This thesis presents accounts of a range of linguistic phenomena in an extended categorial framework, and develops proposals for processing grammars set within this framework. Linguistic phenomena whose treatment we address include word order, grammatical relations and obliqueness, extraction and island constraints, and binding. The work is set within a flexible categorial framework which is a version of the Lambek calculus (Lambek, 1958) extended by the inclusion of additional type-forming operators whose logical behaviour allows for the characterization of some aspect of linguistic phenomena. We begin with the treatment of extraction phenomena and island constraints. An account is developed in which there are many interrelated notions of boundary, and where the sensitivity of any syntactic process to a particular class of boundaries can be addressed within the grammar. We next present a new categorial treatment of word order which factors apart the specification of the order of a h...

An account of grammatical acquisition is developed within the parametersetting framework applied to a generalized categorial grammar (GCG). The GCG is embedded in a default inheritance network yielding a natural partial ordering (reflecting generality) of parameters which determines a partial order for parameter setting. Computational simulation shows that several resulting acquisition procedures are effective on a parameter set expressing major typological distinctions based on constituent order, and defining 70 distinct full languages and over 200 subset languages. The effects on acquisition of inductive bias, that is, of differing initial parameter settings, are explored via computational simulation. Computational simulation of populations of language learners and users instantiating the acquisition model show: 1) that variant acquisition procedures, with differing inductive biases, exert differing selective pressures on the evolution of language(s); 2) acquisition proc...

this paper I shall make a case for a dynamic semiotics. I list a set of phenomena that are difficult to understand in standard theories, and suggest a model borrowed from theories of complex dynamic systems. Since such theories rely on processes of self-organization that often defy analytical treatment, I use small computational models for assessing the empirical consequences of the theories.

this article.

The main purpose of this article is to argue the merits of ‘population thinking’ in gaining insight into linguistic and, in particular, syntactic change. Population-level thinking and modelling can shed new light on many issues in the study of language acquisition and language change, and leads directly to a precise and useful characterisation of E-language. Something which is lacking in current generative linguistics. Moreover, this way of thinking is fully compatible with the major insights of the latter, and integrates them into a framework in which language variation and change are inherent and inevitable, rather than peripheral and/or accidental, properties of language. I will argue that (E-)languages are best modelled as particular kinds of dynamical systems; namely, complex adaptive systems (where these terms are used in technical senses made precise below). The article both introduces some relevant ideas and techniques from modern evolutionary theory, and from the mathematical and computational study of dynamical systems, and also offers a critique and review of some recent work on syntactic change in this emerging framework, arguing that a useful population model needs to support overlapping generations of language users and learners and to allow quite detailed modelling of differing demographic scenarios. I utilise simple linguistic scenarios based on constituent order changes to illustrate the ideas and techniques clearly. I abstract away from the sociolinguistic detail of the actuation

This thesis is a qualitative and quantitative study of the changes that occurred in the phrase structure and system of pronominal clitics in medieval and renaissance Spanish, with the goal of explaining the basic differences between the syntactic properties of clitics in Old Spanish and their counterparts in the various dialects of modern Spanish. Specifically, I argue that these differences are explainable if we classify OSp clitics as Second Position (2P) clitics, in contrast to their modern counterparts. 2P clitics are treated here as prosodically deficient phrasal constituents that appear displaced from their canonical positions as internal arguments of the verb and are adjoined to a phrasal projection at the left edge of the clause (IP). The elements encompassed under the pre-theoretical notion clitic in modern Spanish, however, are not linked to an argument ...

The transition from Middle English to Modern English in the second half of the 14th century is a turning point in the syntax of the language. It is at once the point when several constraints on nominal arguments that had been

: Maritime work is dynamical. As the ship sails, conditions change and so do the information needs. If instrumentation is to keep pace with these changing demands, it must be flexible and tailorable. Since, in addition, self-description and verbalization are important ingredients in maritime work, the system too must be able to present its inner state in a comprehensible manner. Keywords: adaptation, maritime instrumentation, work analysis, anthropological research, mulltimedia 1 Introduction This paper reports on ongoing research on maritime instrumentation at the Danish Center for Human Machine Interaction. The maritime domain is a very dynamic one, and this made us re-think basic assumptions in systems design. The paper starts by diagnosing the theoretical problem; Section 3 presents the empirical findings that made the problem visible. Section 4 draws practical consequences of the empirical studies, and Section 5 suggests a set of more radical consequences. 2 System and Usage: C...

One of the great challenges in linguistics and cognitive science is to understand the nature of the mental representation of language. The precise mechanisms of the mind are unknown, but can be modeled through observation and experimentation. By viewing the mind as a computational device that receives input (primary linguistic data) and produces output (the development of grammatical speech) during language acquisition, one can reason about what representations and algorithms must be internal to the learner. In this thesis, I investigate the acquisition of morphology. The principal challenges are how to learn a theory in the presence of sparse data, and in a manner that can provide explanations for the developmental processes in child language acquisition. The main idea underlying this work is that a consideration of the different aspects of language acquisition places strong constraints on cognitively plausible representations and algorithms that are internal to the learner. To develop a model of morphology acquisition, I pursue three lines of work: iv First, I formulate a cognitively-oriented computational framework for studying language acquisition that consists of four components: the linguistic representation, the

.......................................................................................................................1 1. Introduction...........................................................................................................1 1.1 Protocols: HTTP.......................................................................................3 1.2. HTML.......................................................................................................5 1.3. What is WWW - really?.........................................................................9 2. WWW as a self-organizing system.....................................................................13 2.1. The basic concepts.................................................................................14 2.2. Recursion in WWW...............................................................................17 2.3. Attractors in WWW...............................................................................22 2.4. ...