A formal theory of word order : a case study in West Germanic
This thesis has three primary goals. The first goal is to provide a treatment of <I>bounded</I> discontinuous constituency and word order in general and semi-free word order in particular. Bounded discontinuous constituency is taken to mean the kind of category-bounded discontinuity typically found in the German Mittelfield and in Dutch ~cross-serial~ dependency constructions. It does not mean unbounded dependencies such as <I>wh</I>-movement. The second goal is to provide an alternative account of cross-linguistic variation in word order (particularly with respect to the West Germanic languages) to the <I>Principles and Parameters </I>approach of Government and Binding Theory (GB). The third goal is to formalise the account in a single homogeneous logical formalism which is not based on rewrite rules or other formal language theoretic machinery. A secondary goal is to formulate generalisations about natural languages and families of natural languages which are primarily motivated by empirical considerations rather than theory internal ones. With these goals in mind, the notion of a <I>word order domain</I> is introduced. Informally, a word order domain is the domain over which category bounded discontinuous
Reape, Mike
A formal theory of word order : a case study in West Germanic. This thesis has three primary goals. The first goal is to provide a treatment of <I>bounded</I> discontinuous constituency and word order in general and semi-free word order in particular. Bounded discontinuous constituency is taken to mean the kind of category-bounded discontinuity typically found in the German Mittelfield and in Dutch ~cross-serial~ dependency constructions. It does not mean unbounded dependencies such as <I>wh</I>-movement. The second goal is to provide an alternative account of cross-linguistic variation in word order (particularly with respect to the West Germanic languages) to the <I>Principles and Parameters </I>approach of Government and Binding Theory (GB). The third goal is to formalise the account in a single homogeneous logical formalism which is not based on rewrite rules or other formal language theoretic machinery. A secondary goal is to formulate generalisations about natural languages and families of natural languages which are primarily motivated by empirical considerations rather than theory internal ones. With these goals in mind, the notion of a <I>word order domain</I> is introduced. Informally, a word order domain is the domain over which category bounded discontinuous
formal theory word_order case_study west germanic primary_goal first goal_provide treatment bound constituency word_order general semi free_word order particular bounded constituency take mean kind category bounded discontinuity typically found german dutch cross serial dependency construction mean dependency movement second goal_provide alternative_account cross_linguistic variation word_order particularly_respect west germanic language principles parameters government binding_theory third goal formalise account single homogeneous logical formalism base rewrite rule formal_language theoretic machinery secondary goal formulate generalisation natural_language family natural_language primarily motivate empirical consideration rather theory internal goal mind notion word_order domain introduce informally word_order domain domain category bound