Upravlenie, soglasovanie, primykanie = Government, agreement, and adjunction

Abstract

This is an attempt to give a strictly formal and semantically motivated definition of the syntactic concepts of government, agreement, and adjunction. Government and adjunction are related to the strength of the syntactic connection, which, in its turn, is determined by the comparison of the syntactic representation – the tree – with the semantic one – the graph. If the semantic valency confirms the syntactic dependency the connection is regarded as strong. Government is always a strong connection, whereas adjunction is weak. Both are, however, in conformity with the syntactic tree. Agreement relations may or may not conform to the tree structure and in the former case they can be either strong or weak. A distinction is also made between word and its ending; a syntactic dependency arrow can be directed to or from either of these. Government is primarily a relation from word to ending, secondarily from word to word. Adjunction is directed exclusively from word to word. One type of agreement, the flectional one, is directed from ending to ending, the other type, the semi-flectional, from word to ending. Semiflectional gender agreement is further divided into lexical and referential agreement. As a result of syntactic transformations certain transitions between these connection types can be observed.