Developing a Danish grammar in the GRASP project : A construction-based approach to topology and extraction in Danish

Abstract

This paper presents work carried out in the GRASP (GRAmmar SPecifications for Danish) project to develop and implement a grammar of Danish within a construction-based framework. The grammar builds on an approach in which standard generalisations about dependency relations interact with constraints on topology and extraction in the definition of a hierarchy of construction types of non-trivial coverage. Thus, this work addresses two of the most discussed topics in the literature on Danish syntax – topology and extraction – in the framework of constraint-based linguistic theory. It breaks new ground by providing an (implemented) HPSG account of Danish of reasonable coverage, at the same time as providing an interesting testbed for a contruction-oriented HPSG approach.