Abstract
Minimalist grammars (MGs) constitute a mildly context-sensitive formalism when being equipped with a particular locality condition (LC), the shortest move condition. In this format MGs define the same class of derivable string languages as multiple context-free grammars (MCFGs). Adding another LC to MGs, the specifier island condition (SPIC), results in a proper subclass of derivable languages. It is rather straightforward to see this class is embedded within the class of languages derivable by some well-nested MCFG (MCFG wn ). In this paper we show that the embedding is even proper. We partially do so adapting the methods used in [13] to characterize the separation of MCFG wn -languages from MCFG-languages by means of a “simple copying” theorem. The separation of strict derivational minimalism from well-nested MCFGs is then characterized by means of a “simple reverse copying” theorem. Since for MGs, well-nestedness seems to be a rather ad hoc restriction, whereas for MCFGs, this holds regarding the SPIC, our result may suggest we are concerned here with a structural difference between MGs and MCFGs which cannot immediately be overcome in a non-stipulated manner.
This work has essentially been carried out within the joint research project “Open Problems on Multiple Context-Free Grammars” funded by the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan.
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Kanazawa, M., Michaelis, J., Salvati, S., Yoshinaka, R. (2011). Well-Nestedness Properly Subsumes Strict Derivational Minimalism. In: Pogodalla, S., Prost, JP. (eds) Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics. LACL 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6736. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22221-4_8
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