The English auxiliaries: A relational network description

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Reich
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Transformational Theory ◽  
Good Test ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Context Free ◽  
Relational Network

This is the second of two papers comparing relational network theory with transformational theory. In Reich 1970b we defined some basic nodes and compared relational network theory with a subset of transformational theory which is commonly acknowledged to be linguistically inadequate. In this paper we shall review the types of problems which context-free phrase-structure grammars cannot adequately handle. We shall then show that each of these problems occurs in that portion of English grammar which is concerned with the English auxiliaries; thus a good test of any proposed grammatical theory is whether or not it can be used to describe a grammar of the auxiliaries in an acceptable way. Finally, we shall describe in detail a relational network grammar of the auxiliaries and attempt to demonstrate that relational network theory passes this test.

Constraints on movement transformations

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Global Constraints ◽  
Transformational Theory ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Recent Suggestion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Context Free ◽  
Rewrite System

1. The development of transformational theory has been marked by a considerable shifting about of powers allotted to the various constructs. As a theory of lexicon arose, for example, some of the function of the context-sensitivity of the phrase-structure rules was rendered unnecessary; correspondingly, when the rewrite system was tightly confined to a context-free nature, the transformational component took up part of the burden of providing for certain dependencies and concord phenomena. A fair estimate of the history of that component would have to concede that its powers – in spite of the cycle, and some scattered efforts (Emonds, 1969; Postal, 1971; Ross, 1969; Sanders, 1970)–have grown significantly. For example, Emonds's work aside, no general principles of derived constituent structure have developed (as originally anticipated, say, in Lees, 1957b: 400–401); quite the contrary, the particular elementary operations at the root of transformational relationships have been extended, so that at the moment, in addition to sister-adjunction and daughter-adjunction, we have at our disposal Chomsky-adjunction – a range of moves allowing just about any sort of bracketing relation to be developed. Similarly, the recent suggestion that a transformation be considered, most generally, a relation holding between P-markers (not necessarily ‘adjacent’ and not necessarily paired) engenders an enormous increase in power – all the more so since the so-called local and global constraints that are intended to offset the magnification of power are only promissory (Lakoff, 1970).

scholarly journals Derivation "Trees" and Parallelism in Chomsky-Type Grammars

Triangle ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Benedek Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Formal Language ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Formal Language Theory ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Recursively Enumerable ◽  
Rule Set ◽  
Context Free ◽  
Recursively Enumerable Languages ◽  
Context Free Grammars

In this paper we discuss parallel derivations for context-free, contextsensitive and phrase-structure grammars. For regular and linear grammars only sequential derivation can be applied, but a kind of parallelism is present in linear grammars. We show that nite languages can be generated by a recursion-free rule-set. It is well-known that in context-free grammars the derivation can be in maximal (independent) parallel way. We show that in cases of context-sensitive and recursively enumerable languages the parallel branches of the derivation have some synchronization points. In the case of context-sensitive grammars this synchronization can only be local, but in a derivation of an arbitrary grammar we cannot make this restriction. We present a framework to show how the concept of parallelism can be t to the derivations in formal language theory using tokens.

scholarly journals Modeling Routing Processes through Network Theory: A Grammar to Define RDEVS Simulation Models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
María J. Blas ◽  
Clarisa Espertino ◽  
Silvio Gonnet
Keyword(s):  
Simulation Model ◽  
Network Model ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Context Free Grammar ◽  
Direct Mapping ◽  
Programming Skills ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Context Free

The Routed DEVS (RDEVS) formalism provides a reasonable formalization for the simulation of routing processes. In this paper, we introduce a context-free grammar for the definition of routing processes as a particular case of a constrained network model. Such grammar is based on a metamodel that defines the semantics over the syntactical elements. This metamodel allows a direct mapping between its concepts and RDEVS simulation models. A Java implementation is provided for the grammar as a plug-in for Eclipse IDE. The main benefit of this software tool is the feasibility of getting a simulation model without having programming skills.

A Relational Approach to Lexical Borrowings in the Discourse of Romanian Bilingual Immigrants in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Paul Buzilă ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Linguistic Interference ◽  
Romanian Immigrants ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Relational Network ◽  
Hybrid Forms

A Relational Approach to Lexical Borrowings in the Discourse of Romanian Bilingual Immigrants in Spain. This paper is a neurocognitive analysis of idiosyncratic lexical borrowings recorded in the discourse of bilingual Romanian immigrants living in Spain. The neurocognitive approach, also known as Relational Network Theory (RNT), conceives language as an interconnected relational network composed of nodes and lines, part of and connected to the general cognitive system. Linguistic processing is a result of spreading activation through the network and of interaction of the system with other biological systems. The model elegantly describes real and inferred linguistic behaviors, both well-formed and erroneous. We use this approach to explore the underlying mechanisms that trigger the emergence of linguistic interference in the discourse of bilingual speakers. We focus on several lexical borrowings selected from corpora of Romanian spoken in Spain, and we model them, using the NeuroLab tool, in relational network terms. The network modeling of these hybrid forms pinpoints new ways of understanding the differences between adapted and non-adapted, and between necessary and luxury borrowings. We conclude that the RNT model is well suited for explaining bilingual processing and, arguably, one of the few models that can account for the hybrid forms emerging in the discourse of bilingual speakers. Keywords: Relational Network Theory, lexical borrowing, Romanian, Spanish, Rumañol, neurocognitive linguistics.

Mixed computation

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-244
Author(s):  
Diego Gabriel Krivochen
Keyword(s):  
Computational Complexity ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Explicit Characterization ◽  
Tree Adjoining Grammar ◽  
Branching Trees ◽  
Structural Descriptions ◽  
Context Free ◽  
The Way

Abstract Proof-theoretic models of grammar are based on the view that an explicit characterization of a language comes in the form of the recursive enumeration of strings in that language. That recursive enumeration is carried out by a procedure which strongly generates a set of structural descriptions Σ and weakly generates a set of strings S; a grammar is thus a function that pairs an element of Σ with elements of S. Structural descriptions are obtained by means of Context-Free phrase structure rules or via recursive combinatorics and structure is assumed to be uniform: binary branching trees all the way down. In this work we will analyse natural language constructions for which such a rigid conception of phrase structure is descriptively inadequate and propose a solution for the problem of phrase structure grammars assigning too much or too little structure to natural language strings: we propose that the grammar can oscillate between levels of computational complexity in local domains, which correspond to elementary trees in a lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar.

On syntactic categories

1981 ◽  
Vol 295 (1077) ◽  
pp. 267-283 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
General Type ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Syntactic Category ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Context Free

A traditional concern of grammarians has been the question of whether the members of given pairs of expressions belong to the same or different syntactic categories. Consider the following example sentences. ( a ) I think Fido destroyed the kennel . ( b ) The kennel, I think Fido destroyed . Are the two underlined expressions members of the same syntactic category or not? The generative grammarians of the last quarter century have, almost without exception, taken the answer to be affirmative. In the present paper I explore the implications of taking the answer to be negative. The changes consequent upon this negative answer turn out to be very far-reaching: (i) it becomes as simple to state rules for constructions of the general type exemplified in ( b ) as it is for the canonical NP VP construction in ( a ); (ii) we immediately derive an explanation for a range of coordination facts that have remained quite mysterious since they were discovered by J. R. Ross some 15 years ago; (iii) our grammars can entirely dispense with the class of rules known as transformations; (iv) our grammars can be shown to be formally equivalent to what are known as the context-free phrase structure grammars; (v) this latter consequence has the effect of making potentially relevant to natural language grammars a whole literature of mathematical results on the parsability and learnability of context-free phrase structure grammars.

Svenska nominalfraser och kontext-fri grammatik

1984 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Context Free

Swedish noun-phrases of the form (Det) (Adj)* N are examined in the light of recent work in generalized phrase-structure grammar. It is argued that simple generalizations about the phrase-structure of these NPs are lost by trying to account for the precise morphological possibilities by using phrase-structure rules mentioning categories marked with morphological features. What could be accounted for by two rules must be broken down into subcases which need seven rules, thereby obscuring the overall syntactic structure of the NPs. An alternative is suggested which maintains the simple syntax which generates morphologically ill-formed NPs but only allows morphologically well-formed ones to be interpreted. It is suggested that this system can be constrained so as to generate only context-free languages.

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