Arc pair grammar is a new, extensively formalized, theory of the grammatical structure of natural languages. As an outgrowth of relational grammar, it constitutes a theoretical alternative to the long-dominant generative transformational approach to linguistics. In this work, David Johnson and Paul Postal offer the first comprehensive presentation of this theoretical framework, which provides entirely new notions of all the basic concepts of grammatical theory: sentence, language, rule, and grammar. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. Arc Pair Grammar By David E. Johnson, Paul M. Postal PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-691-08270-7 Contents Preface, ix, Chapter 1. Introduction, Chapter 2. Graph-Theoretic Aspects of APG, Chapter 3. Arc Pair Relations, Chapter 4. Pair Networks, Chapter 5. Basic Sponsor and Erase Laws, Chapter 6. Coordinate Determination, Chapter 7. Focus on Clause Structure, Chapter 8. Cho Arcs, Chapter 9. Further Principles Governing the Distribution of Cho Arcs, Chapter 10. Ghost Arcs and Dummy Nominals, Chapter 11. Replacers and Anaphora, Chapter 12. Linear Precedence, Chapter 13. Grafts, Pioneers, and Closures, Chapter 14. APG Rules and Grammars, References, 715, Index, 724, CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. Sentences, rules, and grammars Any linguistic theory must involve two basic interrelated conceptions. First, there must be a set of ideas about the nature of the basic elements of language, sentences. Any such theory must have a basic conception of what kind of formal objects sentences are. For example, in all current variants of transformational theory (henceforth TG), sentences are regarded as quite complicated formal objects involving logical representations, phonological and phonetic representations, and a central core of structure called a derivation, which consists of a sequence of graph-theoretic objects called (not too happily) constituent structure trees. Secondly, a linguistic theory must have a conception of what a possible sentence-Specifying system or grammar is. This necessarily involves views about what a possible grammatical rule is, what a possible combination of grammatical rules (possible grammar) is, and a specification of how grammars characterize classes of sentences. Inevitably, the conception of the nature of a sentence will greatly determine what conception of grammatical rule is required, although the notion of rule adopted may (and normally will) feed back and determine in part the conception of linguistic object. Thus, it is the idea that grammatical structure involves a sequence of constituent structures (rather than the single structure of structuralist theories) which leads transformational theorists to a conception of grammatical rule countenancing grammatical transformations, etc. But the presumption that transformations exist has, in turn, led to many assumptions about sentence structure, e.g., that there are symbols which trigger transformations, elements like doom, traces, etc. As will become clear, the current work makes no use of the fundamental TG construct Derivation and a fortiori no use of those concepts dependent on or related to this central notion. This work develops a new conceptual framework, which we call Arc Pair Grammar (henceforth: APG). APG is radically different from any other extant conception of linguistic theory along many but not all parameters. Although its concept of sentence structure is an outgrowth of largely unpublished work in RG (see section 1.3 for discussion of the recent historical antecedents of APG), APG will be about 95 percent new even to those familiar with work in RG. To those unfamiliar with the RG framework, APG will be essentially 100 percent novel. Let us briefly contrast one current TG framework with that of APG. Within the current version of the so-called extended standard theory (of TG), a grammar is characterized in terms of various types of object, inter alia (see Chomsky and Lasnik [1977]): (i) a base containing a categorial component (context-free grammar generating an infinite set of phrase markers) and a lexicon (containing word formation and lexical redundancy rules); (ii) lexical insertion rules; (iii) a transformational component; (iv) a semantic interpretive component; (v) a deletion component; (vi) a surface filter component; (vii) a phonological int