Abstract This paper investigates bounds on the generative capacity of prosodic processes, by focusing on the complexity of recursive prosody in coordination contexts in English (Wagner, 2010). Although all phonological processes and most prosodic processes are computationally regular …
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Curbing Feature Coding: Strictly Local Feature AssignmentThe Subregular Complexity of Syntactic Islands
read moreAbstract Graf (2017) warns that every syntactic formalism faces a severe overgeneration problem because of the hidden power of subcategorization. Any constraint definable in monadic second-order logic can be compiled into the category system so that it is indirectly …
Monotonicity in Syntax
read moreAbstract Extending previous work on monotonicity in morphology and morphosyntax, I argue that some of the most important constraints in syntax can be analyzed in terms of monotonic functions that map spe cific kinds of syntactic representations to fixed, universal hierarchies. I cover …
The Computational Unity of Merge and Move
read moreAbstract Based on a formal analysis of the operations Merge and Move, I provide a computational answer to the question why Move might be an integral part of language. The answer is rooted in the framework of subregular complexity, which reveals that Merge …
Typological Implications of Tier-Based Strictly Local Movement
read moreAbstract Earlier work has shown that movement, which forms the backbone of Minimalist syntax, belongs in the subregular class of TSL-2 dependencies over trees. The central idea is that movement, albeit unbounded, boils down to local mother-daughter dependencies on a specific substructure …
Diving Deeper into Subregular Syntax
read moreAbstract In my target paper Subregular linguistics: Bridging theoretical linguistics and formal grammar I argued that theoretical linguistics and formal grammar, despite major differences in methodology, have a lot to offer to each other, and that the recently emerged subfield of subregular linguistics …
Subregular Linguistics: Bridging Theoretical Linguistics and Formal Grammar
read moreAbstract Subregular linguistics is a fairly new approach that seeks a deeper understanding of language by combining the rigor of formal grammar with the empirical sophistication of theoretical linguistics. The approach started in phonology but has since branched out to morphology and even …
Subregular Tree Transductions, Movement, Copies, Traces, and the Ban on Improper Movement
read moreAbstract Extending prior work in Graf (2018, 2020, 2022c), I show that movement is tier-based strictly local (TSL) even if one analyzes it as a transformation, i.e. a tree transduction from derivation trees to output trees. I define input strictly local (ISL …
Morphologically Simplex D-Quantifiers Are Strictly 2-Local
read moreAbstract Even though languages can express a wide range of quantifiers, only a small number are ever realized as morphologically simplex determiners: every, no, some, and most. This is puzzling because I) most is much more complex than the other three, and II …
The Dose Makes the Poison: Chesi’s Vision and Subregular Syntax
read moreAbstract In this reply to Chesi’s Is it the end of (generative) linguistics as we know it, I argue that the specifics of his vision for generative syntax in the 21st century remain hazy. Depending on how one interprets Chesi’s methodological …
Automata for Subregular Syntax: Syntax with Strings Attached
read moreAbstract Building on recent work in subregular syntax, we argue that syntactic constraints are best understood as operating not over trees, but rather strings that track structural relations such as dominance and c-command. Even constraints that seem intrinsically tied to …
Multiple Wh-Movement Is Not Special: The Subregular Complexity of Persistent Features in Minimalist Grammars
read moreAbstract Minimalist grammars have been criticized for their inability to analyze successive cyclic movement and multiple wh-movement in a manner that is faithful to the Minimalist literature. Persistent features have been proposed in the literature as a potential remedy (Stabler …
Diagnosing Movement via the Absence of c-Command Relations
read moreAbstract In this paper, we propose a new diagnostic for movement. It has been argued in the computational linguistics literature that some constraints can be formalized by path constraints on the sequence of their c-commanders (Graf and Shafiei 2019), and …
Cyclic Scope and Processing Difficulty in a Minimalist Parser
read moreAbstract A common view in the theoretical literature is that quantifier raising (QR) is a clause-bounded operation. But in a paper published in Glossa, Wurmbrand (2018) argues that (i) QR is not clause-bounded, and the apparent clause-boundedness of QR is …
The Subregular Complexity of Syntactic Islands
read moreAbstract We provide a formal framework for analyzing syntactic island effects from a subregular perspective. Key aspects of the syntactic representation are encoded as strings where precedence represents containment. Island effects then are expressed as constraints on the shape of …
Are Syntactic Categories ISL-2 Inferrable? A Corpus Study
read moreAbstract We use the MG treebank of Torr (2017) to investigate the conjecture in Graf (2020) that category systems are ISL-2 inferrable. A category system is ISL-2 inferrable iff the category feature of every lexical item …
Modeling Island Effects with Probabilistic Tier-Based Strictly Local Grammars over Trees
read moreAbstract We fuse two recent strands of work in subregular linguistics—probabilistic tier projections (Mayer, 2021) and tier-based perspectives on movement (Graf, 2022a)—into a probabilistic model of syntax that makes it easy to add gradience …
The Computational Power of Harmonic Forms
read moreAbstract This chapter studies vowel harmony from a computational perspective. We primarily study necessary and sufficient conditions on the types of surface constraints present in vowel harmony phonotactics. The takeaway is that the computational complexity of …
A Subregular Bound on the Complexity of Lexical Quantifiers
read moreAbstract Semantic automata theory studies the complexity of generalized quantifiers in terms of the string languages that describe their truth conditions. An important point has gone unnoticed so far: for most quantifiers that are determiners, these string languages are subregular. Whereas quantifier phrases …
The Computational Cost of Generalizations: An Example from Micromorphology
read moreAbstract The central concern of linguistics is to succinctly state generalizations. But as numerous linguists have pointed out over the years, generalizations do not always come for free. A formalism’s ability to account for the data does …
Structure Sensitive Tier Projection: Applications and Formal Properties
read moreAbstract The subregular approach has revealed that the phonological surface patterns found in natural language are much simpler than previously assumed. Most patterns belong to the subregular class of tier-based strictly local languages (TSL), which characterizes them as the …
Sensing Tree Automata as a Model of Syntactic Dependencies
read moreAbstract Various aspects of syntax have recently been characterized in subregular terms. However, these characterizations operate over very different representations, including string encodings of c-command relations as well as tiers projected from derivation trees. We present a way to …
Sanskrit n-Retroflexion Is Input-Output Tier-Based Strictly Local
read moreAbstract Sanskrit /n/-retroflexion is one of the most complex segmental processes in phonology. While it is still star-free, it does not fit in any of the subregular classes that are commonly entertained in the literature. We show that when …
C-Command Dependencies as TSL String Constraints
read moreAbstract We provide a general formal framework for analyzing c-command based dependencies in syntax, e.g. binding and NPI licensing, from a subregular perspective. C-command relations are represented as strings computed from Minimalist derivation trees, and syntactic dependencies are shown …
Case Assignment in TSL Syntax: A Case Study
read moreAbstract Recent work suggests that the subregular complexity of syntax might be comparable to that of phonology and morphology. More specifically, whereas phonological and morphological dependencies are tier-based strictly local over strings, syntactic dependencies are tier-based strictly …
Monotonicity as an Effective Theory of Morphosyntactic Variation
read moreAbstract One of the major goals of linguistics is to delineate the possible range of variation across languages. Recent work has identified a surprising number of typological gaps in a variety of domains. In morphology, this includes stem suppletion, person pronoun syncretism, case …
Why Movement Comes for Free Once You Have Adjunction
read moreAbstract This paper presents a novel answer to the question why Move might be an integral part of language. The answer is rooted in the computational framework of subregular complexity, which has already been fruitfully applied to phonology. The computational perspective reveals that …
Locality Domains and Phonological c-Command over Strings
read moreAbstract A lot of recent work in computational phonology seeks to pinpoint the complexity of phonotactic dependencies from a formal perspective. Numerous mathematical classes have been proposed, but Graf (2017) subsumes them all under the umbrella of interval-based strictly piecewise dependencies (IBSP). IBSP …
Derivations as Representations: News from the Computational Frontier
read moreAbstract Ever since McCawley (1968) one of the fundamental questions of linguistic theory has been whether formalisms should be construed as derivational or representational in nature. The former focuses on how structures are built in an incremental fashion from pre-defined atoms via structure-building …
Grammar Size and Quantitative Restrictions on Movement
read moreAbstract This work is a first tentative step towards motivating constraints on movement as a mechanism for minimizing grammar size.
Recently is has been proved that every Minimalist grammar can be converted into a strongly equivalent single movement normal form such that every …
Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms
read moreAbstract Several typological gaps have attracted a lot of interest in the linguistic literature recently. These concern the Person Case Constraint and the absence of ABA patterns in adjectival gradation, pronoun suppletion, case syncretism, and singular noun allomorphy, among others. This paper is …
The Power of Locality Domains in Phonology
read moreAbstract Domains play an integral role in linguistic theories. This paper combines locality domains with current work on the computational complexity of phonology. The first result is that if a specific formalism —- Strictly Piecewise (SP) grammars —- is supplemented with a mechanism to enforce …
Relative Clauses as a Benchmark for Minimalist Parsing
read moreAbstract Minimalist grammars have been used recently in a series of papers to explain well-known contrasts in human sentence processing in terms of subtle structural differences. These proposals combine a top-down parser with complexity metrics that relate parsing …
Morphotactics as Tier-Based Strictly Local Dependencies
read moreAbstract It is commonly accepted that morphological dependencies are finite-state in nature. We argue that the upper bound on morphological expressivity is much lower. Drawing on technical results from computational phonology, we show that a variety of morphotactic …
An Alternate View on Strong Lexicalization in TAG
read moreAbstract TAGs were recently shown not to be closed under strong lexicalization but to be strongly lexicalizable by context-free tree grammars of rank 2. This paper presents an alternative lexicalization procedure that builds on an earlier generalization …
A Computational Guide to the Dichotomy of Features and Constraints
read moreAbstract A contentious issue in the Minimalist literature is whether certain phenomena are best described in terms of features or constraints. Building on recent work in mathematical linguistics, I argue that constraints and features are interchangeable in Minimalist syntax. This does not invalidate …
A Single Movement Normal Form for Minimalist Grammars
read moreAbstract Movement is the locus of power in Minimalist grammars (MGs) but also their primary source of complexity. In order to simplify future analysis of the formalism, we prove that every MG can be converted into a …
A Refined Notion of Memory Usage for Minimalist Parsing
read moreAbstract Recently there has been a lot of interest in testing the processing predictions of a specific top-down parser for Minimalist grammars (Stabler 2012). Most of this work relies on memory-based difficulty …
Models of Adjunction in Minimalist Grammars
read moreAbstract Three closely related proposals for adding (cyclic) adjunction to Minimalist grammars are given model-theoretic definitions and investigated with respect to their linguistic and formal properties. While they differ with respect to their linguistic adequacy, they behave largely the same on a computational …
Evaluating Evaluation Metrics for Minimalist Parsing
read moreAbstract In response to Kobele et al. (2012), we evaluate four ways of linking the processing difficulty of sentences to the behavior of the top-down parser for Minimalist grammars developed in Stabler (2012). We investigate the predictions these four metrics …
Late Merge as Lowering Movement in Minimalist Grammars
read moreAbstract Minimalist grammars can be specified in terms of their derivation tree languages and a mapping from derivations to derived trees, each of which is definable in monadic second-order logic (MSO). It has been shown that the linguistically motivated operation Late Merge can …
Feature Geometry and the Person Case Constraint: An Algebraic Link
read moreAbstract The Person Case Constraint blocks certain combinations of clitics and weak pronouns in a variety of languages. Out of the numerous logical possibilities, only four variants of the Person Case Constraint are attested. I show that these four variants form a natural …
Beyond the Apparent: Cognitive Parallels Between Syntax and Phonology
read moreAbstract One of the central changes in 20th century linguistics was the reconceptualization of language as a cognitive ability rather than merely an abstract relational system of signs —- in the terminology of Chomsky (1986), the move from E-language to I-language. This shift entails …
Local and Transderivational Constraints in Syntax and Semantics
read moreAbstract A long-standing tension in Minimalist syntax is that between the structure-building operations Merge and Move on the one hand and the constraints restricting the shape of the structures built by said operations on the other. Proposals differ vastly in how much weight …
The Syntactic Algebra of Adjuncts
read moreAbstract This paper gives a theory-neutral account of the Adjunct Island Constraint. I show that the island status of adjuncts is a consequence of two properties that set them apart from arguments: optionality and independence. Adjuncts can be omitted without affecting grammaticality, and …
Tree Adjunction as Minimalist Lowering
read moreAbstract Even though Minimalist grammars are more powerful than TAG on the string level, the classes of tree languages the two define are incomparable. I give a constructive proof that if the standard Move operation in Minimalist grammars is replaced by Reset Lowering …
Is Syntactic Binding Rational?
read moreAbstract Recent results show that both TAG and Minimalist grammars can be enriched with rational constraints without increasing their strong generative capacity, where a constraint is rational iff it can be computed by a bottom-up tree automaton. This raises the …
Movement-Generalized Minimalist Grammars
read moreAbstract A general framework is presented that allows for Minimalist grammars to use arbitrary movement operations under the proviso that they are all definable by monadic second-order formulas over derivation trees. Lowering, sidewards movement, and clustering, among others, are the result of instantiating …
Concealed Reference-Set Computation: How Syntax Escapes the Parser’s Clutches
read moreAbstract It has been conjectured that all properties of language beyond recursion can be motivated by interface requirements. One component in this setup is the parser, which is thought to give rise to a preference for computational parsimony. I discuss a mathematical result …
An Algebraic Perspective on the Person Case Constraint
read moreAbstract Graf (2011) and Kobele (2011) proved independently that Minimalist grammars can express all constraints that are definable in weak monadic second-order logic (MSO), i.e. the extension of first-order logic with quantification over finite sets. The proof takes as its vantage point …
Locality and the Complexity of Minimalist Derivation Tree Languages
read moreAbstract Minimalist grammars provide a formalization of Minimalist syntax which allows us to study how the components of said theory affect its expressivity. A central concern of Minimalist syntax is the locality of the displacement operation Move. In Minimalist grammars, however, Move is …
Closure Properties of Minimalist Derivation Tree Languages
read moreAbstract Recently, the question has been raised whether the derivation tree languages of Minimalist grammars (MGs; Stabler 1997, Stabler & Keenan 2003) are closed under intersection with regular tree languages (Graf 2010). Using a variation of a proof technique devised by Thatcher (1967), I …
Logics of Phonological Reasoning
read moreAbstract Inspired by Kracht (2003) and Potts and Pullum (2002), who use tools from mathematical logic in their investigation of phonological theories, I develop an extendable modal logic over string structures, which in turn is used to formalize a specific phonological theory, Government …
Reference-Set Constraints as Linear Tree Transductions via Controlled Optimality Systems
read moreAbstract Reference-set constraints are a special class of constraints used in Minimalist syntax. They extend the notion of well-formedness beyond the level of single trees: When presented with some phrase structure tree, they compute its set of competing output candidates and determine the …
Formal Parameters of Phonology: From Government Phonology to SPE
read moreAbstract Inspired by the model-theoretic approach to phonology deployed by Kracht (2003) and Potts and Pullum (2002), I develop an extendable modal logic for the investigation of phonological theories operating on (richly annotated) string structures. In contrast to previous research in this vein …
Some Interdefinability Results for Syntactic Constraint Classes
read moreAbstract Choosing as my vantage point the linguistically motivated Müller-Sternefeld hierarchy (Müller and Sternefeld 2000), which classifies constraints according to their locality properties, I investigate the interplay of various syntactic constraint classes on a formal level. For non-comparative constraints, I use Rogers’ (2003 …
Comparing Incomparable Frameworks: A Model Theoretic Approach to Phonology
read moreAbstract In previous work, we used techniques from mathematical logic and model theory to study and compare two phonological theories, SPE and Government Phonology. The surprising result was that Government Phonology corresponds to a very weak fragment of SPE, yet it can attain …
A Tree Transducer Model of Reference-Set Computation
read moreAbstract Reference-set constraints are a special class of constraints used in Minimalist syntax. They extend the notion of well-formedness beyond the level of single trees: When presented with some phrase structure tree, they compute its set of competing output candidates and determine the …
Towards a Factorization of String-Based Phonology
read moreAbstract Inspired by the model-theoretic approach to phonology deployed by Kracht (2003) and Potts and Pullum (2002), I develop an extendible modal logic for the investigation of phonological theories operating on (richly annotated) string structures. In contrast to previous research in this vein …
From Vagueness to Disaster: On the Intricacies of Feature Checking
read moreAbstract Because the thesis I wrote as a wee undergrad at the University of Vienna is cited in Reuland (2011) Anaphora and Language Design, I finally decided to upload it despite its many shortcomings. The (preachy) message is that we have to be …
Agreement with Hybrid Nouns in Icelandic
Abstract A short squib on the special gender agreement properties exhibited by Icelandic nouns when their semantic gender is different from their syntactic gender.
Files [pdf]
read more@Article{Graf07Snippets, author = {Graf, Thomas}, title = {Agreement with Hybrid Nouns in {Icelandic}}, year = {2007}, journal = {Snippets}, volume …