Abstract
In his 1956 paper ‘Three Models for the Description of Language’ Noam Chomsky posed an interesting open question: when we consider the human languages purely as sets of strings of words (henceforth stringsets), do they always fall within the class called context-free languages (CFL’s)? Chomsky declared that he did not know the answer to this question, and turned to a very different set of questions concerning relative elegance and economy of different types of description. Since 1956 various authors (Chomsky included) have attempted to provide answers in the negative, and the negative answer is now the standardly accepted one. We take up the question again in this paper, and show that it is still open, as all the arguments for the negative answer that have been provided in the literature are either empirically or formally incorrect.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aho, A. V. and J. D. Ullmann: 1972, The Theory of Parsing, Translation and Compiling, Volume I: Parsing (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey).
Aho, A. V. and J. D. Ullmann: 1973, The Theory of Parsing, Translation and Compiling, Volume II: Translation and Compiling (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey).
Akmajian, A. and F. Heny: 1975, An Introduction to the Principles of Transformational Syntax (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.).
Allerton, D. J.: 1980, Essentials of Grammatical Theory (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London).
Bach, E.: 1974, Syntactic Theory (Holt Rinehard and Winston, New York).
Bar-Hillel, Y. and E. Shamir: 1960, ‘Finite State Languages: Formal Representations and Adequacy Problems’, reprinted in Y. Bar-Hillel (1964), Language and Information (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.), pp.87–98.
Bonvillain, N.: 1974, ‘Noun Incorporation in Mohawk’, in M. K. Foster (ed.), Papers from the 1972 Conference on Iroquoian Research (National Museum of Man, Ottawa, Canada), pp. 18–26.
Bonvillain, N. and B. Francis: 1980, ‘The Bear and the Fox, in Akwesasne Mohawk’, in Mithun and Woodbury (eds.), pp. 77–95.
Bresnan, J. W.: 1976, ‘Evidence for a Theory of Unbounded Transformations’, Linguistic Analysis 2, 353–393.
Bresnan, J. W.: 1978, ‘A Realistic Transformational Grammar’, in M. Halle, J. W. Bresnan, and G. A. Miller (eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.).
Chomsky, N.: 1956, ‘Three Models for the Description of Language’, I. R. E. Transactions on Information Theory, Volume IT-2, Procedings of the Symposium on Information Theory, September, pp. 113–123.
Chomsky, N.: 1963, ‘Formal Properties of Grammars’, in R. D. Luce, R. R. Bush, an dE. Galanter (eds.), Handbook of Mathematical Psychology, Volume II (John Wiley, New York).
Chomsky, N.: 1977, ‘On Wh-Movement’, in P. Culicover, T. Wasow, and A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.).
Chomsky, N.: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding (Foris, Dordrecht).
Church, K. W.: 1980, On Memory Limitations in Natural Language Processing, MSc Dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Cornulier, B.de: 1973, ‘But If “Respectively” Meant Something?’, Papers in Linguistics 6, 131–134.
Culicover, P. W.: 1976, Syntax (Academic Press, New York).
Daly, R. T.: 1974, Applications of the Mathematical Theory of Linguistics (Mouton, The Hague).
Elster, J.: 1978, Logic and Society: Contradictions and Possible Worlds (John Wiley, New York).
Fidelholtz, J.: 1975, Review of J. Kimball, The Formal Theory of Grammar, Language 51, 493–499.
Fodor, J. A.: 1975, The Language of Thought (Thomas Crowell, New York).
Fromkin, V. and R. Rodman: 1978, An Introduction to Language, Second Edition (Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York).
Gazdar, G.: 1980, ‘A Phrase Structure Syntax for Comparative Clauses’, in T. Hoekstra, H. van der Hulst and M. Moortgat (eds), Lexical Grammar (Foris Publications, Dordrecht), pp. 165–179.
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 (D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland), 131–186.
Gazdar, G., G. K. Pullum, and I. A. Sag: 1981, Auxiliaries and Related Phenomena in a Restrictive Theory of Grammar (Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington, Ind.).
Green, G. M.: 1971, ‘Unspeakable Sentences, Book I’, Linguistic Inquiry 2, 560.
Grinder, J. T. and S. H. Elgin: 1973, Guide to Transformational Grammar (Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York).
Hinton, G.: 1978, ‘Respectively Reconsidered’, Pragmatics Microfiche 3.3, 912–914.
Hopcroft, J. and J. D. Ullmann: 1979, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.).
Hurford, J. R.: 1980, ‘Generative Growing Pains’, Lingua 50, 117–153.
Huybregts, M. A. C.: 1976, ‘Overlapping Dependencies in Dutch’, Utrecht Working Papers in Linguistics I, 24–65.
Johnson, D. E. and P. M. Postal: 1980, Arc Pair Grammar (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J.).
Kimball, J.: 1973, The Formal Theory of Grammar (Prentice-Hall, Engle-wood Cliffs, New Jersey).
Langendoen, D. T.: 1975, ‘Finite State Parsing of Phrase-Structure Languages and the Status of Readjustment Rules in the Grammar’, Linguistic Inquiry 6, 553–554.
Langendoen, D. T.: 1977, ‘On the Inadequacy of Type-3 Grammars for Human Languages’, in P. J. Hopper (ed.), Studies in Descriptive and Historical Linguistics: Festschrift for Winfred P. Lehmann (John Benjamin, Amsterdam, Holland), pp. 159–171.
Langendoen, D. T.: 1981, ‘The Generative Capacity of Word-formation Components’, Linguistic Inquiry 12, 320–322.
Levelt, W. J. M.: 1974, Formal Grammars in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, Volume II: Applications in Linguistic Theory (Mouton, The Hague, Holland).
Lounsbury, F.: 1953, Oneida Verb Morphology (Yale University Publications in Anthropology, No. 48, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.).
McCawley, J. D.: 1968, ‘The Role of Semantics in a Grammar’, in E. Bach and R. T. Harms (eds.), Universals in Linguistic Theory (Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York).
Michelson, K.: 1980, ‘Mohawk Text: The Edge of the Forest Revisited’, in Mithun and Woodbury (eds.), pp. 26–40.
Mithun, M. and H. Woodbury (eds.): 1980, Northern Iroquoian Texts (IJAL Native American Texts Series, No. 4) (University of Chicago Press, Chicago/University Microfilms Internationsl, Ann Arbor, Mich.).
Pinker, S.: 1979, ‘Formal Models of Language Learning’, Cognition 7, 217–283.
Postal, P. M.: 1962, Some Syntactic Rules in Mohawk, Doctoral Dissertation (Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; published by Garland, New York, 1979).
Postal, P. M.: 1964, ‘Limitations of Phrase Structure Grammars’, in J. A. Fodor and J. J. Katz (eds.), The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), pp. 137–151.
Reich, P. A.: 1969, ‘The Finiteness of Natural Language’, Language 45, 831–843.
Sampson, G.: 1975, The Form of Language (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London).
Sampson, G.: 1979, ‘A Non-Nativist Account of Language Universais’, Linguistics and Philosophy 3, 99–104.
Selkirk, E. O.: 1977, ‘Some Remarks on Noun Phrase Structure’, in P. W. Culicover, T. Wasow and A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax (Academic Press, New York), pp. 285–316.
Wachtel, T.: 1981, ‘Sex and the Single Pronoun’, unpublished paper (University of Warsaw).
Winograd, T.: 1972, Understanding Natural Language (Academic Press, New York). Also Cognitive Psychology 3, No. 1 (1972).
Woodbury, H.: 1975, ‘Onondaga Noun Incorporation: Notes on the Interdependence of Syntax and Semantics’, International Journal of American Linguistics 41, 10–20.
Zaenen, A.: 1979, ‘Infinitival Complements in Dutch’, Papers from the Fifteenth Regional Meeting (Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, Ill.), pp. 378–389.
Zwicky, A. M.: 1963, ‘Some Languages That Are Not Context-free’, Quarterly Progress Report of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, 70, 290–293.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pullum, G.K., Gazdar, G. (1987). Natural Languages and Context-Free Languages. 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_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3401-6_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-55608-047-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3401-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive