# QUE feature on the verb **URL:** \ **Category:** Grammar Matrix\ **Tags:** erg, hpsg\ **Created:** [November 4, 2019, 7:46pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366 "2019-11-04T19:46:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/olzama/32/6_2.png) [@olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/olzama)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2019, 4:25pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/41 "2019-11-08T16:25:53Z")
> [@ebender](#): > > the verb only sees its LOCAL features. Oh yeah!.. Right… But what is happening with it (the verb) inheriting from _basic-two-arg_ then? That is bypassed somehow, or ignored, or what is going on? ---
**Author:** ![ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/ebender)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2019, 4:40pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/42 "2019-11-08T16:40:07Z")
The verb is amalgamating the SLASH, REL, and QUE of the two elements on its ARG-ST. The first of these, having been extracted, is of type _gap_: ``` gap := expressed-non-canonical & [ LOCAL #local, NON-LOCAL [ REL 0-dlist, QUE 0-dlist, SLASH 1-dlist & [LIST < #local >] ] ]. ``` So, for that one, it get 0-dlist from REL and 0-dlist from QUE. The LOCAL value of the gap is identified with it’s own SLASH’s LOCAL and ultimately with the LOCAL value of the filler. But, crucially, **not** the NON-LOCAL value of the filler. For full details, see Bouma, Malouf & Sag 2001: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006473306778](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006473306778) ---
**Author:** ![olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/olzama/32/6_2.png) [@olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/olzama)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 12:16am UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/43 "2019-11-12T00:16:36Z")
I read Bouma et al. today and they do give an account of how _gap-synsem_ participates in licensing subject, complement, and adjunct extraction (also under the Argument Structure Extension and Argument Realization Principle). However they do not focus on LOCAL vs. NON-LOCAL distinction, at least not overtly (perhaps there is something implicit). Are we talking about the Locality principle here perhaps? A verb should not see any non-local features of its arguments because there is little linguistic motivation for it? ---
**Author:** ![ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/ebender)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 3:15pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/44 "2019-11-12T15:15:11Z")
No, I don’t think it’s the locality principle. I think it’s specifically for the mechanics of the analysis of long-distance dependencies. I don’t have P&S to hand just now, but perhaps that’s where NON-LOCAL v LOCAL is introduced? ---
**Author:** ![olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/olzama/32/6_2.png) [@olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/olzama)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:23pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/45 "2019-11-12T17:23:39Z")
P&S use the “trace” lexical item (which is similar to _gap-synsem_ in that it identifies its LOCAL with the SLASH) and the Nonlocal Feature Principle which means the mother’s NON-LOCAL is the union of its daughters’ NON-LOCALs. This is as far as the analysis of long-distance dependencies goes. As for where NON-LOCAL is introduced: it is in chapter 1 but it simply says that the discussion of nonlocal features is postponed till chapter 4 (the long-distance dependencies chapter). The answer might be somewhere there but I am afraid it may be implicit… Perhaps somewhere in the ungrammatical examples which their analysis rules out because of how they are treating LOCAL vs. NONLOCAL… But I can’t find anything explicit so far. The only other thing I can find is they say that their nonlocal features are similar to GPSG. Should I look there?.. (My goal here is to understand the theory behind the Grammar Matrix’s usage of QUE; which makes me think perhaps I should be looking in Flickinger somewhere.) (Update: looked in Flickinger; nope.) ---
**Author:** ![olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/olzama/32/6_2.png) [@olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/olzama)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 8:05pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/46 "2019-11-12T20:05:36Z")
Update: Ginzburg and Sag (2001) have a “WH-amalgamation constraint” similar to SLASH-amalgamation, stating that a word’s WH is the union of its ARG-ST element’s WHs. (WH there corresponds to QUE). So a noun will have its specifier’s WH, for example. Then for verbs, they say that “subject-selecting verbs must be WH-empty”, but that is because they have something called WH-Subject Prohibition: a word’s SUBJ must be WH-empty. This is so that sentences like _Who left_ are licensed by the HFR and not the HSR. They have yet an additional WH-Constraint stating that “any non-initial element of a lexeme’s ARG-ST must be WH-empty”. It is a bit confusing to me; the section on verbs is disappointingly short and focuses entirely on special cases, not really explicating how the basic cases are supposed to work. Maybe I will find that in an earlier section (though I already have read them!) ---
**Author:** ![ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/ebender)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 8:12pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/47 "2019-11-12T20:12:55Z")
Interesting! So: they’re using it to prevent spurious ambiguity in sentences like “Who left?”. Because the wh word’s NON-LOCAL features are not accessible to the verb (because it can see only the LOCAL when its SLASH is identified with the filler in the HFR), then a constraint that says that “subject-selecting verbs must be WH-empty” would indeed have the effect of forcing the HFR analysis for these sentences. But this makes me wonder: (1) What do they mean by “subject-selecting verbs”? Do they not have (most) verbs selecting for subjects in the lexicon? (2) What do they do with the WH values of in situ non-subject WH words? ---
**Author:** ![olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/olzama/32/6_2.png) [@olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/olzama)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 9:21pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/48 "2019-11-12T21:21:55Z")
(1) This is what confuses me. I will look for an answer though I suspect they just mean all (most) verbs… Maybe as opposed to infinitives or something like that?.. (2) Their wh-words are optionally WH-specified. You can have a _what_ which is WH-empty as well as one which is WH-nonemtpy. ---
**Author:** ![ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/ebender)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 10:47pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/49 "2019-11-12T22:47:07Z")
(1) It would be quite like Ivan to have some constraint that kicks in just in case the verb is directly combining with its subject. (2) Make sense. ---
**Author:** ![olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/olzama/32/6_2.png) [@olzama](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/olzama)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366/50 "2019-11-13T18:57:12Z")
So, in a sentence like _Who saw what?_, in the ERG/Matrix context, we concluded we expect to see _what_’s QUE value on the verb and on the VP. What should happen to it eventually? There is no complement extraction; should the QUE value just stay there, including in the final S? In the ERG, it disappears at the HFR level, so, at the top S. But what mechanism is in place here, theoretically? [Previous page](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/que-feature-on-the-verb/366.md?page=2)