An alternative to generative grammar formalisms

Geoffrey Keith Pullum, Theorizing about the Syntax of Human Language: A Radical Alternative to Generative Formalisms, Cadernos de Linguística 1(1):01-33, July 2020, DOI: 10.25189/2675-4916.2020.v1.n1.id279

Abstract: Linguists standardly assume that a grammar is a formal system that ‘generates’ a set of derivations. But this is not the only way to formalize grammars. I sketch a different basis for syntactic theory: model-theoretic syntax (MTS). It defines grammars as finite sets of statements that are true (or false) in certain kinds of structure (finite labeled graphs such as trees). Such statements provide a direct description of syntactic structure. Generative grammars do not do this; they are strikingly ill-suited to accounting for certain familiar properties of human languages, like the fact that ungrammaticality is a matter of degree. Many aspects of linguistic phenomena look radically different when viewed in MTS terms. I pay special attention to the fact that sentences containing invented nonsense words (items not in the lexicon) are nonetheless perceived as sentences. I also argue that the MTS view dissolves the overblown controversy about whether the set of sentences in a human language is always infinite: many languages (both Brazilian indigenous languages and others) appear not to employ arbitrarily iterative devices for embedding or coordination, but under an MTS description this does not define them as radically distinct in typological terms.