Conflict and Reconciliation in Feature Structures

Choi, Incheol. 2011. Conflict and Reconciliation in Feature Structures. Linguistic Research 28(2), 311-328. The HPSG framework authorized by Pollard and Sag (1994) requires that a feature structure be totally well-typed and type-resolved (Carpenter 1992). In this paper, I showed that such tight feature logic poses various problems when it is implemented to deal with natural language phenomena. Building on the underspecification approach in Sag (2003), I proposed an HPSG approach which lets us avoid such problems not only in coordination but also in various extraction constructions. While easing the rigidity of the feature regime originally adopted in HPSG, this approach still maintains the rigorous mechanism of feature logic in that all possibilities of type resolution and feature membership are constrained in the type hierarchy and the lexical entries. (Kyungpook National University)