Remarks on marking

Abstract

This paper calls for a reexamination of the Marking Theory of HPSG, which in its standard form involves a considerable amount of dedicated formal machinery, but which proves to be inapplicable for most types of grammatical marking. As an alternative, it is demonstrated that head-marker phrases can be reanalyzed as head-complement structures, with the marking element treated as the syntactic head. This approach allows the elimination of all marking-specific formal apparatus, with the exception of the attribute MARKING, which percolates as an ordinary HEAD feature, and whose function is significantly expanded.

The proposed approach allows marking elements to be related to other lexical heads (prepositions, in particular), and marking constructions are better integrated in the grammar, rather than being grouped into an exceptional class of head-marker phrases.