A Descriptive Approach to Language-Theoretic Complexity
9781575869605
Distributed for Center for the Study of Language and Information
A Descriptive Approach to Language-Theoretic Complexity
Early formal specifications of natural language syntax were quite closely connected to the notion of abstract machines for computing them. This provided a very natural means of gauging the relative difficulty of processing various constructions, as well as offering some insight into the abstract properties of the human language faculty. More recently, this approach has been superseded by one in which languages are specified in terms of systems of constraints on the structure of their sentences. This has made complexity results difficult to obtain. This book introduces a way of obtaining such results. It presents a natural and quite general means of expressing constraints on the structure of trees and shows that the languages that can be specified by systems of such constraints are exactly those computable by a particular standard class of abstract machines. Thus the difficulty of processing a construction can be reduced to the difficulty of expressing the constraints that specify it. The technique is demonstrated by applying it to a fairly complete treatment of English within the framework of Government and Binding theory, with the result of showing that its complexity is much less than has heretofore been assumed.
205 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1998
Studies in Logic, Language, and Information
Language and Linguistics: General Language and Linguistics, Syntax and Semantics
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Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Language-Theoretic Complexity in Generative Grammar
Part I The Descriptive Complexity of Strongly Context-Free Languages
2 Introduction to Part I
3 Trees as Elementary Structures
4 L²K,P and SnS
5 Definability and Non-Definability in L²K,P
6 Conclusion of Part I
Part II The Generative Capacity of GB Theories
7 Introduction to Part II
8 The Fundamental Structures of GB Theories
9 GB and Non-definability in L²K,P
10 Formalizing X-Bar Theory
11 The Lexicon, Theta Theory and Case Theory
12 Binding and Control
13 Chains
14 Reconstruction
15 Limitations of the Interpretation
16 Conclusion of Part II
Index of Symbols
Index of Definitions
Bibliography
Subject Index
Name Index
Acknowledgements
1 Language-Theoretic Complexity in Generative Grammar
Part I The Descriptive Complexity of Strongly Context-Free Languages
2 Introduction to Part I
3 Trees as Elementary Structures
4 L²K,P and SnS
5 Definability and Non-Definability in L²K,P
6 Conclusion of Part I
Part II The Generative Capacity of GB Theories
7 Introduction to Part II
8 The Fundamental Structures of GB Theories
9 GB and Non-definability in L²K,P
10 Formalizing X-Bar Theory
11 The Lexicon, Theta Theory and Case Theory
12 Binding and Control
13 Chains
14 Reconstruction
15 Limitations of the Interpretation
16 Conclusion of Part II
Index of Symbols
Index of Definitions
Bibliography
Subject Index
Name Index
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