This paper argues that modal constructions are represented by a raising structure rather than a control structure. In particular, we challenge the claim that the epistemic vs. root distinction correlates with a raising vs. control structure. The basic epistemic/root distinction is illustrated in (1): epistemic modal statements express necessity or possibility relative to some state of knowledge or beliefs; root (sometimes also referred to as deontic) modal statements express forces like permission, obligation etc. relative to some normative system.

A number of problems for the Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) formalism have been identified in the literature. In this paper we argue for a reconceptualization of the TAG formalism, in which the elementary structures are collections of c-command relations, and the combinatory operation is substitution. We demonstrate how the formalism we sketch, though similar in certain respects to D-tree grammars (Rambow et al., 1995), preserves many of the linguistically desirable aspects of TAG's restrictiveness, specifically concerning the derivation of locality constraints on unbounded dependencies. 1 Introduction The Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) formalism has a number of properties that make it attractive for use in natural language analysis. Specifically, the use of the adjoining operation allows the specification of grammatical constraints to be separated from the recursive processes in the grammar. This leads to an elegant analysis of extraction in TAG which allows the specification of co-occu...

In this paper we argue for a reconceptualization of the Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) formalism, in which the elementary structures are collections of c-command relations, and the combinatory operation is substitution. We show how the formalism we sketch resolves a number of problems for TAG that have been identified in the literature. Additionally, we demonstrate that our proposal is preferable to other previously proposed extensions to TAG, for example D-tree grammars (Rambow et al., 1995), in that it preserves many of the linguistically desirable aspects of TAG’s restrictiveness, specifically concerning the derivation of locality constraints on unbounded dependencies. Keywords: C-Command, Long-Distance Dependencies, Tree Adjoining Grammar 1.

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Introduction ffl The question - what member of the TAG family is necessary to capture natural language? Set-Local Multi-Component TAG increases the generative capacity. Tree-Local MCTAG does not, but it does increase the possibilities for linguistic description. ffl Hypothesis - Tree-Local MCTAG is adequate to describe natural language syntax. There are several counter-examples. adjoin adjoin Tree Set adjoin substitute Tree Set Figure 1: Tree-Local Multi-Component TAG Tree Set Tree Set Figure 2: Set-Local Multi-Component TAG 2 The Problem of Clitic Movement ffl Clitics in Romance are unstressed pronominal elements associated with the objects of a verb. The object as a full NP follows the verb, as in (1). If the object is a clitic, it precedes a finite verb (2), and follows a nonfinite verb (3) (Spanish examples). (1) Mari Mari no neg vi'o saw la the pel ' icula

"Restructuring" in Romance refers to constructions which appear to violate standard locality constraints, thereby presenting a challenge for syntactic theory. One of the most well-studied cases of restructuring is that of clitic climbing. This is illustrated in the Italian example (1a), in which the clitic lo, the apparent object of leggere, appears on the higher verb vuole. As shown in (1b), it can even move past more than one verb. (1) a. Mario lo vuole leggere `Mario wants to read it' b. Mario Mario lo it vuole wants poter to be able leggere to read `Mario wants to be able to read it' Such clitic climbing is possible only with certain verbs, such as voler and poter in (1), which I will refer to as the "trigger" verbs, following Aissen and Perlmutter (1983). Bleam (1994) argued in detail that clitic climbing causes problems for TAG, and that set-local multi-component TAG is required. In previous work (Kulick 1997), I have proposed that due to the limite