Paraphrase Grammars

by R.M. Smaby

Overview

The recent rapid development of transformational grammars has incorpo­ rated some strong claims in the areas of semantics and co-occurrence. The earlier structuralists relied on a minimum of information about the meaning of strings of a language. They asked only if strings of sounds were different in meaning - or simply were different words or phrases. Current transformational grammars, on the other hand, set as their goal the production of exactly the meaningful strings of a language. Stated slightly differently, they wish to specify exactly which strings of a language can occur together (meaningfully) in a given order. The present book purports to show that transformational grammar is in­ dependent of the current trends in semantics. I claim that exciting and sophisticated transformational grammars are required for describing when strings of a language mean the same, that is, for describing when strings of a language are paraphrases of each other. This task can be quite naturally limited to a project of much weaker semantic claims than those which are current in transformational linguistics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789027701787
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	12/31/1970
Series:	Formal Linguistics Series , #2
Edition description:	1971
Pages:	145
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

I: Introduction.- 1. The Transformational Approach.- 2. The Paraphrase Relation.- 3. Paraphrase Grammars.- 4. Compositional Grammars.- 5. Substitution.- 6. Admission Conditions.- 7. Equivalence.- 8. Functional Notation.- 9. Summary.- II: The Paraphrase Relation.- 1. The Study of the Paraphrase Relation.- 2. Collection of Data.- 3. Selection of Data.- 4. Generalization of the Paraphrastic Relationships.- 5. Systematization of the Paraphrase Relation.- 6. Summary.- III: Compositional Grammars.- 1. The Compositional Approach.- 2. A Simple Compositional Language: P.- 3. Compositional Grammars and the Co-Occurrence Problem.- 4. ‘Projection Rules’.- 5. Summary.- IV: Substitution.- 1. The Substitution Concept.- 2. The Presence of Substitution.- 3. A Notation for Substitution.- 4. The Generality of Substitution.- 5. Operations and Transformations.- 6. Summary.- V: Admission and Equivalence.- 1. Admission Conditions.- 2. Ordering of Transformations.- 3. A Recursive Definition and an Admission Condition.- 4. Equivalence.- 5. Summary.- VI: Functional Representation.- 1. Functional Notation.- 2. Functions and Transformations.- 3. Functions and Phonology: the Relative Clause.- 4. Summary.- VII: The Structure of Paraphrase Grammars.- 1. The Recursive Enumerability of the Transformation Relation.- 2. Elementary Transformations.- 3. Summary.- Appendix: Recursive Enumerability.- Index of Subjects.