PhD in Computer Science

Phase-based Minimalist Grammars (PMGs) and Top-Down derivations

Academic year 2013/2014

Sommario del corso

• Course objectives
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Course objectives

The goal of this talk is to provide empirical (and logical) arguments in

favor of a derivational view of the grammar in which structure building

occurs, incrementally, top-down (Chesi 2004a, 2007) and from left to right

(Phillips 1996, 2003).

Following the Minimalist research spirit (Chomsky 1995-2008), I will show

that the bottom-to-top orientation of phrase structure building (that is the

standard mainstream assumption) is not a “virtual conceptual necessity” and

that we can gain in descriptive adequacy if we move away from the idea that

the basic recursive operation is a set formation operation like Merge.

Here I would also propose a parsing algorithm that, similarly to Early 1980,

provide a constituent (complete) analysis of the input sentence, directly

using phrase structure building operations that are part of the Phase-based

Minimalist Grammar.

Class schedule

Note

The seminar will be held by:

dott. Cristiano Chesi, Università di Pavia

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