Recent Approaches to Linguistic Theory

Because unconstrained transformational grammars are capable of generating undecidable sets—apparently more power than is necessary for natural languages—much recent research within linguistics has focused on constraining the power of grammars. Several approaches to this task have been taken, and we will examine two in detail. First, however, in 9.1 we will review some current developments in linguistic theory that are common to both approaches to be examined. Then, in Section 9.2 we describe the framework of generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG). Finally, in Section 9.3 we look at the theory of government and binding (GB), the current version of transformational grammar.