• Jens Michaelis, Uwe Mönnich & Frank Morawietz. Algebraic Description of Derivational Minimalism. Revised version appeared in Algebraic Methods in Language Processing, pp. 125-141. Proceedings of the 16th Twente Workshop on Language Technology (TWLT 16) joint with the 2nd AMAST Workshop on Language Processing, Iowa City, IA, May 20-22, 2000.

Abstract

In this paper we extend the work by Michaelis (1999) which shows how to encode an arbitrary Minimalist Grammar in the sense of Stabler (1997) into a weakly equivalent multiple context-free grammar (MCFG). By viewing MCFG rules as terms in a free Lawvere theory we can translate a given MCFG into a regular tree grammar. The latter is characterizable by both a tree automaton and a corresponding formula in monadic second-order (MSO) logic. The trees of the resulting regular tree language are then unpacked into the intended "linguistic" trees with an MSO transduction based upon tree-walking automata. This two-step approach gives an operational as well as a logical description of the tree sets involved.

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