Primitive computations in phrase construction
Name
702645479-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
3.51 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1e2e7f9de3dcfbe9693e3bd5f69620ed
Author(s)
Nguyen, Chieu V
Advisor(s)
Robert C. Berwick.
Date Issued
2009
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The Minimalist Program in current linguistic theory seeks to explain linguistic structure in terms of economy principles, under the assumption that the human language faculty is a perfect system that performs only enough work to satisfy interface requirements. We consider processing costs as a property of syntactic computation and propose that these principles of economy may be met by the availability of alternative operations, each favorable in different circumstances. We characterize the basic Merge operation as a collection of three nested operations that apply to three corresponding levels of nested syntactic data types. In this framework, we provide an analysis of coordinate structure that uses a goal of minimizing processing cost to explain a number of peculiar characteristics of coordination, including the Coordination of Likes Constraint, the Coordinate Structure Constraint, and apparent case and agreement violations.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-73).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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