Abstract 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 …
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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 …
The Computational Nature of Language
read moreAbstract This course is aimed at students with the general mathematical maturity that can be expected of ESSLLI students (sets, functions, relations, first-order logic), but no further background in linguistics or the theory of computation. It uses recent ideas from subregular complexity, formalized …
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 …
Subregular Linguistics for Linguists
read moreAbstract Drawing from computational work that is known as the subregular program, I argue against two received views in linguistics: “phonology and syntax are very different’ and “subcategorization is a solved problem”.
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Cognitive parallelism
Subregular notions of complexity can be applied to strings …
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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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Subregular Syntax: The What, How, and Why
read moreAbstract It is a well-known fact of computational linguistics that syntax is mildly context-sensitive and thus highly complex —- certainly more complex than phonology or morphology. This complexity is at odds with the ease of language acquisition and the impressive speed of human sentence …
The Surprising Simplicity of Syntax: Derivation Trees, Subregular Complexity, and What It Implies for Language and Cognition
read moreAbstract It is a well-known fact of computational linguistics that syntax is mildly context-sensitive and thus highly complex —- certainly more complex than phonology or morphology. This complexity is at odds with the ease of language acquisition and the impressive speed of human sentence …
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 …
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 …
Tiers and Relativized Locality Across Language Modules
read moreAbstract Heinz and Idsardi (2013) draw attention to a profound computational difference between syntax and phonology: phonology only requires regular computations over strings (Johnson 1972 …
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 …
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 …
Subregular Morpho-Semantics: The Expressive Limits of Monomorphemic Quantifiers
read moreAbstract Even though languages are capable of expressing very complex generalized quantifiers such as all but seven and an even number of, the range of possible meanings for monomorphemic determiners seems to be limited to every, no, some, and numerals. In this talk …
Evaluating Subregular Distinctions in the Complexity of Generalized Quantifiers
read moreAbstract Semantic automata were developed to compare the complexity of generalized quantifiers based on the complexity of the string languages that describe their truth conditions. An important point that has gone unnoticed so far is that …
It’s a (Sub-)regular Conspiracy: Locality and Computation in Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics
read moreAbstract It is commonly believed that phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics are distinct modules of language, governed by very different principles with little common ground. Nonetheless several approaches (e.g. Government Phonology, Distributed Morphology) subscribe to the idea that at least some of …
Fragments of First-Order Logic for Linguistic Structures
read moreAbstract Logic has always played a central role in the study of natural language meaning. But logic can also be used to describe the structure of words and sentences. Recent research has revealed that these structures are so simple that they can be …
Computational Parallels Across Language Modules
read moreAbstract Linguists study a variety of aspects of language, including phonology, morphology, and syntax. It is commonly believed that those are distinct modules of language, governed by very different principles and consequently studied with very different tools. While there have been attempts at …
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 …
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 …
Dependencies in Syntax and Phonology: A Computational Comparison