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  1. Optimality Is Not a Race: Against a Performance-Based View of Reference-Set Computation

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract Reference-set constraints (RCs; also known as transderivational constraints) differ from standard well-formedness conditions in that for every tree, they compute a set of output candidates called its reference set and pick from said set the optimal candidate(s) according to some economy …

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  2. Lost in Translation: A Formal Model of Merge-over-Move and Its Implications for the Language Faculty

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract I demonstrate that Merge-over-Move (MOM), a transderivational constraint (TC) put forward in Chomsky (1995, 2000), can be modeled by linear tree transducers, i.e.\ machines that take a tree as input and traverse it from the leaves towards the root while at …

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  3. Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics: Where Do We Find Optimality?

    Graf, Thomas

    Files [pdf] [code]

    @Misc{Graf10Goettingentalk,
  author    = {Graf, Thomas},
  title     = {Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics: {W}here do we Find
          Optimality?},
  year      = {2010},
  note      = {Invited talk, December 15, Institut für Anglistik,
          Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany}
}
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  4. Optimality Conditions Could Care Less About Optimality

    Graf, Thomas

    Files [pdf] [code]

    @Misc{Graf10ZAStalk,
  author    = {Graf, Thomas},
  title     = {Optimality Conditions Could Care Less About Optimality},
  year      = {2010},
  note      = {Invited talk, December 10, Zentrum für Allgemeine
          Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany}
}
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  5. Reference-Set Computation = Minimalism + Transformational Rules?

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract Transderivational constraints (TC) formed an integral part of the early Minimalist Program. I develop a formal model of TCs firmly rooted in automata theory and subsequently argue that

    • in general, TCs aren’t computationally intractable, nor does their complexity exceed that of …
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  6. Efficient Computation at the Interfaces

    Graf, Thomas

    Files [pdf] [code]

    @Misc{Graf10ONLIposter,
  author    = {Graf, Thomas},
  title     = {Efficient Computation at the Interfaces},
  year      = {2010},
  note      = {Poster presented at On Linguistic Interfaces II (OnLI II),
          December 2--4, 2010, University of Ulster, Belfast, United
          Kingdom}
}
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  8. Reference-Set Constraints as Linear Tree Transductions via Controlled Optimality Systems

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract 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 …

    read more

  9. Reference-Set Constraints as Linear Tree Transductions via Controlled Optimality Systems

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract 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 …

    read more

  10. Concealed Reference-Set Computation or How Syntax Escapes the Parser’s Clutches

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract A core assumption of the biolinguistic program is that all properties of language beyond recursion can be motivated by requirements imposed by other cognitive modules. One component in this setup is the parser, which is thought to give rise to a preference …

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  11. Some Interdefinability Results for Syntactic Constraint Classes

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract 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 …

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  12. A Tree Transducer Model of Reference-Set Computation

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract 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 …

    read more

  13. Locality in Flux —- Reducibility Results for Syntactic Constraints

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract Müller and Sternefeld (2000) propose a locality hierarchy of syntactic constraints such that {representational, derivational} < global < translocal < transderivational. We use formal methods to demonstrate that their hierarchy correctly assumes that higher constraint classes are more powerful, but we also show that for …

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  14. Some Interdefinability Results for Syntactic Constraint Classes

    Graf, Thomas

    Abstract 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 …

    read more

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