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<Paper uid="C90-2059">
  <Title>Gapping and Frame A fresh look from a cognitive Semantics: perspective</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="342" end_page="345" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 A Conjecture
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We can now state a tentative principle regarding the relation between the intcrI)retation of gapping constructions and their acceptability.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> (5) Role Assignment Principle: A gapping construction with a specific interpretation will be acceptable only if it provides sufficient clues for the role assignment implied by that interpretation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> This principle is similar in spirit to tile R,ecoverability Constraint proposed by I\[ankamer (1973), although it is far more generM as it potentially encompasses all kinds of linguistic phenomena that play a role in interpretation, not just syntax. 2 Note that (5) does not claim that interpretability alone will render a sentence acceptable, a To prevent the conjecture from be2IIankamer's principle was concerned with the recovery of 'deep structure' after having undergone deletions and movement.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> 3If someone used apple green as a noun phrase referring to a green apple we will in general be able to make sense of (i.e., interpret) that description while still recognizing it as ungramnlatical.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> ing vacuous two points have to be addressed.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> First, we have to show that there is a systematic repertoire of linguistic devices available for the interpretation of gapping constructions. Secondly, it must be shown that these devices systematically affect the acceptability of gapping sentences in accordance with the principle.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> In many cases gapping constructions will not be strictly 'good' or 'bad', but felicitous to a certain degree, or acceptable to only some fraction of speakers. This is consistent with the principle stated above, since (5) can easily be rephrased in terms of degrees of acceptability:  (6) Role Assignment Principle (graded version): A gapping construction with a  specific interpretation will tend to become more acceptable as more clues for the intended role assignment are made available.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> Note also that this formulation effectively characterizes interpretation of gapping constructions as an evidential cognitive phenomenon, i.e. one where multiple sources of evidence contribute to a perception or interpretation in a cumulative manner.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="342" end_page="344" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1 Syntactic clues
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Despite the definite non-syntactic influences on gapping, syntax (together with the rules governing its relation to semantics) is the major source of information for interpretation, even when the syntactic structure is 'incomplete'. Clues such as linear order, case marking, and prepositions are still potentially available for the remnant constituents.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Van Oirsouw (1987) has recently suggested a theory in terms of constituent deletion under identity which probably covers as much ground as is possibl e in a purely syntax-oriented framework. 4 Interestingly, he was able to state some surprisingly far-reaching generalizations by ignoring all fine points of phrase structure and simply considering the top-level ordering of constituents.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> In a similar fashion, it seems that for forward gapping, the following simple rule captures a considerable range of cases. It is a straightforward variant of the MinimM Distance Principle proposed by Kuno (1976).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> 4His generalizations can be rephrased without necessarily assuming deletion transformations.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4">  (7) Principle of Surface Proximity: A rem- null nant constituent tends to fill a role whose previous filler is close in surface constituent order. (Fillers of the same role tend to be (:lose.) Consider the following series of examples which have increasing amounts of material intervening between the two filler constituents.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5">  (8) (a) John gave Peter a bagel and a banana (b) :John gave Peter a bagel yesterday, and a banana (c) :?John gave Peter a bagel yesterday before lunch, and a banana (d) :::John gave Peter a bagel yesterday before lunch after he had begged him, and a banana (9) (a) John lent Peter some money, and 0 0 0 some clothes (b) ?John lent his brother some money, and 0 0 his girlfriend 0 (c) ?John lent me some money, and Paul  Again sentences marked '?' require appropriate contrastive intonation to become acceptable (cf. section a.a).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> Note that (7) is not arbitrary; it makes sense from a cognitive point of view. If we assume that roles are sequentially processed and have to be retrieved when refilled, it seems natural that the retrieval tends to become more difficult as the temporal distance from the previous processing event increases.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> At a more abstract level, syntagmatic proximity can be viewed as symbolizing conceptual relatedness (Langacker 1985). Hence the frame unit at the conceptual level corresponds (prototypically) to a clause unit at the syntactic level. Gapping constructions relate not just the fillers of the roles in a single frame but also the various fillers of the same role in different frames. Therefore we would expect those fillers to be syntagmatically close to the extent that the two relational aspects can be accommodated simultaneously. null Note that the case of simple constituent coordination can be seen as the optimal solution to multiple frame realization as far as (7) is concerned, and is generally preferred.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8">  (d) John and Paul lent me some money It represents the case where clause unity has been traded off for for the conceptualized unity of the two fillers of the same slot. (Accordingly we get a reading where John and Paul act as a single 'financial entity' only in (9d), but not in the corresponding gapping construction (9c).) In (8a), on the other hand, we have a case where both clause unity and filler proximity can be integrated perfectly. Note that the view presented here obliterates the question whether (8a) is the result of constituent coordination or a case of gapping. A formally oriented theory might be troubled by a syntactic construction that can be 'redundantly' accounted for by two different rules or principles. For a cognitively oriented account such a coincidence presents no contradiction. 5 One might object that (7) makes the wrong predictions when comparing cases with one rem- null nant to those with multiple remnants.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="9"> (10) (a) John offered me money and 0 0 0 good advice (b) John offered me money, and Paul 0 0  good advice Clearly the additional remnant in (10b) increases the distance between the two fillers of the recipient role of offer, yet both sentences in (10) seem equally unproblematic. However, note that as soon as more than one remnant is present their role assignments mutually constrain each other, thus effectively making more 5Van Oirsouw (1987) has tried to develop a unified rule of deletion in coordinations, covering cases otherwise treated as separate rules, such as gapping, conjunction reduction, right-node raising, VP deletion, etc. One of the motivations for such an attempt is that these rules have a certain amount of overlap, i.e. there are constructions which fall into the scope of more than one rule, yet no single rule covers all cases. This is considered undesirable from a metatheoretical point of view since it apparently introduces ambiguity and redundancy.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="10"> A different view may be derived frmn the notion of radial categories as it arises in human categorization behavior (Lakoff, 1986). The sentences to be accounted for are apparently clustered around a small number of constructions (or rules). These constructions, however, are not completely unrelated; rather they are linked to each other by those special cases where more than one rule overlap. Thus the overlap between rules is not undesirable but cognitively advantageous since it allows the complete set of constructions to be perceived as a unified phenomenon.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="11"> information available to the interpretation process. (()lie fundamental constraint that comes into play is that every filler can fill only one role. Furthermore linear order information is now available.)</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="344" end_page="344" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.2 Case marking and prepositions
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> In languages that case-mark their verb arguments we would expect this device to provide very strong (in fact, mandatory) clues for role assignment. This can be verified in German, where noun phrases are case-marked, except for those consisting only of single proper nouns.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  (11) (a) Ich sah, wie der Englitnder den Franzosen begriigte und der Deutsche 0 (3  ture (up to the noun phrase level) and are both non-optimal by proximity considerations. (1 la) can be made acceptable with appropriate contrastive intonation, while (11b) remains awkward. Instead, the interpreta.tion corresponding to (11c) is easily obtained, again in accordance with proximity.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> In English, where case-marklng is generally not available, prepositions can play a similar role.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3">  (12) (a) :Bill visited Jim yesterday after dinner, and 0 13 John 0 13 (b) Bill talked to Jim yesterday after din null ner, and {3 13 to John {3 Again, both examples are awkward due to the great distance between successive role fillers, but in (12b) the prepositional marker to gives a strong clue for the intended attachment of John thus enhancing acceptability.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="344" end_page="345" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.3 Topic-Focus structure
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> In most of the cases seen so far a typical intonation pattern will naturally accompany the gapping construction, focusing on and contrasting the various fillers of same frame slot. In fact, as the distance between remnants and previous filler constituents increases, the interpretation has to be supported by increasing amounts of stress. Note that such a trade-off between syntactic proximity and focus structure makes sense in view of the evidential character of gapping proposed in (6).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  (13) (a) Linda returned the textbook to the lio brary, but not (3 (3 0 to the one it belongs to.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> (b) Linda returned the textbook to the library, but not 13 13 the lecture tape 13 (c) Linda returned the textbook to the li null brary, but not the other students in the class 0 0 (Italics indicate intonation centers.) This behavior fits well into the general principle of role assignment proposed. In terms of our frame semantics account, focus ett~ctively 'foregrounds' a subset of the roles implying that those are the ones likely to be refilled.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> There is evidence that the converse process works as well, i.e. that circumstances which 'background' certain roles provide support for gapping structures where those roles are not refilled. It seems that this is at least part of what happens in (3). The preceding sentence sets up Mary (i.e. her) as a topic, relative to which the other roles are foregrounded.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> Sgall et al. (1986) have argued for incorporating descriptions of topic-focus structures into linguistic representations (rather than throwing them into the 'pragmatic wastebasket'). Clearly more work on the relation between syntactic configuration, focus and gapping is needed. To get an idea of the possibihties Mong these lines consider the following: Let us assume, following Sgall et al., that in the absence of special intonation in English declarative sentences elements towards the end of the sentence are increasingly 'focussed.' Then the gapping cases in (8) and (9) might be subsumed by focus structure: Refilled roles tend to occur towards the end of the clause because that is where default focus is located. It would be jumping to conclusion, however, to say that all gapping phenomena can be  accounted for in term of focus structure, given the other cases discussed here.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="4" start_page="345" end_page="345" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.4 Semantic constraints
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> From the data presented so far we would expect any type of constraint which could potentially guide role assignment to have an impact on gapping. Therefore, semantic compatibility between the verb semantics and its arguments should make a difference in gapping contexts.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> This is illustrated in the following example pairs.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> (14) (a)John likes ice-cream, but not ~ 0 chocolate gapping, VP deletion, conjunction reduction, right-node raising) lend themselves to a similar analysis, hopefully using compatible principles. Still, gapping provides a striking case where a number of linguistic processes --traditionally perceived as operating at different levels and largely independently--seem to follow a general principle. More importantly, the principle can be understood as arising from cognitive constraints on sentence processing. Forward gapping is a lucky case in point because ~he role assignment problem can easily be identified as a major subtask in the interpretation, thus giving us a handle on a cognitive analysis.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3">  I would like to thank George Lakoff for introducing me to the view of linguistics that led to this work, and many helpful cornments along the way. The author is supported by an IBM Gradu.ate Fellowship.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> Note how (15a) is perceived as 'funny' because the verb semantics are not kept exactly identical; rather a different sense (and frame) associated with like is invoked in the second clausefi</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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