Learning-Theoretic Foundations of Linguistic Universals

Abstract

Some aspects of a theory of grammar are presented which derive from a formal theory of language acquisition. One aspect of the theory is a universal constraint on analyzability known as the Freezing Principle, which supplants a variety of constraints proposed in the literature. A second aspect of the theory is the Invariance Principle, a constraint on the relationship between semantic and syntactic structure that makes verifiable predictions of syntactic universals. The relationship between the notion of 'explanatory adequacy' of a theory of grammar and the learnability of a class of transformational grammars is discussed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 1974
Accession Number
ADA002743

Entities

People

  • Henry Hamburger
  • Kenneth Wexler
  • Peter Culicover

Organizations

  • University of California, Irvine

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • California
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Construction
  • Grammars
  • Hypotheses
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Literature
  • Natural Languages
  • Observation
  • Semantics
  • Social Sciences
  • Syntax
  • Transformational Grammars

Fields of Study

  • Linguistics

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Theoretical Analysis.