Minimal phrase structure: A new formalized theory of phrase structure

Main author: Lowe, John J.
Other authors: Lovestrand, Joseph
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-32392
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic P Philology. Linguistics
description X' theory was a major milestone in the history of the development of generative grammar. It enabled important insights to be made into the phrase structure of human language, but it had a number of weaknesses, and has been essentially replaced in mainstream generativism by Bare Phrase Structure (BPS), which assumes fewer theoretical primitives than X′ theory, and also avoids several of the latter’s weaknesses. However, Bare Phrase Structure has not been widely adopted outside the Minimalist Program (MP), rather, X′ theory remains widespread. In this paper, we develop a new, fully formalized approach to phrase structure which incorporates insights and advances from BPS, but does not require the Minimalist-specific assumptions that come with BPS. We formulate our proposal within Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), providing an empirically and theoretically superior model for phrase structure compared with standard versions of X′ theory current in LFG.
format Journal Article
author Lowe, John J.
author_facet Lowe, John J.
Lovestrand, Joseph
authorStr Lowe, John J.
author_letter Lowe, John J.
author2 Lovestrand, Joseph
author2Str Lovestrand, Joseph
title Minimal phrase structure: A new formalized theory of phrase structure
publisher Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Instytut Podstaw Informatyki (Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Computer Science)
publishDate 2020
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32392/