A logical treatment of semi-free word order and bounded discontinuous constituency

In this paper we present a logical treatment of semifree word order and bounded discontinuous constituency. We extend standard feature value logics to treat word order in a single formalism with a rigorous semantics without phrase structure rules. The elimination of phrase structure rules allows a natural generalisation of the approach to nonconfigurational word order and bounded discontinuous continuency via sequence union. Sequence union formalises the notions of clause union and scramblingby providing a mechanism for describing word order domains larger than the local tree. The formalism incorporates the distinction between bounded and unbounded forms of discontinuous constituency. Grammars are organised as algebraic theories. This means that linguistic generalisations are stated as axioms about the structure of signs. This permits a natural interpretation of implicational universals in terms of theories, subtheories and implicational axioms. The accompanying linguistic analysis is...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1989
• Where: EACL
• Authors: Mike Reape
• Keywords: Discontinuous Constituency, EACL 1989, Natural Language Processing, Phrase Structure Rules, Word Order