Features and Formulae

Feature structures are a representational device used in several current linguistic theories. This paper shows how these structures can be axiomatized in a decidable class of first-order logic, which can also be used to express constraints on these structures. Desirable properties, such as compactness and decidability, follow directly. Moreover, additional types of feature values, such as "set-valued" features, can be incorporated into the system simply by axiomatizing their properties.

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