A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to explain how natural languages are acquired. This paper describes some recent findings on how learners acquire syntactic knowledge for which there is little, if any, decisive evidence from the environment. The first section presents several general observations about language acquisition that linguistic theory has tried to explain and discusses the thesis that certain linguistic properties are innate because they appear universally and in the absence of corresponding experience. A third diagnostic for innateness, (...) early emergence, is the focus of the second section of the paper, in which linguistic theory is tested against recent experimental evidence on children's acquisition of syntax. (shrink)

Previous research has established that people can implicitly learn chunks, which do not require a memory buffer to process. The present study explores the implicit learning of nonlocal dependencies generated by higher than finite-state grammars, specifically, Chinese tonal retrogrades and inversions , which do require buffers . People were asked to listen to and memorize artificial poetry instantiating one of the two grammars; after this training phase, people were informed of the existence of rules and asked to classify new poems, (...) while providing attributions of the basis of their judgments. People acquired unconscious structural knowledge of both tonal retrogrades and inversions. Moreover, inversions were implicitly learnt more easily than retrogrades constraining the nature of the memory buffer in computational models of implicit learning. (shrink)

If all dependent expressions were adjacent some variety of immediate constituent analysis would suffice for grammar, but syntactic and semantic mismatches are characteristic of natural language; indeed this is a, or the, central problem in grammar. Logical categorial grammar reduces grammar to logic: an expression is well-formed if and only if an associated sequent is a theorem of a categorial logic. The paradigmatic categorial logic is the Lambek calculus, but being a logic of concatenation the Lambek calculus can only capture (...) discontinuous dependencies when they are peripheral. In this paper we present the displacement calculus, which is a logic of intercalation as well as concatenation and which subsumes the Lambek calculus. On the empirical side, we apply the new calculus to discontinuous idioms, quantification, VP ellipsis, medial extraction, pied-piping, appositive relativisation, parentheticals, gapping, comparative subdeletion, cross-serial dependencies, reflexivization, anaphora, dative alternation, and particle shift. On the technical side, we prove that the calculus enjoys Cut-elimination. (shrink)

We present a detailed process theory of the moment‐by‐moment working‐memory retrievals and associated control structure that subserve sentence comprehension. The theory is derived from the application of independently motivated principles of memory and cognitive skill to the specialized task of sentence parsing. The resulting theory construes sentence processing as a series of skilled associative memory retrievals modulated by similarity‐based interference and fluctuating activation. The cognitive principles are formalized in computational form in the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) architecture, and our (...) process model is realized in ACT–R. We present the results of 6 sets of simulations: 5 simulation sets provide quantitative accounts of the effects of length and structural interference on both unambiguous and garden‐path structures. A final simulation set provides a graded taxonomy of double center embeddings ranging from relatively easy to extremely difficult. The explanation of center‐embedding difficulty is a novel one that derives from the model' complete reliance on discriminating retrieval cues in the absence of an explicit representation of serial order information. All fits were obtained with only 1 free scaling parameter fixed across the simulations; all other parameters were ACT–R defaults. The modeling results support the hypothesis that fluctuating activation and similarity‐based interference are the key factors shaping working memory in sentence processing. We contrast the theory and empirical predictions with several related accounts of sentence‐processing complexity. (shrink)

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the (...) universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of “universal,” we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition.Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills. (shrink)

Controlled natural languages (CNL) with a direct mapping to formal logic have been proposed to improve the usability of knowledge representation systems, query interfaces, and formal specifications. Predictive editors are a popular approach to solve the problem that CNLs are easy to read but hard to write. Such predictive editors need to be able to “look ahead” in order to show all possible continuations of a given unfinished sentence. Such lookahead features, however, are difficult to implement in a satisfying way (...) with existing grammar frameworks, especially if the CNL supports complex nonlocal structures such as anaphoric references. Here, methods and algorithms are presented for a new grammar notation called Codeco, which is specifically designed for controlled natural languages and predictive editors. A parsing approach for Codeco based on an extended chart parsing algorithm is presented. A large subset of Attempto Controlled English has been represented in Codeco. Evaluation of this grammar and the parser implementation shows that the approach is practical, adequate and efficient. (shrink)

Current theories of grammar handle both extraction and anaphorization by introducing variables into syntactic representations. Combinatory categorial grammar eliminates variables corresponding to gaps. Using the combinator W, the paper extends this approach to anaphors, which appear to act as overt bound variables. [Slightly extended version in Bartsch et al 1989.].

Formal semantics is an approach to SEMANTICS1, the study of meaning, with roots in logic, the philosophy of language, and linguistics, and since the 1980’s a core area of linguistic theory. Characteristics of formal semantics to be treated in this article include the following: Formal semanticists treat meaning as mind-independent (though abstract), contrasting with the view of meanings as concepts “in the head” (see I-LANGUAGE AND E-LANGUAGE and MEANING EXTERNALISM AND INTERNALISM); formal semanticists distinguish semantics from knowledge of semantics (Lewis (...) 1975, Cresswell 1978), which has consequences for the notion of semantic COMPETENCE. A central part of the meaning of a sentence on this approach is its TRUTH CONDITIONS, and most although not all formal semantics is model-theoretic, relating linguistic expressions to model-theoretically constructed semantic values cast in terms of truth, REFERENCE, and possible worlds. This sets formal semantics apart from approaches which view semantics as relating a sentence just to a representation on another linguistic “level” (LOGICAL FORM) or a representation in an innate LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT. The formal semanticist could accept such representations as an aspect of semantics but would insist on asking what the model-theoretic semantic interpretation of the given representationlanguage is (Lewis 1970). Formal semantics is centrally concerned with COMPOSITIONALITY at the SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE, how the meanings of larger constituents are built up from the meanings of their parts on the basis of their syntactic structure, and with the relation between compositional SENTENCE MEANING and meaning in discourse. (shrink)

This article examines cognitive process models of human sentence comprehension based on the idea of informed search. These models are rational in the sense that they strive to find a good syntactic analysis quickly. Informed search derives a new account of garden pathing that handles traditional counterexamples. It supports a symbolic explanation for local coherence as well as an algorithmic account of entropy reduction. The models are expressed in a broad framework for theories of human sentence comprehension.

Contemporary generative grammar assumes that syntactic structure is best described in terms of sets, and that locality conditions, as well as cross-linguistic variation, is determined at the level of designated functional heads. Syntactic operations (merge, MERGE, etc.) build a structure by deriving sets from lexical atoms and recursively (and monotonically) yielding sets of sets. Additional restrictions over the format of structural descriptions limit the number of elements involved in each operation to two at each derivational step, a head and a (...) non-head. In this paper, we will explore an alternative direction for minimalist inquiry based on previous work, e.g., Frank (2002, 2006), albeit under novel assumptions. We propose a view of syntactic structure as a specification of relations in graphs, which correspond to the extended projection of lexical heads; these are _elementary trees_ in Tree Adjoining Grammars. We present empirical motivation for a lexicalised approach to structure building, where the units of the grammar are elementary trees. Our proposal will be based on cross-linguistic evidence; we will consider the structure of elementary trees in Spanish, English and German. We will also explore the consequences of assuming that nodes in elementary trees are addresses for purposes of tree composition operations, substitution and adjunction. (shrink)

This paper argues for the idea that in describing language we should follow Haskell Curry in distinguishing between the structure of an expression and its appearance or manifestation . It is explained how making this distinction obviates the need for directed types in type-theoretic grammars and a simple grammatical formalism is sketched in which representations at all levels are lambda terms. The lambda term representing the abstract structure of an expression is homomorphically translated to a lambda term representing its manifestation, (...) but also to a lambda term representing its semantics. (shrink)

Traditional mechanistic accounts of language processing derive almost entirely from the study of monologue. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue. As a result, these accounts may only offer limited theories of the mechanisms that underlie language processing in general. We propose a mechanistic account of dialogue, the interactive alignment account, and use it to derive a number of predictions about basic language processes. The account assumes that, in dialogue, the linguistic representations employed by the (...) interlocutors become aligned at many levels, as a result of a largely automatic process. This process greatly simplifies production and comprehension in dialogue. After considering the evidence for the interactive alignment model, we concentrate on three aspects of processing that follow from it. It makes use of a simple interactive inference mechanism, enables the development of local dialogue routines that greatly simplify language processing, and explains the origins of self-monitoring in production. We consider the need for a grammatical framework that is designed to deal with language in dialogue rather than monologue, and discuss a range of implications of the account. Key Words: common ground; dialogue; dialogue routines; language comprehension; language production; monitoring; perception-behavior link. (shrink)

Ambiguities in natural language can multiply so fast that no person or machine can be expected to process a text of even moderate length by enumerating all possible disambiguations. A sentence containing $n$ scope bearing elements which are freely permutable will have $n!$ readings, if there are no other, say lexical or syntactic, sources of ambiguity. A series of $m$ such sentences would lead to $(n!)^m$ possibilities. All in all the growth of possibilities will be so fast that generating readings (...) first and testing their acceptability afterwards will not be feasible. -/- This insight has led a series of researchers to adopt a level of representation at which ambiguities remain unresolved. The idea here is not to generate and test many possible interpretations but to first generate one `underspecified' representation which in a sense represents all its complete specifications and then use whatever information is available to further specify the result. -/- One central hypothesis in the paper will be that the relation between an underspecified representation and its full representations is not so much the relation between one structure and a set of other structures but is in fact the relation between a description (a set of logical sentences) and its models. (shrink)

Unification grammars are known to be Turing-equivalent; given a grammar G and a word w, it is undecidable whether w L(G). In order to ensure decidability, several constraints on grammars, commonly known as off-line parsability (OLP), were suggested, such that the recognition problem is decidable for grammars which satisfy OLP. An open question is whether it is decidable if a given grammar satisfies OLP. In this paper we investigate various definitions of OLP and discuss their interrelations, proving that some of (...) the OLP variants are indeed undecidable. We then present a novel, decidable OLP constraint which is more liberal than the existing decidable ones. (shrink)

The Montagovian hypothesis of direct model-theoretic interpretation of syntactic surface structures is supported by an account of the semantics of binding that makes no use of variables, syntactic indices, or assignment functions & shows that the interpretation of a large portion of so-called variable-binding phenomena can dispense with the level of logical form without incurring equivalent complexity elsewhere in the system. Variable-free semantics hypothesizes local interpretation of each surface constituent; binding is formalized as a type-shifting operation on expressions that denote (...) functions, & sentences containing a free pronoun are analyzed as a function from individuals to propositions having a meaning of type (e,t). Standard weak crossover effects & binding patterns in sentences with multiple pronouns are shown to submit to straightforward type-theoretic treatments that do not rely on indexation. The variable-free semantics smoothly implements full surface compositionality & requires less machinery than standard accounts to handle functional questions, their answers, sloppy inferences, & across-the-board binding. 73 References. J. Hitchcock. (shrink)

Geach’s rich paper ‘A Program for Syntax’ introduced many ideas into the arena of categorial grammar, not all of which have been given the attention they warrant in the thirty years since its first publication. Rather surprisingly, one of our findings (Section 3 below) is that the paper not only does not contain a statement of what has widely come to be known as “Geach’s Rule”, but in fact presents considerations which are inimical to the adoption of the rule in (...) question. With regard to at least some amongst the numerous other points extracted here from Geach’s discussion, we shall not be able to reach so definitive a conclusion, and content ourselves with giving the issues an airing. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky claims that we know the grammatical principles of our languages in pretty much the same sense that we know ordinary things about the world (e.g. facts), a view about linguistic knowledge that I term ''cognitivism''. In much recent philosophy of linguistics (including that sympathetic to Chomsky's general approach to language), cognitivism has been rejected in favour of an account of grammatical competence as some or other form of mental mechanism, describable at various levels of abstraction (''non-cognitivism''). I argue (...) for cognitivism and against non-cognitivism. First, I show that the distinction between competence and performance in current linguistics is as clearly made as ever it was, in spite of recent interest in linguistic processing modules. Second, I use these facts about the practice of theoretical linguistics to refute various proposals for a non-cognitivist construal of grammatical competence, and to support cognitivism by reflecting on the inapplicability of a multi-level account of linguistic competence. Cognitivism is then defended against several objections centring around the problems of rational integration and conceptualization of grammatical knowledge. Finally, the conception of competence argued for in relation to linguistics is placed in the larger context of cognitive science research and its implications for philosophy of mind. (shrink)

We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, the analysis follows relatively directly from an abstract statement of the ellipsis interpretation problem. It predicts correctly a wide range of interactions between ellipsis and other semantic phenomena such as quantifier scope and bound anaphora. Finally, although the (...) analysis itself is stated nonprocedurally, it admits of a direct computational method for generating interpretations. (shrink)

Two positions of Bolinger, about synonymy and meaningfulness of words, point to significance of controlling the referentiality of word forms, from representing them in grammar to their projection onto surface structure, i.e. configurationality. In particular, it becomes critical to control the range of surface substitution for surface syntactic categories of words to maintain referential properties of idiosyncrasy. Categorial grammars as reference systems suggest ways to keep the two aspects in grammar. The first dividend of adopting a categorial perspective is systematically (...) distinguishing metaphorical sense extensions from idioms. The second dividend is procedural. Some tokens can be seen to be types themselves, with distinct referential import. Furthermore, some idiomatic meanings which require a unique phonological word for specific reference to events and participants can be types too. Together they can be thought of as the idiotype. The idiotype as idiosyncrasy’s foot through the door of grammar reveals controllable range of possibilities for referentiality and configurationality of idiosyncrasy. Phrasal and idiomatic meanings can then be treated compositionally, given the proposed added role of paracompositionality arising from event versus predicate distinction at the level of predicate-argument structure, in multiword expression cum idiom and phrasal verb treatment, which we show for English, Mandarin Chinese and Turkish. (shrink)

How do why-interrogatives work? How do they express the questions they express, in the contexts in which they express them? In this essay, I argue that, at a fundamental level, why-interrogatives work just like other wh-interrogatives, particularly other adjunct wh-interrogatives, and they express the questions they express, in the contexts in which they express them, by the same means that other wh-interrogatives do. These conclusions go against a trend in recent work on why-interrogatives, which holds that they are syntactically and (...) semantically unlike other wh-interrogatives. Since the claim that why-interrogatives are unlike other wh-interrogatives has been taken to support various philosophical theses about the nature of why-questions and explanation, showing that why-interrogatives are just like other wh-interrogatives undermines this line of support for these theses. (shrink)

The topics of structural proof theory and logic programming have influenced each other for more than three decades. Proof theory has contributed the notion of sequent calculus, linear logic, and higher-order quantification. Logic programming has introduced new normal forms of proofs and forced the examination of logic-based approaches to the treatment of bindings. As a result, proof theory has responded by developing an approach to proof search based on focused proof systems in which introduction rules are organized into two alternating (...) phases of rule application. Since the logic programming community can generate many examples and many design goals, the close connections with proof theory have helped to keep proof theory relevant to the general topic of computational logic. (shrink)

Formal semantics and pragmatics as they have developed since the late 1960's have been shaped by fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration among linguists, philosophers, and logicians, among others, and in turn have had noticeable effects on developments in syntax, philosophy of language, computational linguistics, and cognitive science.In this paper I describe the environment in which formal semantics was born and took root, highlighting the differences in ways of thinking about natural language semantics in linguistics and in philosophy and logic. With Montague as (...) a central but not solo player in the story, I reflect on crucial developments in the 1960's and 70's in linguistics and philosophy, and the growth of formal semantics and formal pragmatics from there. I discuss innovations, key players, and leading ideas that shaped the development of formal semantics and its relation to syntax, to pragmatics, and to the philosophy of language in its early years, and some central aspects of its early impact on those fields. (shrink)

Some modifications are suggested to recent (1985) generalised phrase-structure grammar which make the formalism more suitable to computational use, and at the same time provide a clear and elegant redefinition for parts of the formalism which are standardly complex and ill-defined. It is shown how the feature-instantiation principles can be represented as explicit rules in a format similar to metarules, and how a grammar of four parts, immediate-dominance rules, linear-precedence rules, metarules, and these new propagation rules, can be used to (...) produce the ordinary GPSG analyses of English. Methods of computational implementation are discussed, in particular it is suggested that the parts of the grammar are most conveniently interpreted as instructions as to how to produce a set of context-free phrase-structure rules which can be used with a simple left-corner parser. (shrink)

Discontinuity refers to the character of many natural language constructions wherein signs differ markedly in their prosodic and semantic forms. As such it presents interesting demands on monostratal computational formalisms which aspire to descriptive adequacy. Pied piping, in particular, is argued by Pollard (1988) to motivate phrase structure-style feature percolation. In the context of categorial grammar, Bach (1981, 1984), Moortgat (1988, 1990, 1991) and others have sought to provide categorial operators suited to discontinuity. These attempts encounter certain difficulties with respect (...) to model theory and/or proof theory, difficulties which the current proposals are intended to resolve.Lambek calculus is complete for interpretation byresiduation with respect to the adjunction operation of groupoid algebras (Buszkowski 1986). In Moortgat and Morrill (1991) it is shown how to give calculi for families of categorial operators, each defined by residuation with respect to an operation of prosodic adjunction (associative, non-associative, or with interactive axioms). The present paper treats discontinuity in this way, by residuation with respect to three adjunctions: + (associative), (.,.) (split-point marking), andW (wrapping) related by the equations 1+s 2+s 3=(s 1,s 3)Ws 2. We show how the resulting methods apply to discontinuous functors, quantifier scope and quantifier scope ambiguity, pied piping, and subject and object antecedent reflexivisation. (shrink)

We callsyntactic coding a technique which converts syntactic principles or constraints on representations into grammatical rules which can be implemented in any given rule grammar. In this paper we show that any principle or constraint on output trees formalizable in a certain fragment of dynamic logic over trees can be coded in this sense. This allows to reduce in a mechanical fashion most of the current theories of government and binding into GPSG-style grammars. This will be exemplified with Rizzi'sRelativized Minimality.

In Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture, the well-formed expressions of a language are licensed by correspondences between phonology, syntax, and conceptual structure. I show how this architecture can be used to make sense of the existence of parasitic gap constructions. A parasitic gap is one that is rendered acceptable because of the presence of another gap in the same sentence. Compare *a person who everyone who talks to likes Chris, which shows an illicit extraction from a relative clause, and a person everyone (...) who talks to likes, which shows a parasitic gap in the relative clause. Languages differ in terms of the range of configurations in which they allow parasitic gaps; these configurations appear to form a hierarchy.These observations raise some fundamental questions: Why do parasitic gaps exist at all?Why are different syntactic configurations possible for P-gaps and why just these configurations?Why is there a parasitic gap hierarchy?The answers that I propose make crucial use of constructional overgeneralization of across-the-board extraction in coordinate constructions, formulated straightforwardly in the framework of Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture. (shrink)

Two kinds of theoretical framework for syntax are encountered in current linguistics. One emerged from the mathematization of proof theory, and is referred to here as generative-enumerative syntax (GES). A less explored alternative stems from the semantic side of logic, and is here called model-theoretic syntax (MTS). I sketch the outlines of each, and give a capsule summary of some mathematical results pertaining to the latter. I then briefly survey some diverse types of evidence suggesting that in some ways MTS (...) seems better suited to theorizing about the relevant linguistic phenomena. (shrink)

The primary goal of this essay is to demonstrate how considerations from computational complexity theory can inform grammatical theorizing. To this end, generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) linguistic theory is revised so that its power more closely matches the limited ability of an ideal speaker-hearer: GPSG Recognition is EXP-POLY time hard, while Revised GPSG Recognition is NP-complete. A second goal is to provide a theoretical framework within which to better understand the wide range of existing GPSG models, embodied in formal (...) definitions as well as in implemented computer programs. (shrink)

The resolution of ambiguities is one of the central problems for Machine Translation. In this paper we propose a knowledge-based approach to disambiguation which uses Description Logics (dl) as representation formalism. We present the process of anaphora resolution implemented in the Machine Translation systemfast and show how thedl systemback is used to support disambiguation.The disambiguation strategy uses factors representing syntactic, semantic, and conceptual constraints with different weights to choose the most adequate antecedent candidate. We show how these factors can be (...) declaratively represented as defaults inback. Disambiguation is then achieved by determining the interpretation that yields a qualitatively minimal number of exceptions to the defaults, and can thus be formalized as exception minimization. (shrink)

This book sets out the foundations, methodology, and practice of a formal framework for the description of language. The approach embraces the trends of lexicalism and compositional semantics in computational linguistics, and theoretical linguistics more broadly, by developing categorial grammar into a powerful and extendable logic of signs. Taking Montague Grammar as its point of departure, the book explains how integration of methods from philosophy (logical semantics), computer science (type theory), linguistics (categorial grammar) and meta-mathematics (mathematical logic ) provides a (...) categorial foundation with coverage including intensionality, quantification, featural polymorphism, domains and constraints. For the first time, the book systematises categorial thinking into a unified program which is at once both logically secured, and a practical tool for pure lexical grammar development with type-theoretic semantics. It should be of interest to all those active in computational linguistics and formal grammar and is suitable for use at advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, and research levels. (shrink)

Theories of natural language syntax often characterize grammatical knowledge as a form of abstract computation. This paper argues that such a characterization is correct, and that fundamental properties of grammar can and should be understood in terms of restrictions on the complexity of possible grammatical computation, when defined in terms of generative capacity. More specifically, the paper demonstrates that the computational restrictiveness imposed by Tree Adjoining Grammar provides important insights into the nature of human grammatical knowledge.