LINGUIST List 14.2599

Mon Sep 29 2003

Books: Generative Grammar: Morawietz

Editor for this issue: Marisa Ferrara <marisalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. julia.ulrich, Two-Step Approaches to Natural Language Formalisms: Morawietz

Title: Two-Step Approaches to Natural Language Formalisms
Series Title: Studies in Generative Grammar 64
			
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter 
 http://www.mouton-publishers.com		 
 
Author: Frank Morawietz, University of T�bingen, Germany 
				
Hardback: ISBN: 3110178214, Pages: xv, 246 pages, Price: EURO 78.00 /
	 approx. US$ 86.00
			
Abstract:

This book presents a unified formal approach to various contemporary
linguistic formalisms such as Government & Binding, Minimalism or Tree
Adjoining Grammar. Through a careful introduction of mathematical
techniques from logic, automata theory and universal algebra, the book
aims at graduate students and researchers who want to learn more about
tightly constrained logical approaches to natural language
syntax. Therefore it features a complete and well illustrated
introduction to the connection between declarative approaches
formalized in monadic second-order logic (MSO) and generative ones
formalized in various forms of automata as well as of tree grammars.

Since MSO logic (on trees) yields only context-free languages, and at
least the last two of the formalisms mentioned above clearly belong to
the class of mildly context-sensitive formalisms, it becomes necessary
to deal with the problem of the descriptive complexity of the
formalisms involved in another way. The proposed genuinely new
two-step approach overcomes this limitation of MSO logic while still
retaining the desired tightly controlled formal properties.


>From the Contents

I	Introduction
	1	Overview
	2	Technical preliminaries

II	The Classical Approach - Using MSO Logic as a Description
	Language for Natural Language Syntax
	3	Model-theoretic syntax and monadic second-order logic
	4	Finite-state devices
	5	Decidability and definability
	6	Applications
	7	Intermediate conclusion

III	Two Steps Are Better Than One - Extending the Use of MSO Logic
	to Non-Context-Free Linguistic Formalisms
	8	Overview of the two-step approach
	9	Non-context-freeness of natural language
	10	The first step: Lifting
	11	The second step: Reconstruction

IV	Conclusion and Outlook

V	Appendix


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Lingfield(s): General Linguistics
		Generative Grammar (General Linguistics)

Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)


 See this book announcement on our website: 
 http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=7349.