Abstract
The program for syntax which I describe here is not one I can claim as specially my own. The two basic ideas are due to Frege: analysis of an expression into a main functor and its argument(s), and distinction among categories of functors according to the categories of arguments and values. The development of a handy notation for categories, and of an algorithm to test whether a string of expressions will combine into a complex expression that belongs to a definite category, is due to the Polish logicians, particularly Ajdukiewicz. My own contribution has been confined to working out details. So my program is not original, but I think it is right in essentials; and I am making propaganda for it by working it out in some particular instructive examples. I think this is all the more called for because some recent work in syntax seems to have ignored the insights I am trying to convey.
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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Geach, P.T. (1987). A Program for Syntax. 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_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3401-6_6
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