L vr ~Po~ vp 
V e Np I x 
A 
I I I I 
the bucket tlx ~chet 
A NP0~ vr 
0V NPx~. PP2 s't 
I A 
I I 
into tN 2N A 
I 
Kcotm¢ 
The lexical anchors are respectively 'kick', "the' 
and "bucket' for (1, 'bury', 'the' and 'hatchet' for 
¢2, and 'take', 'into' and 'account' for ,t3. The 
idiomatic interpretation of sentences such as 
'John kicked the bucket', as opposed to their 
296 
literal readln~ is strail~forwardly based on their 
distinct derivation trees'-': 
toni\[kick. ;\] 
o.N'Pn\[John\] (1) ctNPdntbucket\] (2.2) c~tdnl\[klck .the.bucket\] : ', 
! ! 
¢zD\[the\] (1) o.NPa\[John\] (1) 
literal derivation idiomatic derivation 
Idiomatic and non idiomatic elementary trees are 
gathered into tree families according to the 
same principles. Here are some examples of the 
trees belonging to the Family of idioms with a 
frozen object (nOVDN1): 
S ~ S a 3 
NPoi VP .%1*, .... *, S 
VO NP, N'Po,va VP 
• ¢ ~ V¢ NIP: 
//~ .~,f"x., 
vp .,,,,.o /,\ 
o o VO (Pp~ vo sP~., 
(~:0 / \ 
~1 ,v. V ,, 
counterpart, although it allows for passive : "Par 
quelle mouche a-t-il 6t6 piqu~ ?" (M. Gross 
19s9). 
\[prendre\],V;ie,D;temps,N: DN0Vnllpassive= +\] 
\[piquer\],V;mouche,N : NOVnl \[Wh.N0 =+ \] 
Notice that the tree familiy name tells not only 
about the argument structure but also about the 
head being multicomponent or not (all head 
elements are noted with capital letter). Usually, 
no part of a multicomponent head can be 
omitted, and trees that are possible for this 
argument structure but in which all head 
elements could not be inserted will be ruled out. 
For example, what-questions (noted Wh-i) are 
generally disallowed with frozen nominals (and 
thus not noted for each iexical entry), whereas 
questions with wh-determiners (noted Wh-Ni) 
are not: 
John took a trip to Spain 
# What did John take ? 
? Which trip to Spain did John take ? (AbeRl6 et 
at. 1990) 
In fact, as has been noted by M. Gross 1989 
for French, Wh-Ni questions seem to be ruled out 
when the determiner of the argument is 
completely fixed, as the following contrasts show:. 
John spilled the/those beans 
John buried the/#thi~/#a hatchet 
Which bean(s) did John spill ? 
# Which hatchet did John bury ? 
Similarly, idioms bear syntactic features 
constrainln£ the elementary trees of the Tree 
Family they select. In the n0VDN1 Tree Family, 
for e~mmple, 'kick the bucket' selects only al, and 
the trees corresponding to wh-movement 
on NO; 'bury the hatchet' selects 
also the trees for passive (and possibly 
topic~liT.'ation on N1). 
\[bury\],V;the,D;hatchet,N: n0VDN1 \[Wh-N1  -\] 
\[kick\],V;the,D;bucket,N: n0VDN1 \[passive=-; 
Wh-N1 =-; Top-N1=-\] 
This generalization which can be captured since 
the Tree family names will be different (with D 
for frozen determiners, and d for not frozen 
ones): 
\[spill\],V; \[beun\],N: n0VdN1 
\[bury\],V; the,D; hatchet,N: n0VDN1 
The trees for the Wh-N questions will thus belong 
only to the corresponding 'd' Families, and not to 
the 'D' ones. 
CONCLUSION 
There are some idioms which exist only in the 
passive form, or in the question form, and the 
correspond;no trees are directly selected. In 
French, "~tre pris par le temps" (to be very busy) 
lacks its active counterpart (* Le temps prend 
Jean), and "Quelle mouche a piqe6 NP ?" (What's 
eating NP ?) lacks its non interrogative 
13 "l'he derived trees are the same (modulo the syntactic 
features explained above). 
297 
It has been shown that taklno, idiomatic or semi- 
idiomatic constructions into account in a French 
or Enali~ grammar forces one to define some 
lexical constraints on syntactic rules such as wh- 
question, pronominaliTation and topicalization. 
Such a lexical treatment has been exemplified 
using Lexicalized Tree Adjoining grammars. An 
interestlno point about TAGs is that, due to their 
extended domain of locality, they enable one to 
consider as 'lexicar syntactic rules bearing on 
constituent structures, and not only rules 
changing the syntactic category of a predicate (as 
D. Dowry 1978) or rules chan#,~ the argument 
structure of a predicate (as in T. Wasow 1977 or 
D. Flickinger 1987). 
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298 
