Abstract 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 …
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Syntactic Tiers: Empirical Applications and Challenges
read moreAbstract In prior work (Graf 2018), I have argued on computational grounds that movement is best understood by borrowing an idea from autosegmental phonology: specific elements of the syntactic structure are projected onto one or more tiers, and movement dependencies must be maximally …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Syntactic Tiers for Movement and Agreement
read moreAbstract This lecture series is an empirically minded introduction to the concept of tiers, which for the last ten year has played a central role in work at the intersection of theoretical and computational linguistics. While this computational notion of tiers is inspired …
Subregular Linguistics for…well, Linguists
read moreAbstract Subregular linguistics is a recent research program that draws heavily from formal language theory but enjoys two noteworthy traits:
- the key concepts are intuitive and easy to visualize without the use of any mathematics, and
- its computational machinery is very sensitive to …
Diagnosing Movement via the Absence of c-Command Relations
read moreAbstract Based on an earlier finding that almost all c-command dependencies amount to subregular constraints on c-strings, we argue that all exceptions to this generalization involve movement. Since regulating movement is already known to be beyond the purview of c-strings …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
One Reason to Move, a Million Reasons to Be an Island: Third-Factor Explanations from Computational Syntax
read moreAbstract Two linguistic findings are commonly taken for granted yet are anything but trivial:
- Phrases can be displaced from their base position.
- Some phrases block displacement.
On a technical level, these properties are hashed out in terms of movement and islands. From a …
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 …
Memory Usage Predicts Relative Difficulty in Human Sentence Processing
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 …
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 …
A Hidden Consensus: Computational Invariants of Minimalist Syntax
read moreAbstract A common sentiment among linguists is that the Minimalist literature features a dazzling array of competing proposals that seem to share little common ground in their technical assumptions. While differences certainly do exist between accounts, a computationally informed perspective reveals a set …
Dependencies in Syntax and Phonology: A Computational Comparison
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 …
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 …
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 …
Tree Adjunction as Minimalist Lowering
read moreAbstract TAG and Minimalist grammars (MGs) are related in very interesting ways. Even though MGs subsume TAGs at the level of string languages, their respective classes of tree languages are incomparable (Kobele et al 2007, Mönnich 2006). As pointed out by Mönnich (2006 …
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 …
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 …