Download file (.pdf )
Word Grammar
last changed 23 April 2004
Bibliographical information
This is the first draft (written in April 2004) of an entry for the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition (Elsevier), edited by Keith Brown.
Abstract
The main idea behind Word Grammar is that language, like general knowledge, is a network of a rather special kind which I call an “inheritance network”: a network in which every node and link is part of at least one inheritance hierarchy. This network can be exploited in processing by means of two very general procedures: variable binding and default inheritance, both of which apply only to highly active nodes. As for language structure, WG recognises three kinds of linguistic units – words, forms and sounds – and a rich hierarchy of relations between linguistic units and between linguistic and non-linguistic units. The article applies these units and relations to simple examples of morphology, syntax, semantics and sociolinguistics.