Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part IComparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- 2Theoretical Approaches to Comparative Syntax
- 3Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
- 4Quantitative Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 5Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 6Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
- 7Micro-Comparative Syntax, Dialectology, and Sociolinguistics
- 8Change
- 9Universal and Language-Specific Properties of Language
- Part IIComparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part IIIComparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IVComparative Syntax: Interfaces
- Index
- References
5 - Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
from Part I - Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2026
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part IComparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- 2Theoretical Approaches to Comparative Syntax
- 3Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
- 4Quantitative Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 5Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 6Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
- 7Micro-Comparative Syntax, Dialectology, and Sociolinguistics
- 8Change
- 9Universal and Language-Specific Properties of Language
- Part IIComparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part IIIComparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IVComparative Syntax: Interfaces
- Index
- References
Summary
Generative syntax aims to characterize knowledge of language in computational terms: What is the nature of the computational system in an individual’s mind that underlies their linguistic abilities? This chapter explores syntactic variation from this computational vantage point, making use of concepts that have emerged from the rich body of work in the study of grammar formalisms. The perspective we adopt focuses on syntactic dependency patterns and the relationship between these patterns and constituency. We show how this allows for grammatical phenomena to be characterized in terms of formal properties of the ways in which they require constituents to be combined: whether the constituents are continuous or discontinuous in the surface string; whether this surface discontinuity is bounded or unbounded; whether discontinuous constituents are interleaved in a manner that has been termed "well-nested"; and whether constituents are copied in the surface string. These properties speak to the nature of the grammatical device necessary to characterize a given dependency and allows us to provide a new kind of cross-linguistic typology in explicitly computational terms.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax , pp. 141 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Abeillé, A. 1994. Syntax or semantics? Handling nonlocal dependencies with MCTAGs or synchronous TAGs. Computational Intelligence 10(4): 471–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bach, E. 1981. Discontinuous constituents in generalized categorial grammars. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, 1–12.Google Scholar
Bader, M., and Meng, M.. 2023. Processing noncanonical sentences: Effects of context on online processing and (mis)interpretation. Glossa Psycholinguistics 2(1): 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, T., Rambow, O., and Niv, M.. 1992. The Derivational Generative Power of Formal Systems or Scrambling Is Beyond LCFRS. Technical Report IRCS-92-38, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Bodirsky, M., Kuhlmann, M., and Möhl, M.. 2005. Well-nested drawings as models of syntactic structure. In Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Formal Grammar and 9th Meeting on Mathematics of Language.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Kaplan, R. M., Peters, S., and Zaenen, A.. 1982. Cross-serial dependencies in Dutch. Linguistic Inquiry 13(4): 613–635.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. 1956. Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2(3): 113–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Citko, B. 2005. On the nature of merge: External merge, internal merge, and parallel merge. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4): 475–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erlewine, M. Y., and Lim, J.. 2023. Deriving scrambling with word order freezing. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 8(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.8364.Google Scholar
Fanselow, G. 2001. Features, θ-roles and free constituent order. Linguistic Inquiry 32(3): 405–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flack, K. 2007. Ambiguity avoidance as contrast preservation: Case and word order freezing in Japanese. In UMass Occasional Papers in Linguistics 32: Papers in Optimality Theory, vol. III, 57–89. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Gazdar, G. 1988. Applicability of indexed grammars to natural languages. In Reyle, U. and Rohrer, C. (eds.), Natural Language Parsing and Linguistic Theories, 69–94. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazdar, G., Klein, E. H., Pullum, G. K., and Sag, I. A.. 1985. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, C. D. 1972. Formal Aspects of Phonological Description. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joshi, A. 1985. How much context-sensitivity is necessary for characterizing structural descriptions? In Dowty, D., Karttunen, L., and Zwicky, A. (eds.), Natural Language Processing: Theoretical, Computational and Psychological Perspectives, 206–250. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joshi, A., Becker, T., and Rambow, O.. 2000. Complexity of scrambling: A new twist to the competence-performance distinction. In Abeillé, A. and Rambow, O. (eds.), Tree Adjoining Grammars, 167–181. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, M. 2009. The pumping lemma for well-nested multiple context-free languages. In Diekert, V. and Nowotka, D. (eds.), Developments in Language Theory [Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5583]. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, M., and Salvati, S.. 2012. MIX is not a tree-adjoining language. In Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 666–674.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, M., Michaelis, J., Salvati, S., and Yoshinaka, R.. 2011. Well-nestedness properly subsumes strict derivational minimalism. In Pogodalla, S. and Prost, J.-P. (eds.), Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics, 112–128. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kobele, G. M. 2006. Generating Copies: An Investigation into Structural Identity in Language and Grammar. PhD thesis, UCLA.Google Scholar
Kroch, A., and Santorini, B.. 1991. The derived constituent structure of the West Germanic verb-raising construction. In Freidin, R. (ed.), Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, 269–338. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kuhlmann, M. 2013. Mildly non-projective dependency grammar. Computational Linguistics 39(2): 355–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhlmann, M., and Nivre, J.. 2006. Mildly non-projective dependency structures. In Proceedings of the COLING/ACL 2006 Main Conference Poster Sessions, 507–514, Sydney, Australia, Association for Computational Linguistics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maling, J., and Zaenen, A.. 1982. A phrase structure account of Scandinavian extraction phenomena. In Jacobson, P. and Pullum, G. K. (eds.), The Nature of Syntactic Representations, 229–282. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manaster-Ramer, A. 1987. Dutch as a formal language. Linguistics and Philosophy 10(2): 221–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, G., and Chomsky, N.. 1963. Finitary models of language users. In Luce, R. D., Bush, R. R., and Galanter, E. (eds.), Handbook of Mathematical Psychology, vol. 2, 419–491. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Miller, P. H. 1991. Scandinavian extraction phenomena revisited: Weak and strong generative capacity. Linguistics and Philosophy 14(1): 101–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunes, J. 2004. Linearization of Chains and Sideward Movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, C. 1984. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammars, Head Grammars and Natural Language. PhD thesis, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Radzinski, D. 1990. Unbounded syntactic copying in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics and Philosophy 13: 113–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rambow, O. 1994. Formal and Computational Aspects of Natural Language Syntax. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Rudin, C. 1988. On multiple questions and multiple wh-fronting. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 445–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salvati, S. 2015. MIX is a 2-MCFL and the word problem in Z2 is captured by the IO and OI hierarchies. Journal of Computer and System Sciences 81(7): 1252–1277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seki, H., Matsumara, T., Fujii, M., and Kasami, T.. 1991. On multiple context-free grammars. Theoretical Computer Science 88: 191–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stabler, E. P. 1997. Derivational minimalism. In Retoré, C. (ed.), Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics [Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1328], 68–95, Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stabler, E. P. 2004. Varieties of crossing dependencies: Structure dependence and mild context sensitivity. Cognitive Science 28: 699–720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weir, D. 1988. Characterizing Mildly Context-Sensitive Grammar Formalisms. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Yadav, H., Husain, S., and Futrell, R.. 2022. Assessing corpus evidence for formal and psycholinguistic constraints on nonprojectivity. Computational Linguistics 48(2): 375–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: WCAG 2.2 AAA
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
The HTML of this chapter complies with version 2.2 of the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG), offering more comprehensive accessibility measures for a broad range
of users and attains the highest
(AAA)
level of WCAG compliance, optimising the user experience by meeting the most extensive
accessibility guidelines.
Content Navigation
Table of contents navigation
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Allows you to navigate directly to chapters, sections, or non‐text items through a linked table of contents, reducing the need for extensive scrolling.
Index navigation
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Provides an interactive index, letting you go straight to where a term or subject appears in the text without manual searching.
Reading Order & Textual Equivalents
Short alternative textual descriptions
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
You get concise descriptions (for images, charts, or media clips), ensuring you do not miss crucial information when visual or audio elements are not accessible.
Full alternative textual descriptions
You get more than just short alt text: you have comprehensive text equivalents, transcripts, captions, or audio descriptions for substantial non‐text content, which is especially helpful for complex visuals or multimedia.
You get more than just short alt text: you have comprehensive text equivalents, transcripts, captions, or audio descriptions for substantial non‐text content, which is especially helpful for complex visuals or multimedia.
Visualised data also available as non-graphical data
You can access graphs or charts in a text or tabular format, so you are not excluded if you cannot process visual displays.
You can access graphs or charts in a text or tabular format, so you are not excluded if you cannot process visual displays.
Visual Accessibility
Use of high contrast between text and background colour
You benefit from high‐contrast text, which improves legibility if you have low vision or if you are reading in less‐than‐ideal lighting conditions.
You benefit from high‐contrast text, which improves legibility if you have low vision or if you are reading in less‐than‐ideal lighting conditions.