A Speculation about what Linguistic Structures Might Be
Avery Andrews
November 2020 

The proposal of this paper is that the linguistic structures (tree diagrams, derivations with or without various kinds of additional decorations) that linguists use should be regarded as `aspirational' representions of equivalence classes of computations or proofs that utterance with a proposed structure has certain properties. 'Aspirational' means that unlike the case in proof theory, where logicians actually know what proofs they want to treat as equivalent, in linguistics we are speculating about computations whose nature is largely unknown to use, but we can nevertheless make some educated guesses about aspects of their organization. Elaborating Marr's levels somewhat further along the lines proposed by Christoper Peacocke and Martin Davies (level 1.5), I suggest calling this 'explanation at level 1.6'.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006117 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Modular Design of Grammar. Edited by I Wayan Arka, Ash Asudeh, and Tracy Holloway King, Oxford University Press.
keywords:	structures, computations, equivalent proofs, pcc, semantics, syntax
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