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 metric. Well-known examples of RCs are Fewest Steps and Merge-over-Move (Chomsky 1995), Rule I (Reinhart 2006) and Scope Economy (Fox 2000). It has been argued in the literature (Jacobson 1997, among others) that if RCs have any role to play in language, it is in the parser, where they emerge as an epiphenomenon of parallel processing. The intuition is that the assembly of optimal outputs involves fewer steps, so suboptimal outputs are ungrammatical because they are discarded by the parser once the optimal candidate has been assembled. In other words, optimality is a race between candidates (Fewest Steps is one of the few RCs where this logic makes immediate sense, but for the sake of argument I will assume that it can be extended to all RCs). Given the Strong Minimalist Hypothesis, it seems indeed preferable to derive RCs from independently posited properties of the parser (see Hale 2009 and references therein) rather than treat them as a core component of narrow syntax. But I argue that the opposite is the case: If RCs have any role to play in language, the null hypothesis is for them to reside in syntax.

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

Graf, Thomas

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@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}
}

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}
}

Reference-Set Computation = Minimalism + Transformational Rules?
Wed 08 December 2010 | in Presentations |
| constraints | transderivationality | optimality theory | Focus Economy | Merge-over-Move | Shortest Derivation Principle | transducers |

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 …
read more

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}
}

Rethinking Transderivationality
Fri 22 October 2010 | in Presentations |
| constraints | transderivationality | optimality theory | Focus Economy | Merge-over-Move | transducers |

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 …
read more
Reference-Set Constraints as Linear Tree Transductions via Controlled Optimality Systems

Sat 07 August 2010 | in Papers |
| constraints | transderivationality | reference-set computation | optimality theory | transducers |

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

Sat 07 August 2010 | in Presentations |
| constraints | transderivationality | reference-set computation | optimality theory | transducers |

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

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