An HPSG-Based Analysis of English Quotative Constructions

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of English Quotative Constructions (QCs) within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). QCs refer to sentences that involve a quotative verb and a quote (i.e., a direct speechcomplement). In QCs, a quote can be positioned sentence-initially, sentence-finally,or even discontinuously. Moreover, a subject and a verb may undergo inversion, a phenomenon known as Quotative Inversion (QI) in the literature. In this paper, I introduce a new feature and lexical rule within HPSG to elucidate the syntactic properties of QCs. I then propose the linearization-based HPSG approach for the distribution of quotes in QCs.