Mathematical Structure of Syntactic Merge
This work provides a foundational mathematical model for linguistic theory, potentially impacting computational linguistics and cognitive science.
The paper tackles the problem of mathematically formalizing the syntactic Merge operation from linguistics by describing it in terms of Hopf algebras, similar to renormalization in physics, and shows that this formulation can justify empirical linguistic phenomena and model externalization and syntactic parameters.
The syntactic Merge operation of the Minimalist Program in linguistics can be described mathematically in terms of Hopf algebras, with a formalism similar to the one arising in the physics of renormalization. This mathematical formulation of Merge has good descriptive power, as phenomena empirically observed in linguistics can be justified from simple mathematical arguments. It also provides a possible mathematical model for externalization and for the role of syntactic parameters.