Paul M. Postal

Arc pair grammar is a new, extensively formalized, theory of the grammatical structure of natural languages. As an outgrowth of relational grammar, it constitutes a theoretical alternative to the long-dominant generative transformational approach to linguistics. In this work, David Johnson and Paul Postal offer the first comprehensive presentation of this theoretical framework, which provides entirely new notions of all the basic concepts of grammatical theory: sentence, language, rule, and grammar. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Arc pair grammar is a new, extensively formalized, theory of the grammatical structure of natural languages. As an outgrowth of relational grammar, it constitutes a theoretical alternative to the long-dominant generative transformational approach to linguistics. In this work, David Johnson and Paul Postal offer the first comprehensive presentation of this theoretical framework, which provides entirely new notions of all the basic concepts of grammatical theory: sentence, language, rule, and grammar. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This work critically examines Noam Chomsky's widely accepted ontological assumptions--now referred to as "biolinguistics"--and demonstrates that they are internally inconsistent. Notably, Chomsky himself has, at least once, acknowledged this issue. Additionally, we challenge a fundamental claim from Chomsky's linguistic theories of the 1950s: that natural languages, particularly English, operate on constructive (proof-theoretic) grammars, also known as generative grammars. This assertion fails to account for numerous linguistic structures that fall outside its framework. Finally, we scrutinize Chomsky's frequent assertion that "there is essentially only one language on Earth," revealing it to be more rhetorical than substantive. By exposing these foundational flaws, this work calls for a reassessment of key aspects of Chomskyan linguistics.

In this important work of linguistic analysis, Paul M. Postal addresses a paradigm anomaly in French that has hitherto resisted explanation. A general restriction limiting the form of direct objects in complex infinitival constructions with main verbs like faire fails to hold with certain subordinate verbs, especially connaître. Marshaling extensive evidence, Postal argues that this apparent irregularity is a symptom of a deeper regularity. Rather than being an ordinary transitive complement, the subordinate clause in these cases is actually an Inversion structure, one in which the logical subject demotes to indirect object. However, since this demotion induces no word order change or other direct morphological consequences, the inversion is "masked," and revealed only by several types of apparent anomalies. This analysis has significant consequences for contemporary syntactic theories. First, the arguments support the view that a sentence's superficial structure cannot be identified with its syntactic structure, even though such an identification is a fundamental assumption of several currently influential grammatical frameworks. Second, even certain theories that do posit abstract aspects of grammatical form fail to allow for the needed Inversion structures. Postal's study supports theories based on the notion of arc and stratification into levels which provide a natural treatment consistent with the factual requirements. Masked Inversion in French is the first systematic account of this puzzling French syntactic anomaly, and its findings will stimulate research in many areas of natural language grammatical structure.

In this work, Paul M. Postal supports the universalist theory of language by examining passive clauses. Contrary to a skeptical tradition, Postal argues that passive clauses are cross-linguistically identifiable and characterizable. This study proposes refinements of the analysis of the natural language grammatical category Passive Clause. These refinements include an account of the notion 'dummy nominal,' central to the analysis of impersonal passive clauses; additions permitting a proper typology of the major known subtypes of Passive Clause; a generalization permitting application to clauses whose subjects are not earlier level direct objects; and, construction of precise rule concepts to represent restrictions on passive clauses. The passive domain supports the universalist approach in three distinguishable ways: (1) by permitting formulation of otherwise apparently unstatable lawful characteristics of all passive structures; (2) by facilitating statement of language-specific passive constraints holding in diverse languages; and, (3) by allowing uniform statement in grammars of recurrent constraints on passives. Each mode of support is applied to actual cases based on material from more than a dozen languages from English and French to Quiche (Mayan) and Chi-Mwi:ni (Bantu).