The Dynamics of Lexical Interfaces

Dynamic Syntax is a formal model of utterance description that attempts to articulate and substantiate the claim that human linguistic knowledge is essentially the ability to process language in context. The model provides an explicit demonstration of how interpretation is built up incrementally from the information provided by the words as they are encountered. Drawing from a range of analyses of natural language data, the authors use formal definitions, step-by-step derivations, and detailed lexical definitions to illustrate this new form of syntactic analysis and to show how the model can be applied to a broad range of constructions and languages.

Ruth Kempson is professor emeritus of philosophy at King’s College London and associate research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Eleni Gregoromichelaki is a research fellow in the dynamic syntax research group at King’s College London. Christine Howes is a doctoral candidate in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London.