Patterns of Language - A Population Model for Language Structure
Robert John Freeman · arXiv (Cornell University) · 1996
A key problem in the description of language structure is to explain its contradictory properties of specificity and generality, the contrasting poles of formulaic prescription and generative productivity. I argue that this is possible if we accept analogy and similarity as the basic mechanisms of structural definition. As a specific example I discuss how it would be possible to use analogy to define a generative model of syntactic structure.