This chapter presents a sketch grammar of Amis, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. The data are representative of the Central dialect of this language. The focus of the discussion is on phenomena related to its case marking and voice, such as applicative constructions and grammatical relations. An in-depth discussion of macrorole assignment with one-place predicates is included.

This chapter proposes a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) analysis of externally and internally headed relative clauses, free relatives, non-restrictive relatives, and it-cleft sentences. Particular emphasis is placed on the interface properties of these constructions and the challenges that they pose in the syntax–semantics and semantics–syntax linking. The chapter also reflects on the similarities and differences between relatives and clefts.

This chapter presents the fundamental theoretical principles of Role and Reference Grammar. The exposition does not presuppose any previous familiarity with RRG, and it ties in with the relevant chapters in the Handbook. After a discussion of theoretical assumptions, the theory of syntactic structure, including clauses, phrases and words, is presented in detail, with new data not found in previous expositions of the theory. The presentation includes the structure of both simple and complex sentences. The next major section concerns semantic representation, and this includes the representation of simple clauses, semantics roles and interclausal semantic relations. There follows a very short mention of the notion of information structure; the reader is referred to two other chapters which present these ideas in detail. The final section concerns the linking between syntax and semantics in simple and complex sentences. The issue of representing language-specific vs. cross-linguistically valid grammatical information is a major theme of this section. RRG’s approach involving constructional schemata is quite distinct from that of mainstream construction grammar.

This chapter introduces the theoretical constructs adopted by Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) in the treatment of information structure and addresses the question of the place of information structure in the architecture of grammar. It is claimed that RRG offers an approach to information structure which is flexible enough to capture the cross-linguistic variation in the role played by discourse in the semantics–syntax and syntax–semantics linking, while also being sufficiently constrained to make important generalizations on the expression of pragmatic states and pragmatic relations, and their interface with prosody, morphology and sentence structure.

This chapter explicates the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) theory of case assignment and outlines its OT implementation and its extension to instrumental case assignment and case syncretism. The ’non-OT’ theory of case assignment in RRG is a version of dependent case theory that assigns nominative, accusative, absolutive and ergative case in terms of the ranking of actor and undergoer, while its OT-based counterpart defines accusative, ergative, dative and instrumental case with reference to (non-)macrorole status, conflates nominative and absolutive as an any-argument case, and derives the variation of case syncretism from the case hierarchy of Silverstein (1980/1993).

This chapter explores the computational implementation and applications of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). We discuss computational work which provides evidence that the RRG approach to grammar has a beneficial role to play in natural language processing (NLP) and delivers a credible and realistic linguistic model to underpin NLP applications. The computability of the model has been tested in diverse software applications. We characterize these and explain how RRG is used to underpin the linguistic component in the architecture of a number of software systems and applications. We conclude with a discussion of the contribution that RRG can provide to NLP. We discuss how the RRG model is translated into software, and some of the challenges involved. The chapter is a testimonial to how the RRG model of language can be successfully implemented in software.

This grammatical sketch explores sentence structure in Cheyenne/Tsêhésenêstsestôtse (Plains Algonquian, USA). We first describe the principal morphosyntactic features of Cheyenne and offer a brief account of grammatical phenomena that benefit from a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) analysis: basic clause types, verb valence and transitivity, the marking of core arguments, argument-adjuncts and adjuncts, and the linking algorithm. This analysis shows that there is no evidence for the postulation of grammatical relations, save for a pragmatically influenced privileged syntactic argument, and supports the hierarchical scope order of operators postulated by RRG. We then illustrate the fundamental role of pragmatics in argument coding, macrorole assignment, and word order by examining the relationship of information structure with the reference-tracking system of obviation and the direct/inverse system. These systems work jointly with the Person and Semantic Function Hierarchies. Despite word order variability, it is possible to integrate information structure into clause structure and explore the intricate mechanism that accommodates semantic information into syntactic structure.

This chapter discusses the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) treatment of adpositional assignment and introduces a new typology of adpositional phrase types, which arises from the combination of three binary features: [±argument], which corresponds to the semantic status of the participant introduced; [±core], which indicates whether this is a core argument or a peripheral adjunct; [±predicative], which manifests the predicative or non-predicative function of the adposition. The combinations of the three features provide the basis for a principled classification of adpositional phrases, which captures the distinct functions adpositions can have in different clauses.

This chapter offers an in-depth treatment of clause linkage and complex sentences in RRG. First, it discusses and exemplifies each nexus–juncture type, adducing evidence from a wide range of languages. Then, it introduces the notion of syntactic and semantic cohesiveness in clause linkage and makes relevant generalizations and predictions.

The RRG approach to information structure (IS) was laid out by Bentley (Chapter 11), and the linking between syntax and semantics was explicated by Van Valin (Chapter 1), Watters (Chapter 6), Guerrero (Chapter 14) and Paris (Chapter 15). These discussions did not emphasize the role of IS in linking, and it is to this topic that we turn in this chapter. We begin by presenting the representation of IS in the layered structure of the clause, and then we show how context can be represented using a version of Discourse Representation Theory and the different focus types derived from these representations. The next section illustrates the importance of IS for the analysis of grammatical phenomena, and this is followed by an analysis of conjunction reduction, which presented problems for an RRG analysis in purely syntactic terms. Finally, the interaction of IS and the linking algorithm will be explored, showing that IS interacts with it in important ways.

The goal of this chapter is to examine the rules that relate syntactic and semantic representations to each other in adverbial (adjoined) clauses. The following types of adverbial clause relations are discussed, using evidence from English, Spanish, Yaqui and other languages: concessive, conditional, reason, temporal, purpose, manner and means. The chapter sheds light on the complexities of adverbial relations between clauses and how such complexities can be captured in Role and Reference Grammar.

This chapter provides a grammatical overview of Avatime, a Niger-Congo language spoken in the south-east of Ghana. The first part surveys lexical categories (parts of speech and major Aktionsart classes of predicates), syntactic structure (clause structure, grammatical operators, nominal structure, and adpositional structure), and focus structure, while the second part is devoted to describing and illustrating the rich variety of serial verb constructions in Avatime, identifying three types of juncture–nexus (nuclear cosubordination, core coordination, and core cosubordination), and investigating how the correspondences of these juncture–nexus relations and their semantic functions fit into the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy.

One of the major concerns of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) has always been the development of a theory of semantic composition for both state and activity predicates. Over the last thirty years, there have been a variety of proposals aimed at the formulation of a semantic representation system that accounts for the interface between syntax and semantics. Proposals to enrich the RRG semantic representation system involve notations such as the use of internal variables, lexical functions and qualia structure, among others, in an effort to link syntax to conceptual or semantic meaning. Nevertheless, another solution could lie in a more ontologically oriented model of semantic representation that provides a conceptual framework for the formalization of meaning construction. This chapter outlines and describes a semantic representation system in the form of conceptual logical structures (CLSs), based on the FunGramKB ontology.