Linguistics and some aspects of its underlying dynamics

In recent years, central components of a new approach to linguistics, the Minimalist Program (MP) have come closer to physics. Features of the Minimalist Program, such as the unconstrained nature of recursive Merge, the operation of the Labeling Algorithm that only operates at the interface of Narrow Syntax with the Conceptual-Intentional and the Sensory-Motor interfaces, the difference between pronounced and un-pronounced copies of elements in a sentence and the build-up of the Fibonacci sequence in the syntactic derivation of sentence structures, are directly accessible to representation in terms of algebraic formalism. Although in our scheme linguistic structures are classical ones, we find that an interesting and productive isomorphism can be established between the MP structure, algebraic structures and many-body field theory opening new avenues of inquiry on the dynamics underlying some central aspects of linguistics.Comment: 17 page

Negative concord and (multiple) agree: a case study of West Flemish

This paper examines the formalization of negative concord in terms of the Minimalist Program, focusing entirely on negative concord in West Flemish. It is shown that a recent analysis of negative concord which advocates Multiple Agree is empirically inadequate. Instead of Multiple Agree, it is argued that a particular implementation of the simpler and less powerful binary Agree is superior in deriving the data in questio

<Articles>VP-internal Movement(<Syntax>)

1. Introduction In this paper I will discuss the internal structure of VP under the Minimalist Program. Adopting the layered VP hypothesis, I will argue that there is movement inside the VP. ..

Geometric representations for minimalist grammars

We reformulate minimalist grammars as partial functions on term algebras for strings and trees. Using filler/role bindings and tensor product representations, we construct homomorphisms for these data structures into geometric vector spaces. We prove that the structure-building functions as well as simple processors for minimalist languages can be realized by piecewise linear operators in representation space. We also propose harmony, i.e. the distance of an intermediate processing step from the final well-formed state in representation space, as a measure of processing complexity. Finally, we illustrate our findings by means of two particular arithmetic and fractal representations.Comment: 43 pages, 4 figure

The Idea of Code in Contextualism and Minimalism

In this paper I discuss the idea of a semantic code in the contemporary debate between contextualism and minimalism. First, I identify historical sources of these positions in Grice's pragmatics and in Davidson's theory of meaning in order to sketch the role of a semantic code there. Then I argue that contextualism is committed to the idea of an ad hoc code, while minimalism involves a persistent code. However, the latter approach to a code requires disambiguation which must be carried out in the early stages of speech act processing. I raise a concern that primary pragmatic processes may be active here, especially in the case of disambiguating polysemous expressions, which could be problematic or even devastating for the minimalist program. At the end I evaluate a possible minimalist way out by examining the minimalist account of metaphor, which lies at the root of polysemy. If a code robust enough to deal with polysemy could be created, minimalist conceptions would present a new impetus to understand language as a code. Without such a code, very little would be left of the notion of a persistent code and hence of minimalism itself

On choice rules in dependent type theory

In a dependent type theory satisfying the propositions as types correspondence together with the proofs-as-programs paradigm, the validity of the unique choice rule or even more of the choice rule says that the extraction of a computable witness from an existential statement under hypothesis can be performed within the same theory. Here we show that the unique choice rule, and hence the choice rule, are not valid both in Coquand\u2019s Calculus of Constructions with indexed sum types, list types and binary disjoint sums and in its predicative version implemented in the intensional level of the Minimalist Founda- tion. This means that in these theories the extraction of computational witnesses from existential statements must be performed in a more ex- pressive proofs-as-programs theory