The Complexity of Trees, Universal Grammar and Economy Conditions

Chris Collins

doi:10.5964/bioling.9573

The Complexity of Trees, Universal Grammar and Economy Conditions

Chris Collins

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In this squib, I argue that the child faces a severe computational complexity problem in parsing even the simplest of trees: the number of possible trees consistent with UG grows exponentially as a function of the number of lexical items. Economy conditions have the result of drastically decreasing the complexity of the parsing task. I also discuss the relationship between UG, I-language, economy conditions and explanatory adequacy.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	e9573
Pages (from-to)	1-13
Number of pages	13
Journal	Biolinguistics
Volume	16
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.5964/bioling.9573
State	Published - 2022

Keywords

Catalan numbers
Super Catalan numbers
binary branching
economy conditions
explanatory adequacy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language

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10.5964/bioling.9573

Cite this

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The Complexity of Trees, Universal Grammar and Economy Conditions

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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