A Unified Representation for Continuity and Discontinuity: Syntactic and Computational Motivations

Abstract: This paper advances a unified representation of linguistic structure for three grammar formalisms, namely, Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG), Dependency Grammar (DG) and Categorial Grammar (CG) from the perspective of syntactic and computational complexity considerations. The correspondence principle is proposed to enable a unified representation of the representational principles from PSG, DG, and CG. To that end, the paper first illustrates a series of steps in achieving a unified representation for a discontinuous subordinate clause from Turkish as an illustrative case. This affords a new way of approaching discontinuity in natural language from a theoretical point of view that unites and integrates the basic tenets of PSG, DG, and CG, with significant consequences for syntactic analysis. Then this paper demonstrates that a unified representation can simplify computational complexity with regards to the neurocognitive representation and processing of both continuous and discontinuous sentences vis-`a-vis the basic principles of PSG, DG, and CG.