Representation theory (RT) is a theoretical linguistic framework in the

generative Generative may refer to: * Generative actor, a person who instigates social change * Generative art, art that has been created using an autonomous system that is frequently, but not necessarily, implemented using a computer * Generative music, ...

tradition, created and developed by

Edwin S. Williams Edwin Samuel Williams (born 1948) is an American linguist and Emeritus Professor of linguistics at Princeton University. He is known for his expertise on morphology and syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphe ...

– chiefly in an eponymous

monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...

of 2003. Williams compares it with other frameworks such as Noam Chomsky's

minimalist program In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky. Following Imre Lakatos's distinction, Chomsky presents minima ...

, and argues that his proposal has significant descriptive and conceptual advantages over them. The substance of the proposal is that linguistic derivation is the result of mappings and mismappings between an open set of 'representations', which in one dimension correspond to increasingly larger locality domains and in the other pair '

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

' (sentential and sub-sentential) and '

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

' (as well as pragmatic) levels. Cross-linguistic variation is then accounted for by the prioritisation of 'faithfulness' to some representations over others.

References

External links

Edwin S. Williams
at Princeton University Generative linguistics {{Ling-stub

See also

References

External links