Abstract 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 strongly equivalent MG where every phrase moves at most once. The translation procedure is implemented via a deterministic linear tree transduction on the derivation tree language and induces at most a linear blow-up in the size of the lexicon.
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@inproceedings{GrafEtAl16FG,
author = {Graf, Thomas and Aks\"{e}nova, Al\"{e}na and De Santo, Aniello},
title = {A Single Movement Normal Form for {M}inimalist Grammars},
year = {2016},
bookTitle={{F}ormal {G}rammar: 20th and 21st International Conferences, {FG} 2015, {B}arcelona, {S}pain, {A}ugust 2015, Revised Selected Papers. {FG} 2016, {B}ozen, {I}taly, {A}ugust 2016},
editor={Foret, Annie
and Morrill, Glyn
and Muskens, Reinhard
and Osswald, Rainer
and Pogodalla, Sylvain},
publisher={Springer},
address={Berlin, Heidelberg},
pages={200--215},
abstract={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 strongly equivalent MG where every phrase moves at most once. The translation procedure is implemented via a deterministic linear tree transduction on the derivation tree language and induces at most a linear blow-up in the size of the lexicon.},
isbn="978-3-662-53042-9",
doi={10.1007/978-3-662-53042-9_12},
url={https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53042-9_12}
}