Some Formal Considerations on the Generation of Hierarchically Structured Expressions
Fortuny Andreu, Jordi (University of Groningen. Center for Language and Cognition)
Corominas-Murtra, Bernat (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Date: |
2009 |
Abstract: |
In this note we define a machine that generates nests. The basic relations commonly attributed to linguistic expressions in configurational syntactic models as well as the device of chains postulated in current transformational grammar to represent distance relations can be naturally derived from the assumption that the combinatorial syntactic procedure is a nesting machine. Accordingly, the core of the transformational generative syntactic theory of language can be solidly constructed on the basis of nests, in the same terms as the general theory of order, an important methodological step that provides a rigorization of Chomsky's minimalist intuition that the simplest way to generate hierarchically organized linguistic expressions is by postulating a combinatorial operation called Merge, which can be internal or external. Importantly, there is reason to think that nests are a useful representative tool in other domains besides language where either some recursive algorithm or evolutionary process is at work, which suggests the unifying force of the mathematical abstraction this note is based on. |
Rights: |
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Language: |
Anglès |
Document: |
Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada |
Subject: |
Nest ;
Theory of order ;
Dominance ;
Domain ;
Constituency ;
Chain (of copies) ;
Rigorization |
Published in: |
Catalan journal of linguistics, V. 8 (2009) p. 99-111, ISSN 2014-9719 |
Adreça original: https://revistes.uab.cat/catJL/article/view/v8-fortuny-coromines
Adreça alternativa: https://raco.cat/index.php/CatalanJournal/article/view/168906
DOI: 10.5565/rev/catjl.143
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Record created 2010-02-10, last modified 2022-05-05