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Patterns of Language - A Population Model for Language Structure

Robert John Freeman
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Abstract

A key problem in the description of language structure is to explain its contradictory properties of specificity and generality, the contrasting poles of formulaic prescription and generative productivity. I argue that this is possible if we accept analogy and similarity as the basic mechanisms of structural definition. As a specific example I discuss how it would be possible to use analogy to define a generative model of syntactic structure.

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Robert John Freeman. 1996-08-09. Patterns of Language - A Population Model for Language Structure. https://arxiv.org/abs/cmp-lg/9608004

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