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arXiv · 1506.08663

Linguistics and some aspects of its underlying dynamics

Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini·Giuseppe Vitiello
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Abstract

In recent years, central components of a new approach to linguistics, the Minimalist Program (MP) have come closer to physics. Features of the Minimalist Program, such as the unconstrained nature of recursive Merge, the operation of the Labeling Algorithm that only operates at the interface of Narrow Syntax with the Conceptual-Intentional and the Sensory-Motor interfaces, the difference between pronounced and un-pronounced copies of elements in a sentence and the build-up of the Fibonacci sequence in the syntactic derivation of sentence structures, are directly accessible to representation in terms of algebraic formalism. Although in our scheme linguistic structures are classical ones, we find that an interesting and productive isomorphism can be established between the MP structure, algebraic structures and many-body field theory opening new avenues of inquiry on the dynamics underlying some central aspects of linguistics.

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Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Giuseppe Vitiello. 2015-06-14. Linguistics and some aspects of its underlying dynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.08663

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