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<Paper uid="P01-1029">
  <Title>Word Order in German: A Formal Dependency Grammar Using a Topological Hierarchy</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 In examples such as (i), the separable verbal prefix
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> an behaves like a subordinated verb intervening between the 'main' verb and its dependent:  any of the verbs of the main domain (V2, any verb in the right bracket or even an embedded verb) has to occupy the first position, called the Vorfeld (VF, prefield). null * All the other non-verbal dependents of the verbs in the domain (V2 or part of the verbal cluster) can go in the Mittelfeld (MF, middle-field).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> * Some phrases, in particular sentential complements (complementizer and relative clauses), prepositional phrases, and even some sufficiently heavy noun phrases, can be positioned in a field right of the right bracket, the Nachfeld (NF, after-field). Like the Mittelfeld, the Nachfeld can accommodate several dependents.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> * When a verb is placed in any of the Major Fields (Vor-, Mittel-, Nachfeld), it opens a new embedded domain.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> In the following section we illustrate our rules with the dependency tree of Fig. 1 and show how we describe phenomena such as scrambling and (partial) VP fronting.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.4 Non-embedded construction and
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      <Paragraph position="0"> &amp;quot;scrambling&amp;quot; Let us start with cases without embedding, i.e. where the subordinated verbs versprochen 'promised' and zu lesen 'to read' will go into the right bracket of the main domain (Fig. 2). The constituents which occupy the left and right brackets are represented by shadowed ovals. The other three phrases, niemand 'nobody', diesem Mann 'to this man', and das Buch 'the book', are on the same domain level; one of them has to take the Vorfeld, the other two will go into the Mittelfeld. We obtain thus 6 possible orders, among them (1a) and (1b). There are nevertheless some general restrictions on the relative constituent order in the Mittelfeld. We do not consider these rules here (see for instance Lennerz 1977, Uszkoreit 1987), but we want to insist on the fact that the order of the constituents depends very little on their hierarchical position in the syntactic structure.4 Even if the order is not free, there (i) Er fangt gleich zu schreien an.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> He begins right_away to shout AN.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> 'He begins to shout right away.' 4 Dutch has the same basic topological structure, but has lost morphological case except on pronouns. For a simplified description of the order in the Dutch Mittelfeld, we have to attach to each complement placed in the Mittelfeld its height in the syntactic are restrictions that weigh more heavily than the hierarchical position: pronominalization, focus, new information, weight, etc.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3">  The fact that a verbal projection (i.e. the verb and all of its direct and indirect dependents) does not in general form a continuous phrase, unlike in English and French, is called scrambling (Ross, 1967). This terminology is based on an erroneous conception of syntax that supposes that word order is always an immediate reflection of the syntactic hierarchy (i.e. every projection of a given element forms a phrase) and that any deviation from this constitutes a problem. In fact, it makes little sense to form a phrase for each verb and its dependents. On the contrary, all verbs placed in the same domain put their dependents in a common pot. In other words, there is no scrambling in German, or more precisely, there is no advantage in assuming an operation that derives 'scrambled' sentences from 'nonscrambled' ones.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4">  As we have said, when a verb is placed in one of the major fields, it opens an embedded domain. We represent domains by ovals with a bold outline. In the situation of Fig. 3, where zu lesen 'to read' opens an embedded domain, hat 'has' and versprochen 'promised' occupy the left and right bracket of the main domain and we find three phrases on the same level: niemand 'nobody', diesem Mann 'to this man', and das Buch zu lesen 'to read the book'. The embedded domain can go into the Vorfeld (1c), the Nachfeld (1d), or the Mittelfeld (1a,e).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> Note that we obtain the word order (1a) a second time, giving us two phrase structures: (2) a. [Niemand] [hat] [diesem Mann] [das Buch zu lesen] [versprochen] b. [Niemand] [hat] [diesem Mann] [das Buch] [zu lesen versprochen] This structural ambiguity corresponds, we believe, to a semantic ambiguity of communicative type: In (2a), the fact of reading the book is marked (as in Reading the book, nobody promised him that), whereas (2b) is neutral in this respect (Nobody promised him to read the book).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> Moreover, the structures (2a) and (2b) correspond to different prosodies (the left border of the right bracket is clearly marked with an accent on the first syllable of the radical).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> Finally, the existence of this ambiguity is also confirmed by the contrast between full infinitives (with zu) and bare infinitives (without zu): Bare infinitives cannot form an embedded domain outside of the Vorfeld. Consequently, there are two different prosodies for (3a) (with or without detachment of das Buch 'the book' from zu lesen 'to read'), whereas only one prosody without detachment is permitted for (3b), although (3a) and (3b) have isomorphic dependency trees. Evidence comes also from the written form recommending a comma for (3a) (i.e. preference for the embedded structure), whereas the comma is not allowed for (3b).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8"> (3) a. Niemand versucht(,) das Buch zu lesen 'Nobody tries to read the book.' b. Niemand will das Buch lesen 'Nobody wants to read the book.'</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.6 Emancipation
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      <Paragraph position="0"> The dependents of a verb do not have to be in their governor's domain: They can be 'emancipated' and end up in a superior domain. For example, in Fig. 4, the verb zu lesen 'to read' has created an embedded domain from which its dependent das Buch 'the book' has been emancipated. We have thus four complements to place in the superior domain, allowing more than thirty word orders, among them (1f) and (1g). Among these orders, only those that have das Buch or zu lesen in the Vorfeld are truly acceptable, i.e. those where embedding and emancipation are communicatively motivated by focus on das Buch or zu lesen.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1">  place on their right in the right bracket (Oberfeldumstellung or auxiliary flip; Bech, 1955) (4a). The dependents of this verb go again on the left side of their governor, just as in standard order (we thus obtain V1V2, V1V3V2, V1V4V3V2) but it can also join the place to the left of the auxiliary (we thus obtain the marginal Zwischenstellung V3V1V2 (4c), V4V3V1V2).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The governed verbs V2 accepting this inverse order form a closed class including the modal and perception verbs and some others (helfen, 'help', the causative/permissive lassen 'make/let' ... - haben 'have' itself also allows this right-placement, which suffices to explain the cases of 'double flip' as in (4b) giving V1V2V4V3). Note that the dependent of haben 'have' is the bare infinitive. This form, called the Ersatzinfinitiv, is also possible or even preferable for certain verbs when the auxiliary  is in V2 position.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> (4) a. Er wird das Buch haben lesen konnen.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> He will the book have read can.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> 'He will have been able to read the book.' b. Ich glaube, dass er das Buch wird haben lesen konnen.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> I believe that he the book will have read can. 'I believe that he will have been able to read the book.' c. Ich glaube, dass er das Buch lesen wird konnen.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> I believe that he the book read will can.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8"> 'I believe that he will be able to read the book.'  In related languages like Dutch or Swiss-German, which have the same topological structure, the standard order in the right bracket is somewhat similar to the German Oberfeldumstellung. The resulting order gives rise to cross serial dependencies (Evers 1975, Bresnan et al. 1982) Such constructions have often been studied for their supposed complexity. With our subsequent description of the Oberfeldumstellung, we obtain a formal structure that applies equally to Dutch. Indeed, the two structures have identical descriptions with the exception of the relative order of dependent verbal elements in the right bracket (keeping in mind that we do not describe the order of the Mittelfeld).</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
2.9 Relatives and pied-piping
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      <Paragraph position="0"> Relative clauses open an embedded domain with the main verb going into the right bracket. The relative pronoun takes the first position of the domain, but it can take other elements along (pied-piping) (5). German differs from English and Romance languages in that even verbs can be brought along by the relative pronoun (5b).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> (5) a. Der Mann [[von dem] [Maria] [gekusst wird]] liebt sie.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The man [[by whom] [Maria] [kissed is]] loves her.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> b. Das war eine wichtige Einnahmequelle, [[die zu erhalten] [sich] [die EU] [verpflichtet hat]].</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> This was an important source_of_income, [[that to conserve] [itself] [the EU] [commited has]].</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> 'This was an important source_of_income, that the EU obliged itself to conserve.' Before we discuss the topological structure of relative clauses, we will discuss their syntactic representation. Following Tesniere (1959) and numerous analyses that have since corroborated his analysis, we assume that the relative pronoun plays a double syntactic role: * On one hand, it has a pronominal role in the relative clause where it fills a syntactic position.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> * On the other hand, it plays the role of a complementizer allowing a sentence to modify a noun.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> For this reason, we attribute to the relative pronoun a double position: as a complementizer, it is the head of the relative clause and it therefore depends directly on the antecedent noun and it governs the main verb of the relative clause. As a pronoun, it takes its usual position in the relative clause.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8">  It is now possible to give the word order rules for relative clauses. The complementizing part of the relative pronoun opens an embedded domain consisting of the complementizer field (Kathol 1995), Mittelfeld, right bracket, and Nachfeld. The main verb that depends on it joins the right bracket. The other rules are identical to those for other domains, with the group containing the pronominal part of the relative pronoun having to join the other part of the pronoun in the complementizer field. In a sense, the complementizer field acts like the fusion of the Vorfeld and the left bracket of the main domain: The complementizing part of the pronoun, being the root of the dependency tree of the relative clause, takes the left bracket (just like the top node of the whole sentence in the main domain), while the pronominal part of the relative pronoun takes the Vorfeld. The fact that the pronoun is one word requires the fusion of the two parts and hence of the two fields into one. Note that verbal pied-piping is very easy to explain in this analysis: It is just an embedding of a verb in the complementizer field. Just like the Vorfeld, the complementizer field can be occupied by a non-verbal phrase or by a verb creating an embedded domain.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Formalization
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    <Paragraph position="0"> A grammar in the formalism we introduce in the following will be called a Topological</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
Dependency Grammar.
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      <Paragraph position="0"/>
    </Section>
    <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1 Definition of the Grammar
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      <Paragraph position="0"> For a grammar, the parameters to instantiate are the vocabulary V, the set of (lexical) categories C, the set of syntactic relations R, the set of box names B, the set of field names F, the initial field i, the order of permeability of the boxes, which is a partial ordering on B (used for emancipation) and four sets of rules:5 1. Box description rules: The rule b f1 f2 ... fn indicates that the box b consists of the list of fields f1, f2, ..., fn. f1 f2 ... fn b 2. Field description rules: The pair (f,e) in Fx{!,?,+,[?]} indicates that the field f has to contain exactly one element (!), at most one element (?), at least one element  (+) or any number of elements ([?]).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> 3. Correspondence rules (between the de- null pendency and the topological structure): The rule (r,c1,c2,f2,b) indicates that a word w2 of category c2, that exhibits a dependency of type r on a word w1 of category c1, can go into field f2 of a box containing w1, if this box is separated from w1 by borders of type [?] b (in other words, the parameter b controls the emancipation).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> (In all our figures, boxes are represented by ovals, fields by rectangles or sections of an oval.) 4. Box creation rules: The rule (c,f,b,f') indicates that a word of category c, placed into a field f, can create a box b and go into the field f' of this box. Box creation rules are applied recursively until a lexical rule of type (c,f,b,-) is encountered where b is a lexical box with a unique lexical field, into which the word has to be placed. Phrase structure derivation starting from a dependency tree The word labeling the root node of the tree is placed into the initial field i. Box creation rules are then activated until the word is placed 5 We will not present lexical rules indicating each lexical entry's characteristics, in particular its category. null in a lexical field (-). A correspondence rule is activated for one of the dependents of the root node, placing it in an accessible field. Just as for the root node, box creation rules are activated until the word is assigned to a lexical field. This procedure continues until the whole tree is used up. Each time a box creation rule is triggered, a box is created and a description rule for this box has to be activated. Finally, the constraints of the field description rules have to be respected (e.g. a field requiring at least one element can not remain empty).</Paragraph>
    </Section>
    <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.2 Example of a grammar
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      <Paragraph position="0"> We will now instantiate our formalism for the German grammar fragment described in section 2 (leaving aside non-verbal elements in the right bracket) and we will put forward the derivation of (1f) with this grammar (Fig.5).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> main, cd = comp domain, vc = verbal cluster, vb = verbal box, v = verb, xp =</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> bracket, nf = Nachfeld, cf = comp field, h = head, o = Oberfeld, u = Unterfeld , - = lexical field, f = vf/mf/nf/cf = major field) i is the initial field  Correspondence rules Positioning of the first verb in the right bracket:6 (r, Y, V, ], -) Positioning of a verb to the left of the preceding verb in the right bracket: (r, V, V!fin, o, vc) Positioning of a verb to the right of the preceding verb in the right bracket:7 (r, AV!inf, EV, u, -) 6 The last parameter (-) indicates that the right bracket of a given domain is not accessible when emancipating an element from an embedded domain. 7 Auxiliaries with zu do not allow auxiliary flip: (i) [?]Er meint das Buch zu haben lesen konnen. He thinks the book to have read can.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> Positioning of a non-verbal element in a major field:8 (r, V, X, f, ed) Box creation rules Creation of the main domain in the initial field: (Vfin, i, md, [) Creation of an embedded domain in a major field: (V!fin, f, ed, ]) Creation of a verbal cluster in the right bracket or the Unterfeld: (V,]/u,vc, h) 8 This last parameter indicates that it is possible to emancipate out of any type of box inferior to 'ed' in the order of permeability, i.e. ed, xp, vb or vc, but not out of cd. Moreover, this rule puts no restrictions on the field of the governor. This rule would have to be refined to account for NP-internal word order phenomena.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> Creation of a verbal box in the Oberfeld: (V, o, vb, h) Positioning of a verb: (V, [/h, v, -) Creation of a non-verbal phrase: (X, f, xp, ?) Creation of a domain for a relative clause:9 (&amp;quot;C&amp;quot;, f, cd, &amp;quot;cf&amp;quot;)</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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