Abstract Extending previous work on monotonicity in morphology and morphosyntax, I argue that some of the most important constraints in syntax can be analyzed in terms of monotonic functions that map spe cific kinds of syntactic representations to fixed, universal hierarchies. I cover …
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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 …
The Computational Power of Harmonic Forms
read moreAbstract 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 …
A Subregular Bound on the Complexity of Lexical Quantifiers
read moreAbstract Semantic automata theory studies the complexity of generalized quantifiers in terms of the string languages that describe their truth conditions. An important point has gone unnoticed so far: for most quantifiers that are determiners, these string languages are subregular. Whereas quantifier phrases …
A Subregular Bound on the Complexity of Lexical Quantifiers
read moreAbstract Semantic automata theory studies the complexity of generalized quantifiers in terms of the string languages that describe their truth conditions. An important point has gone unnoticed so far: for most quantifiers that are determiners, these string languages are subregular. Whereas quantifier phrases …
Monotonicity as an Effective Theory of Morphosyntactic Variation
read moreAbstract One of the major goals of linguistics is to delineate the possible range of variation across languages. Recent work has identified a surprising number of typological gaps in a variety of domains. In morphology, this includes stem suppletion, person pronoun syncretism, case …
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 …
Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms
read moreAbstract Several typological gaps have attracted a lot of interest in the linguistic literature recently. These concern the Person Case Constraint and the absence of ABA patterns in adjectival gradation, pronoun suppletion, case syncretism, and singular noun allomorphy, among others. This paper is …
Graph Transductions and Typological Gaps in Morphological Paradigms
read moreAbstract Several typological gaps have attracted a lot of interest in the linguistic literature recently. These concern the Person Case Constraint and the absence of ABA patterns in adjectival gradation, pronoun suppletion, case syncretism, and singular noun allomorphy, among others. This paper is …
Do We Need Features for Morphosyntax?
read moreAbstract Bobaljik & Sauerland’s *ABA and the Combinatorics of Morphological Features attempts to explain the absence of ABA patterns across languages in terms of feature combinatorics. Their approach marks a step in the right direction by focusing on the algebra underlying the feature …
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 …
A Computational Guide to the Dichotomy of Features and Constraints
read moreAbstract A contentious issue in the Minimalist literature is whether certain phenomena are best described in terms of features or constraints. Building on recent work in mathematical linguistics, I argue that constraints and features are interchangeable in Minimalist syntax. This does not invalidate …
Feature Geometry and the Person Case Constraint: An Algebraic Link
read moreAbstract The Person Case Constraint blocks certain combinations of clitics and weak pronouns in a variety of languages. Out of the numerous logical possibilities, only four variants of the Person Case Constraint are attested. I show that these four variants form a natural …
Feature Geometry and the Person Case Constraint: An Algebraic Link
read moreAbstract The Person Case Constraint blocks certain combinations of clitics and weak pronouns in a variety of languages. Out of the numerous logical possibilities, only four variants of the Person Case Constraint are attested. I show that these four variants form a natural …
Is Syntactic Binding Rational?
read moreAbstract Recent results show that both TAG and Minimalist grammars can be enriched with rational constraints without increasing their strong generative capacity, where a constraint is rational iff it can be computed by a bottom-up tree automaton. This raises the …
Is Syntactic Binding Rational?
read moreAbstract Recent results show that both TAG and Minimalist grammars can be enriched with rational constraints without increasing their strong generative capacity, where a constraint is rational iff it can be computed by a bottom-up tree automaton. This raises the …
The Complexity of Binding in English and ASL
read moreAbstract It is a well-known fact that pronouns can sometimes be locally bound in English, for instance in picture-phrases and certain adjuncts. Even though many different analyses have been developed over the years, it is still unclear why English …
Why There Must Be Exceptions to Principle B
read moreAbstract Recent Minimalist thinking has been strongly influenced by the idea that some universals may be due to factors outside the language faculty, in particular limited computational resources (Chomsky 2005). In combination with recent results on Stablerian Minimalist grammars (Stabler 1997, Graf 2011 …