Abstract
Chomsky’s argument that natural languages are not finite state languages puts a lower bound on the weak generative capacity of grammars for natural languages (Chomsky (1956)). Arguments based on weak generative capacity are useful in excluding classes of formal devices as characterizations of natural language, but they are not the only formal considerations by which this can be done. Generative grammars may also be excluded because they cannot assign the correct structural descriptions to the terminal strings of a language; in this case, the grammars are excluded on grounds of strong generative capacity. Thus, the deterministic subclasses of context-free grammars (Knuth (1965)) can be rejected because they cannot assign alternative phrase structures to represent natural language ambiguities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bach E. (1979) “Control in Montague Grammar”, Linguistic Inquiry 10, 515–581.
Bach, E. (1980) “In Defense of Passive,” Linguistics and Philosophy 3, 297–341.
Bach, E. (1981) “Discontinuous Constituents in Generalized Categorial Grammars,” in V. Burke and J. Pustejovsky, eds. Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Linguistic Society, Graduate Linguistics Student Association, University of Massachusetts` at Amherst.
Bar-Hillel, Y., C. Gaifman, E. Shamir (1960) “On Categorial and Phrase-Structure Grammars,” Bulletin of the Research Council of Israel, 9F.
Chomsky, N. (1956) “Three Models for the Description of Language,” IRE Transactions on Information Theory IT-2, 113–134.
Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic Structures, Mouton, The Hague.
Evers, A. (1975) The Transformational Cycle in Dutch and German, Doctoral dissertation, Rijks-universiteit, Utrecht, Holland.
Gazdar, G. (1981) “Unbounded Dependencies and Coordinate Structure,” Linguistic Inquiry 12, 155–184.
Gazdar, G. (1982) “Phrase Structure Grammar,” in P. Jacobson and G.K. Pullum, eds., The Nature of Syntactic Representation, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Grimshaw, J. (1982a) “Theories of Subcategorization,” paper presented at the First West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Stanford University, January 1982.
Grimshaw, J. (1982b) “On the Lexical Representation of Romance Reflexive Clitics,” in J. Bresnan, ed., The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Hale, K. (1979) “On the Position of Walbiri in a Typology of the Base,” available from the Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington, Indiana.
Halvorsen, P.K. (1981) “An Interpretation Procedure for Functional Structures,” unpublished manuscript, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Huybregts, M.A.C. (1976) “Overlapping Dependencies in Dutch,” Utrecht Working Papers in Linguistics 1, 24–65.
Kaplan, R.M. and J. Bresnan (1982) “Lexical-Functional Grammar: A Formal System for Grammatical Representation,” in J. Bresnan, ed., The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Knuth, D. (1965) “On the Translation of Languages from Left to Right,” Information and Control 8, 607–639.
Langendoen, D.T. (1977) “On the Inadequacy of Type-3 and Type-2 Grammars for Human Languages,” in P.J. Hopper, ed., Studies in Descriptive and Historical Linguistics: Festschrift for Winfred P. Lehmann, John Benjamin, Amsterdam, 159–171.
Montalbetti, M. (1981) “Consistency and Clitics,” unpublished manuscript, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Nash, D. (1981) Topics in Walbiri Grammar, Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Postal, P. (1964a) Constituent Structure, Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, Publication 30, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Postal, P. (1964b) “Limitations of Phrase Structure Grammars,” in J. Fodor and J. Katz, eds., The Structure of Language, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 137–151.
Pullum, G.K. and G. Gazdar (1982) “Natural Languages and Context-free Languages,” Linguistics and Philosophy 4, 471–504.
Roberts, J. (1981) “Towards a Unified Analysis of the Passive in Navajo,” unpublished manuscript, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Simpson, J. (1983) Aspects of Walpiri Morphology and Syntax, Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Simpson, J. and J. Bresnan (1982) “Control and Obviation in Warlpiri,” paper presented at the First West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Stanford University, January 1982.
Thatcher, J.W. (1967) “Characterizing Derivation Trees of Context-Free Grammars through a Generalization of Finite Automata Theory,” Journal of Computer and System Science 1, 317–322.
Thatcher, J.W. (1973) “Tree Automata: An Informal Survey,” in A.V. Aho, ed., Currents in the Theory of Computing, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 143–172.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1982 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bresnan, J., Kaplan, R.M., Peters, S., Zaenen, A. (1982). Cross-Serial Dependencies in Dutch. In: Savitch, W.J., Bach, E., Marsh, W., Safran-Naveh, G. (eds) The Formal Complexity of Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3401-6_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3401-6_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-55608-047-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3401-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive