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A REEVALUATION OF SOME ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE

A REEVALUATION OF SOME ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE MICHAEL B. KAC This paper is concerned with phrase structure rules and their relationship to transformations and to the lexicon in the context of a generative grammar. Although the central proposal to be made here is directly concerned with PS-rules, it has consequences elsewhere in the theory -- a result which ought not to be unexpected. I. FORMAL CONSIDERATIONS The adjudication of competing explanatory paradigms relies on a number of criteria, one of which is that of CONCEPTUAL SIMPLICITY. This is a difficult concept to define precisely and its value can perhaps be overestimated; nonetheless it is a valuable criterion for establishing at least aprimafacie basis for a decision as to which of a set of alternative descriptions of the same facts to accept. Perhaps the classic example of a decision motivated at least in part by this criterion is the preference of Copernican over Ptolemaic astronomy. The latter paradigm could, in fact, account for a great deal but required that planetary motion be described in terms both of 'cycles' (orbits) and 'epicycles' (or orbitswithin-orbits); Copernicus, by contrast, constructed a system in which all the same facts could be accounted for but with reference only to cycles. Thus, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Linguistics - An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences de Gruyter

A REEVALUATION OF SOME ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE

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References (7)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Walter de Gruyter
ISSN
0024-3949
eISSN
1613-396X
DOI
10.1515/ling.1972.10.92.28
Publisher site
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Abstract

MICHAEL B. KAC This paper is concerned with phrase structure rules and their relationship to transformations and to the lexicon in the context of a generative grammar. Although the central proposal to be made here is directly concerned with PS-rules, it has consequences elsewhere in the theory -- a result which ought not to be unexpected. I. FORMAL CONSIDERATIONS The adjudication of competing explanatory paradigms relies on a number of criteria, one of which is that of CONCEPTUAL SIMPLICITY. This is a difficult concept to define precisely and its value can perhaps be overestimated; nonetheless it is a valuable criterion for establishing at least aprimafacie basis for a decision as to which of a set of alternative descriptions of the same facts to accept. Perhaps the classic example of a decision motivated at least in part by this criterion is the preference of Copernican over Ptolemaic astronomy. The latter paradigm could, in fact, account for a great deal but required that planetary motion be described in terms both of 'cycles' (orbits) and 'epicycles' (or orbitswithin-orbits); Copernicus, by contrast, constructed a system in which all the same facts could be accounted for but with reference only to cycles. Thus,

Journal

Linguistics - An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences – de Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 1972

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