Expectation-based Minimalist Grammars

TL;DR

This paper introduces Expectation-based Minimalist Grammars (e-MGs), a simplified formalism driven solely by top-down lexical expectations, aiming to unify parsing and generation processes.

Contribution

It formalizes e-MGs as a minimalist grammar variant relying on top-down expectations, simplifying structure building and aligning parsing with generation.

Findings

Defines a core derivation consistent in parsing and generation

Simplifies formalism by focusing on lexical expectations

Bridges gap between different minimalist grammar variants

Abstract

Expectation-based Minimalist Grammars (e-MGs) are simplified versions of the (Conflated) Minimalist Grammars, (C)MGs, formalized by Stabler (Stabler, 2011, 2013, 1997) and Phase-based Minimalist Grammars, PMGs (Chesi, 2005, 2007; Stabler, 2011). The crucial simplification consists of driving structure building only by relying on lexically encoded categorial top-down expectations. The commitment on a top-down derivation (as in e-MGs and PMGs, as opposed to (C)MGs, Chomsky, 1995; Stabler, 2011) allows us to define a core derivation that should be the same in both parsing and generation (Momma & Phillips, 2018).