Parsing and syntactic theory
Stephen Pulman · 1980
It is argued that many constraints on syntactic rules are a consequence of simple assumptions about parsing mechanisms.If generally true, this suggests an interesting new line of research for syntactic theory.Recent syntactic theory has aimed for a theory of grammar rich enough to be descriptively adequate, but restricted enough to make plausible claims about the acquisition of 3such systems.Thus in Chomsky's trace theory, sentences, their constituent structures and grammatical relations are determined by a few simple rules which in themselves would generate many non-sentences, but which are constrained by putatively universal principles marking the non-sentences as such.These principles are attributed to the human language faculty, but with no direct implications for models of perception or production,involving as they do many abstract concepts (empty nodes, traces etc.) for which there is no obvious psychological interpretation.