Epilogue: Unbounded Dependencies and the Limits of Syntax

2018 ◽  
pp. 279-323
Keyword(s):  
Unbounded Dependencies

scholarly journals From Natural Language to RDF Graphs with Pregroups

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonin Delpeuch ◽  
Anne Preller
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Semantic Category ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Pregroup Grammars ◽  
Unbounded Dependencies ◽  
Efficient Type ◽  
Rdf Graphs

We define an algorithm translating natural language sentences to the formal syntax of RDF, an existential conjunctive logic widely used on the Semantic Web. Our translationis based on pregroup grammars, an efficient type-logical grammatical framework with atransparent syntax-semantics interface. We introduce a restricted notion of side effects inthe semantic category of finitely generated free semimodules over {0,1} to that end.The translation gives an intensional counterpart to previous extensional models.We establish a one-to-one correspondence between extensional models and RDF models such that satisfaction is preserved. Our translation encompasses the expressivity of the target language and supports complex linguistic constructions like relative clauses and unbounded dependencies.

scholarly journals Eighteen-month-old infants represent nonlocal syntactic dependencies

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (41) ◽  
pp. e2026469118
Author(s):  
Laurel Perkins ◽  
Jeffrey Lidz
Keyword(s):  
Expressive Power ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Core Property ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Unbounded Dependencies ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Structural Configurations ◽  
Syntactic Dependencies

The human ability to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences is driven by syntax, a cognitive system that can combine a finite number of primitive linguistic elements to build arbitrarily complex expressions. The expressive power of syntax comes in part from its ability to encode potentially unbounded dependencies over abstract structural configurations. How does such a system develop in human minds? We show that 18-mo-old infants are capable of representing abstract nonlocal dependencies, suggesting that a core property of syntax emerges early in development. Our test case is English wh-questions, in which a fronted wh-phrase can act as the argument of a verb at a distance (e.g., What did the chef burn?). Whereas prior work has focused on infants’ interpretations of these questions, we introduce a test to probe their underlying syntactic representations, independent of meaning. We ask when infants know that an object wh-phrase and a local object of a verb cannot co-occur because they both express the same argument relation (e.g., *What did the chef burn the pizza). We find that 1) 18 mo olds demonstrate awareness of this complementary distribution pattern and thus represent the nonlocal grammatical dependency between the wh-phrase and the verb, but 2) younger infants do not. These results suggest that the second year of life is a period of active syntactic development, during which the computational capacities for representing nonlocal syntactic dependencies become evident.

Unbounded Dependency Constructions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui P. Chaves ◽  
Michael T. Putnam
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Unbounded Dependencies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Grammatical Structures ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

This book is about one of the most intriguing features of human communication systems: the fact that words which go together in meaning can occur arbitrarily far away from each other. The kind of long-distance dependency that this volume is concerned with has been the subject of intense linguistic and psycholinguistic research for the last half century, and offers a unique insight into the nature of grammatical structures and their interaction with cognition. The constructions in which these unbounded dependencies arise are difficult to model and come with a rather puzzling array of constraints which have defied characterization and a proper explanation. For example, there are filler-gap dependencies in which the filler phrase is a plural phrase formed from the combination of each of the extracted phrases, and there are filler-gap constructions in which the filler phrase itself contains a gap that is linked to another filler phrase. What is more, different types of filler-gap dependency can compound, in the same sentence. Conversely, not all kinds of filler-gap dependencies are equally licit; some are robustly ruled out by the grammar whereas others have a less clear status because they have graded acceptability and can be made to improve in ideal contexts and conditions. This work provides a detailed survey of these linguistic phenomena and extant accounts, while also incorporating new experimental evidence to shed light on why the phenomena are the way they are and what important research on this topic lies ahead.

Successive Cyclicity and the Syntax of Long-Distance Dependencies

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Coppe van Urk
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Unbounded Dependencies ◽  
Full Consideration

Every major theoretical approach to syntactic structure incorporates a mechanism for generating unbounded dependencies. In this article, I distinguish between some of the most commonly entertained mechanisms by looking in detail at one of the most fundamental discoveries about long-distance dependencies, the fact that they are successive cyclic. Most of the mechanisms posited in order to generate long-distance dependencies capture this property, but make different predictions about what reflexes of successive cyclicity should be attested across languages. In particular, theories of long-distance dependencies can be distinguished according to whether they propose intermediate occurrences of the moving phrases (movement theories) or whether intermediate heads carry features relevant to displacement (featural theories). I show that a full consideration of the typology of successive cyclicity provides clear evidence that both components are part of the syntax of long-distance dependencies. In addition, reflexes of successive cyclicity are equally distributed across the CP and vP edge, suggesting that these are parallel domains.

Any questions left? Review of Ginzburg & Sag's Interrogative investigations

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEAN-PIERRE KOENIG
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Explicit Description ◽  
Current Version ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Unbounded Dependencies ◽  
Explanatory Adequacy ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Future Theory ◽  
Share Information

For better or worse, linguistics is rife with frameworks, each with its own ethos. Two important aspects of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar's are: (1) the search for an explicit and exhaustive account of the intricate syntactic and semantic facts that constitute one's grammar and (2) the hypothesis that general/universal and specific aspects of one's grammar are not qualitatively distinct. This book stands as a superb example of this ethos. It illustrates the fecundity of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (henceforth, HPSG) as a framework and advances our knowledge of the syntax and semantics of interrogatives. It is the most explicit description of the semantics and syntax of any area of English syntax of which this reviewer is aware. It thus sets up a healthy empirical benchmark for other theories of interrogatives. The sixty pages of appendices that detail the grammar discussed in the book and its almost complete implementation in the current version of the English Resource Grammar attest to this empirical bent. Any future theory will have to match it in accuracy before any metatheoretical issues (e.g. simplicity or explanatory adequacy) can be meaningfully discussed. Its precision and comprehensiveness will also, hopefully, lead to descriptions of unbounded dependencies and clause-types in other languages that are orders of magnitude more detailed than those currently available. Ginzburg & Sag's (G&S's) book also illustrates how possibly universal principles (such as the requirement that head-daughters and mothers of a local tree share information) and construction-specific requirements (such as the fact that the scope of

scholarly journals Gaps and resumptive pronouns in Modern Standard Arabic

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mansour Alotaibi ◽  
Robert D. Borsley
Keyword(s):  
Modern Standard Arabic ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Resumptive Pronouns ◽  
Unbounded Dependencies ◽  
Modern Standard

Unbounded dependencies in Modern Standard Arabic often involve not a gap but a null resumptive pronoun. The facts are quite complex, but it is not too difficult to extend the SLASH mechanism of HPSG to handle dependencies with a null resumptive pronoun. It is also not too difficult to restrict the distribution of gaps appropriately.

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