Kay and Fillmore (1999): The What's X Doing Y? Construction

This file formalizes the construction of [KF99], What's X doing Y?, whose interrogative form conventionally conveys that someone judges the scene Y(X) incongruous (their gloss (39)), a meaning the paper argues is neither a conversational implicature of an innocent question (Section 2.2) nor a proposition that negation could apply to (Section 4.6). The construction is wxdyConstruction, the flat rendering of the paper's Figure 12: BE and doing are fixed heads, what is a fixed and left-isolated object that binds the reference of nothing, doing and Y share the scene judged incongruous, and doing may not be negated, a stipulation the paper reports being unable to deduce. X is not unified with Y: coinstantiation, twice, unifies it with the subject requirements of doing and of Y, so that it becomes the subject argument of the predication Y(X) (wxdy_coinstantiation).

The grammatical evidence for the construction in Section 2.3 is derived by the licensing recognizer over the paper's minimal pairs: the canonical (3a) and the stative (14a) are licensed, while the bare-stem do of (12a), doing as complement of keep in (13a), what else in (15f), and the negated doing of (17b) are not, negation inside Y in (17c) being fine. The coinstantiation construction of Figure 13 is recorded as a fully abstract form with one unification index.

Implementation notes

The paper's semantics, the incongruity-judgment frame of Figure 12 with a contextually anchored judge, is not represented beyond the construction's pragmatic point; its inheritance from the left-isolation, subject–auxiliary inversion and wh-interrogative constructions of the paper's unification grammar is recorded in prose only.

References

• [KF99]
• [FKOC88]

The construction (Figure 12)

def KayFillmore1999.wxdyConstruction : ConstructionGrammar.Construction Unit

The WXDY construction, the flat rendering of Figure 12. BE governs the complement doing, which cannot be negated (Section 4.6) and governs the object WXDY-what, left-isolated and not an operator binding the reference of anything, and the complement Y, a predicate phrase of any category. The semantics of doing and of Y bear #1, the scene judged incongruous, and the subject requirement of Y bears #2, the argument of its frame. X, the subject of BE, bears #2 because coinstantiation unifies it with the subject requirements of doing and of Y (Section 4.2, Figure 13).

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_refGroupCount : ConstructionGrammar.refGroupCount wxdyConstruction.form = 2

The form carries the two indices of Figure 12, #1 and #2.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_coinstantiation : (((List.head? wxdyConstruction.form).bind fun (x : ConstructionGrammar.Slot String) => x.refIdx) = (List.getLast? wxdyConstruction.form).bind fun (x : ConstructionGrammar.Slot String) => x.subjIdx) ∧ ((List.head? wxdyConstruction.form).bind fun (x : ConstructionGrammar.Slot String) => x.refIdx) ≠ (List.getLast? wxdyConstruction.form).bind fun (x : ConstructionGrammar.Slot String) => x.refIdx

"When thus unified with the subject requirement of the Y complement, the semantics of the X constituent becomes the logical subject argument of the predication, Y(X)" (Section 4.2): X, the first slot, bears the index of the subject requirement of Y, the last, and not the index of Y itself.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_formal_idiom : wxdyConstruction.IsFormalIdiom

WXDY is a formal idiom: the X and Y slots are open.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_partially_open : wxdyConstruction.specificity = ConstructionGrammar.Specificity.partiallyOpen

It is properly partial: BE, doing and what are fixed while X and Y are open.

The grammatical evidence (Section 2.3)

The paper's minimal pairs, matched against the form: each is a sequence of daughter trees in the slot order X, BE, doing, what, Y, with lemma-level words tagged for part of speech.

def KayFillmore1999.negator : Morphology.Word

not, a particle of negative polarity.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.scratchTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(3a) What's this scratch doing on the table?

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.stativeTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(14a) What's he doing knowing the answer?, a stative complement.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.bareStemTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(12a) What does this scratch do on the table?, with bare-stem do.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.nonCopulaTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(13a) What did he keep doing in the tool shed?, doing as complement of keep rather than of copular BE: a fine sentence, but not an instance of the construction.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.whatElseTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(15f) What else are you doing eating cold pizza?, with else on WXDY-what.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.negatedDoingTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(17b) What are my brushes not doing soaking in water?, with negated doing.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def KayFillmore1999.negatedComplementTokens : List (PhraseStructure.Tree Unit Morphology.Word)

(17c) What are my brushes doing not soaking in water?, negation inside Y.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_matches_canonical : ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form scratchTokens ∧ ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form stativeTokens

The construction licenses the canonical (3a) and the stative (14a): WXDY does not encode progressive aspect.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_rejects_bare_stem : ¬ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form bareStemTokens

The present participle is frozen: bare-stem do is rejected, (12a).

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_rejects_non_copula : ¬ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form nonCopulaTokens

doing must complement copular BE: keep doing is no instance, (13a).

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_rejects_what_else : ¬ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form whatElseTokens

WXDY-what does not accept else, (15f): the slot is lexically fixed.

theorem KayFillmore1999.wxdy_negation_contrast : ¬ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form negatedDoingTokens ∧ ConstructionGrammar.FormMatches wxdyConstruction.form negatedComplementTokens

Negation of doing is rejected, (17b), while negation inside Y is licensed, (17c).

Coinstantiation (Figure 13, Section 4.2)

def KayFillmore1999.coinstantiationForm : ConstructionGrammar.TypedForm String

The coinstantiation construction, which unifies the intrinsic value of an unfulfilled valence requirement of a predicator with the subject requirement of its controlled complement, covering raising and control alike; it figures twice in every WXDY clause. The flat rendering gives the predicator's subject the index of its complement's subject requirement.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

theorem KayFillmore1999.coinstantiation_specificity : ConstructionGrammar.derivedSpecificity coinstantiationForm = ConstructionGrammar.Specificity.fullyAbstract

Coinstantiation is fully abstract: every slot is open.

theorem KayFillmore1999.coinstantiation_coreference : ConstructionGrammar.refGroupCount coinstantiationForm = 1

It carries one index, shared by the predicator's subject and its complement's subject requirement.