2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Research on the physics of language with particular emphasis on the quantum mechanical properties of syntax
Project/Area Number |
26370446
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Section | 一般 |
Research Field |
Linguistics
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Research Institution | Yokohama National University |
Principal Investigator |
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Research Collaborator |
URIAGEREKA Juan
ORÚS Roáan
JARRET Michael
GALLEGO Ángel
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Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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Keywords | 生成文法 / 統語論 / 併合 / 語彙的カテゴリー / 統語的カテゴリー / 行列力学 / パウリ行列 |
Outline of Final Research Achievements |
In this project, we use tools from physics, in particular matrix mechanics, to model syntactic properties of human language. We start with the fundamental assumption that the lexical category features N and V are interpreted as '1' and 'i' respectively. We analyze first-merge (head-complement) as matrix multiplication and elsewhere-merge (specifiers) as a tensor product, arguing that this provides for a natural explanation for the highly limited combinatorial possibilities of human language. We also propose a model of chains as the superposition of two tensor products via matrix addition. Another major result has been the discovery of the Chomsky-Pauli group, which includes all of the major lexical category matrices, interpreted according to the fundamental assumption, and all of the matrices in the Pauli Group. We suggest that this group exhausts the possibilities for linguistic categories (lexical and grammatical categories and their projections).
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Free Research Field |
理論言語学
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