Formal Language Theory and its Relevance for Linguistic Analysis最新文献

{"title":"Nonderived environment blocking and input-oriented computation","authors":"Jane Chandlee","doi":"10.1075/elt.00031.cha","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00031.cha","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper presents a computational account of nonderived environment blocking (NDEB) that indicates the\u0000 challenges it has posed for phonological theory do not stem from any inherent complexity of the patterns themselves. Specifically,\u0000 it makes use of input strictly local (ISL) functions, which are among the most restrictive (i.e., lowest computational complexity)\u0000 classes of functions in the subregular hierarchy (Heinz 2018) and shows that NDEB is\u0000 ISL provided the derived and nonderived environments correspond to unique substrings in the input structure. Using three classic\u0000 examples of NDEB from Finnish, Polish, and Turkish, it is shown that the distinction between derived and nonderived sequences is\u0000 fully determined by the input structure and can be achieved without serial derivation or intermediate representations. This result\u0000 reveals that such cases of NDEB are computationally unexceptional and lends support to proposals in rule- and constraint-based\u0000 theories that make use of its input-oriented nature.","PeriodicalId":174474,"journal":{"name":"Formal Language Theory and its Relevance for Linguistic Analysis","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115176615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mixed computation","authors":"D. Krivochen","doi":"10.1075/elt.00034.kri","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00034.kri","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Proof-theoretic models of grammar are based on the view that an explicit characterization of a language comes in\u0000 the form of the recursive enumeration of strings in that language. That recursive enumeration is carried out by a procedure which\u0000 strongly generates a set of structural descriptions Σ and weakly generates a set of strings S; a grammar is thus a function that\u0000 pairs an element of Σ with elements of S. Structural descriptions are obtained by means of Context-Free phrase structure rules or\u0000 via recursive combinatorics and structure is assumed to be uniform: binary branching trees all the way down. In\u0000 this work we will analyse natural language constructions for which such a rigid conception of phrase structure is descriptively\u0000 inadequate and propose a solution for the problem of phrase structure grammars assigning too much or too little structure to\u0000 natural language strings: we propose that the grammar can oscillate between levels of computational complexity in local domains,\u0000 which correspond to elementary trees in a lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar.","PeriodicalId":174474,"journal":{"name":"Formal Language Theory and its Relevance for Linguistic Analysis","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123861859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Review of De Smedt & De Cruz (2020): The Challenge of Evolution to Religion","authors":"Carlo Brentari","doi":"10.1075/elt.00035.bre","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00035.bre","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":174474,"journal":{"name":"Formal Language Theory and its Relevance for Linguistic Analysis","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130055529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The computational unity of Merge and Move","authors":"T. Graf","doi":"10.1075/elt.00032.gra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00032.gra","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Based on a formal analysis of the operations Merge and Move, I provide a computational answer to the question why\u0000 Move might be an integral part of language. The answer is rooted in the framework of subregular complexity, which reveals that\u0000 Merge is most succinctly analyzed in terms of the formal class TSL. Any cognitive device that can handle this level of complexity\u0000 also possesses sufficient resources for Move. In fact, Merge and Move are remarkably similar instances of TSL. Consequently, Move\u0000 has little computational or conceptual cost attached to it and comes essentially for free in any grammar that expresses Merge as\u0000 compactly as possible.","PeriodicalId":174474,"journal":{"name":"Formal Language Theory and its Relevance for Linguistic Analysis","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121580157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Variation in mild context-sensitivity","authors":"R. Frank, Tim Hunter","doi":"10.1075/elt.00033.fra","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00033.fra","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Aravind Joshi famously hypothesized that natural language syntax was characterized (in part) by mildly\u0000 context-sensitive generative power. Subsequent work in mathematical linguistics over the past three decades has revealed\u0000 surprising convergences among a wide variety of grammatical formalisms, all of which can be said to be mildly context-sensitive.\u0000 But this convergence is not absolute. Not all mildly context-sensitive formalisms can generate exactly the same stringsets (i.e.\u0000 they are not all weakly equivalent), and even when two formalisms can both generate a certain stringset, there might be\u0000 differences in the structural descriptions they use to do so. It has generally been difficult to find cases where such differences\u0000 in structural descriptions can be pinpointed in a way that allows linguistic considerations to be brought to bear on choices\u0000 between formalisms, but in this paper we present one such case. The empirical pattern of interest involves wh-movement\u0000 dependencies in languages that do not enforce the wh-island constraint. This pattern draws attention to two related dimensions of\u0000 variation among formalisms: whether structures grow monotonically from one end to another, and whether structure-building\u0000 operations are conditioned by only a finite amount of derivational state. From this perspective, we show that one class of\u0000 formalisms generates the crucial empirical pattern using structures that align with mainstream syntactic analysis, and another\u0000 class can only generate that same string pattern in a linguistically unnatural way. This is particularly interesting given that\u0000 (i) the structurally-inadequate formalisms are strictly more powerful than the structurally-adequate ones from the perspective of\u0000 weak generative capacity, and (ii) the formalism based on derivational operations that appear on the surface to align most closely\u0000 with the mechanisms adopted in contemporary work in syntactic theory (merge and move) are the formalisms that fail to align with\u0000 the analyses proposed in that work when the phenomenon is considered in full generality.","PeriodicalId":174474,"journal":{"name":"Formal Language Theory and its Relevance for Linguistic Analysis","volume":"52 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113988759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}