syntax and semantics as sets of contexts

[Rob Freeman]

I would also like to invite anyone to take up the broader point I tried to raise on the Corpora list. That a perspective of language which sees grammar as parametrized only by sets selected between combinations of contexts can:

1) Provide us with a much richer model of syntax.

2) Suggest ways syntax might make distinctions of meaning (by distinguishing different sets to be associated with a given word or phrase, according to exact syntactic context.)

The insight that syntax should be governed by sets of contexts, and not rules, can suggest solutions to many of the problems corpus analysis seems to pose for syntax. Such as the infinite gradations of lexical restriction on multiword expressions.

Each gradation of lexical restriction might now be understood to be just another example in the set of examples which governs the expression.

-Rob