Feature reassembly as constraint satisfaction

Abstract

Research on bilingual grammars from a formal perspective has often come under the guise of mainstream generative grammar. Since the inception of Chomsky’s (

Integrated, Not Isolated: Defining Typological Proximity in an Integrated Multilingual Architecture

“…In our view, representations that are “partially decomposable” (Simon, 1969 ) are best interpreted as distributed knowledge that combines to deliver complex representations. There are multiple ways to postulate how these complex representations come into existence, from the use of declarative and violable constraints (van Oostendorp et al, 2016 ; Putnam, 2017 ) to those that employ an architecture of grammar with an invariant computational syntax (Kandybowicz, 2009 ; Lohndal, 2013 ; Boeckx, 2014 , 2016 ; Grimstad et al, 2014 ; Alexiadou et al, 2015 ; Riksem, 2017 ). Questions regarding the difficulty in arriving at the proper definitive set of universal parameters and the inability to determine if and how these constraints could combine to deliver complex representations had emerged in the work of Newmeyer ( 2004 , 2005 ) and has led to a reappraisal of the role of the traditional notion of parameters (see e.g., Fábregas et al, 2015 ; Eguren et al, 2016 ).…”

“…This brings us once again to the notion of cross-linguistic proximity and the challenge of capturing and measuring this heuristic without the aid of traditional parameters. The move away from traditional parameters toward e(xternal)-parameters raises interesting challenges for the ontology of a model (see e.g., Putnam, 2017 ; Putnam et al, 2017 for an overview). The challenge for finding proximity and congruence between two source grammars requires a multi-dimensional search.…”

“… 2 As pointed out by a Frontiers reviewer, there is also ongoing work to refine the notion of parameter in generative theorizing (e.g., Baker, 2001 , 2009 ; Fábregas et al, 2015 ; Eguren et al, 2016 ; Biberauer and Roberts, 2017 ). Two particular recalcitrant issues concerning the notion of parameter that are of relevance to our model are: (1) the grain-size of parameters (e.g., Westergaard, 2013 ), and (2) the vertical and horizontal interaction of different sets of parameters (e.g., Biberauer and Roberts, 2017 ; Putnam, 2017 ). Here we adopt an agnostic approach to the notion of parameter, recognizing that in a multi-dimensional grammar space capturing the interaction and competition of these units is of primary importance.…”