> --- Alex Fink <a4pq1injbok_0@...> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:22:05 -0700, Gary Shannon
>> <fiziwig@...> wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Hypothesis: For any natural language, related
>> elements
>>> are always immediately adjacent and there exists a
>>> complete fusion grammar for that language.
>>>
>>> Comments? Counterexamples?
>>
>> From a formal language theory point of view, the set
>> of languages with
>> fusion grammars (without transposition) seems to be
>> equal to the set of
>> context-free languages. So how about examples of
>> non-context-free behaviour
>> in natural language?
>>
>> For example, a quick Google turns up
>>
>>
>
http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~michael/esslli2004/flt.pdf
>> containining a potential English counterexample:
>>
>> | * Bar-Hillel and Shamir (1960):
>> | - English contains copy-language
>> | - cannot be context-free
>> | * Consider the sentence
>> | John, Mary, David, ... are a widower, a widow,
>> a widower, ...,
>> | respectively.
>> | * Claim: the sentence is only grammatical under
>> the condition that
>> | if the nth name is male (female) then the nth
>> phrase after the
>> | copula is a widower (a widow)
>>