• Jens Michaelis. Derivational Minimalism Is Mildy Context-Sensitive. Paper presented at the conference Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics (LACL `98), Grenoble, December 14-16, 1998. Revised version appeared in M. Moortgat (ed.), Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics, LNCS/LNAI Vol. 2014, pp. 179-198, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2001. Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics, pp. 179-198, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2001.

Abstract

The change within the linguistic framework of transformational grammar from GB-theory to minimalism brought up a new formal grammar type, the type of a minimalist grammar (MG) introduced by Stabler (see e.g. Stabler 1996), which is an attempt of a rigorous algebraic formalization of the new linguistic perspectives. One of the questions that arises from such a definition is that of the weak generative power of the corresponding grammar class. Stabler (1996) has shown that MGs give rise to languages not derivable by any tree adjoining grammar (TAG). But he leaves open the ``... problem to specify how the MG-definable string sets compare to previously studied supersets of the TAG language class.'' In this paper we address the issue by showing that each MG as defined in Stabler 96 falls into the class of mildly context-sensitive grammars as described in e.g. Joshi et al. 1991 . The proof of our claim is essentially done by converting a given MG into a linear context-free rewriting system (LCFRS) which derive the same (string) language. Further, we establish an infinite hierarchy on the MG-class and briefly compare it to other hierarchies of MCSG-formalisms.

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