Phrase structure grammar

The term phrase structure grammar was originally introduced by Noam Chomsky as the term for grammar studied previously by Emil Post and Axel Thue (Post canonical systems). Some authors, however, reserve the term for more restricted grammars in the Chomsky hierarchy: context-sensitive grammars or context-free grammars. In a broader sense, phrase structure grammars are also known as constituency grammars. The defining character of phrase structure grammars is thus their adherence to the constituency relation, as opposed to the dependency relation of dependency grammars.

History

In 1956, Chomsky wrote, "A phrase-structure grammar is defined by a finite vocabulary (alphabet) V_p, and a finite set Σ of initial strings in V_p, and a finite set F of rules of the form: X → Y, where X and Y are strings in V_p." ^[1]

Constituency relation

In linguistics, phrase structure grammars are all those grammars that are based on the constituency relation, as opposed to the dependency relation associated with dependency grammars; hence, phrase structure grammars are also known as constituency grammars. ^[2] Any of several related theories for the parsing of natural language qualify as constituency grammars, and most of them have been developed from Chomsky's work, including

• Government and binding theory
• Generalized phrase structure grammar
• Head-driven phrase structure grammar
• Lexical functional grammar
• The minimalist program
• Nanosyntax

Further grammar frameworks and formalisms also qualify as constituency-based, although they may not think of themselves as having spawned from Chomsky's work, e.g.

• Arc pair grammar, and
• Categorial grammar.

See also

• Catena

Notes

1. Chomsky, Noam (1956). "Three models for the description of language" (PDF). IRE Transactions on Information Theory : 117. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-05-03.
2. Matthews (1981:71ff.) provides an insightful discussion of the distinction between constituency- and dependency-based grammars. See also Allerton (1979:238f.), McCawley (1988:13), Mel'cuk (1988:12-14), Borsley (1991:30f.), Sag and Wasow (1999:421f.), van Valin (2001:86ff.).

References

• Allerton, D. 1979. Essentials of grammatical theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Borsley, R. 1991. Syntactic theory: A unified approach. London: Edward Arnold.
• Chomsky, Noam 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
• Matthews, P. Syntax. 1981. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN   978-0521297097.
• McCawley, T. 1988. The syntactic phenomena of English, Vol. 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Mel'cuk, I. 1988. Dependency syntax: Theory and practice. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Sag, I. and T. Wasow. 1999. Syntactic theory: A formal introduction. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
• Tesnière, Lucien 1959. Éleménts de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck.
• van Valin, R. 2001. An introduction to syntax. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.