Abstract
We examine an argument for the non-context-freeness of English that has received virtually no discussion in the literature. It is based on adjuncts of the form ‘X or no X’, where X is a nominal. The construction has been held to exemplify unbounded syntactic reduplication. We argue that although the argument can be made in a mathematically valid form, its empirical basis is not claimed unbounded syntactic identity between nominals does not always hold in attested cases, and second, an understanding of the semantics of the construction removes the necessity of making reference to any syntactic reduplication.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bresnan J.W., Kaplan R.M., Peters P.S., Zaenen A. (1982). Cross-serial dependencies in Dutch. Linguistic Inquiry 13: 613-635
Chomsky N. (1963). Formal properties of grammars. In: Luce R.D., Bush R.R., Galanter E. (eds) Handbook of mathematical psychology (Vol. II). New York, John Wiley
Culy C. (1985). The complexity of the vocabulary of Bambara. Linguistics and Philosophy 8: 345-351
Dalrymple M., Kehler A. (1995). On the constraints imposed by respectively. Linguistic Inquiry 26: 531-536
Daly R.T. (1974). Applications of the mathematical theory of linguistics. The Hague, Mouton
Dayal, V. (1997). Free relatives and ever: Identity and free choice readings. In Proceedings of SALT VII(pp. 99-116). Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications.
Gawron, J. M. (2001). Universal concessive conditionals and alternative NPs in English. In C. Condoravdi & G. R. de Lavalette (Eds.), Logical perspectives on language and information. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Geurts B. (2005). Entertaining alternatives: Disjunctions as modals. Natural Language Semantics 13: 383–410
Harkema H. (2001). A characterization of minimalist languages. In: de Groote P., Morrill G., Retoré C. (eds) Logical aspects of computational linguistics: 4th international conference. Berlin, Springer Verlag, pp. 193–211
Higginbotham J. (1984). English is not a context-free language. Linguistic Inquiry 15: 119–126
Higginbotham J. (1985). Reply to Pullum. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 298–304
Hopcroft J.E., Ullman J.D. (1979). Introduction automata theory, languages, and computation. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley
Huddleston R., Pullum G.K. et al. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Izvorski R. (2000). Free adjunct free relatives. In Billerey R., Lillehaugen B.D. (eds) Proceedings of the 19th West Coast conference on formal linguistics. Somerville, MA, Cascadilla Press, pp. 232–245
Kobele, G. M., & Michaelis, J. (2005). Two type 0-variants of minimalist grammars. Presented at the 2005 FG-MoL (Formal Grammars/Mathematics of Language) FG-MoL ’05: The 10th conference on formal grammar and the 9th meeting on mathematics of language. University of Edinburgh. Proceedings to be published by CSLI Publications, Stanford, California.
Manaster-Ramer, A. (1986). Copying in natural languages, context-freeness, and queue grammars. In Proceedings of the 24th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics (pp. 85–89). New York: Columbia University.
Manaster-Ramer A. (1991). Vacuity. Linguistics and Philosophy 14: 339–348
Michaelis J. (2001). Transforming linear context-free rewriting systems into minimalist grammars. In: de Groote P., Morrill G., Retoré C. (eds) Logical aspects of computational linguistics: 4th international conference, LACL ’01. Berlin, Springer Verlag, pp. 228–244
Pelletier F.J. (1988). Vacuous relatives and the (non-)context-freeness of English. Linguistics and Philosophy 11: 255–260
Potts C. (2005). The logic of conventional implicatures. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Pullum G.K., Gazdar G. (1982). Natural languages and context-free languages. Linguistics and Philosophy 4: 471–504
Pullum G.K. (1985). Such that clauses and the context-freeness of English. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 291–298
Shieber S. (1985). Evidence against the context-freeness of human language. Linguistics and Philosophy 8: 333–343
Simons M. (2001). Disjunction and alternativeness. Linguistics and Philosophy 24: 597–619
Stabler E.P. (1997). Derivational minimalism. In: Retoré C. (eds) Logical aspects of computational linguistics: LACL ’96. Berlin, Springer-Verlag, pp. 68–95
Ullian J. (1966). Failure of a conjecture about context-free languages. Information and Control 9: 61–65
Zimmermann T.E. (2000). Free choice disjunction and epistemic possibility. Natural Language Semantics 8: 255–290
Zwicky A.M., Sadock J.M. (1985). A note on xy languages. Linguistics and Philosophy 8: 229–236
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The first author’s interest in this topic was sparked many years ago, when Robert Berwick brought to his attention the observations of Alexis Manaster-Ramer. Gerald Gazdar, Uwe Mönnich, James MoRogers, Stuart Shieber and Alia Sperling have supplied useful ideas in conversation and in comments on an earlier draft. Versions of this paper were presented at MIT in May 2005 and at University College London in September 2005, and the members of both audiences are thanked for their valuable discussion. The work of Pullum on this paper was partially supported by a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pullum, G.K., Rawlins, K. Argument or no argument?. Linguist and Philos 30, 277–287 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-007-9013-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-007-9013-y