We are going to look at two main approaches to grammar: Transformational and Unificational Transform and Unify What's the difference? What's the best way to explain grammar? How about this sentence for example? The meaning of the word "seems" and the meaning of the word "tries" are rather different If you try to do something, you are actively trying to do something If you seem to do something, you're not really actively seeming: you're not a "seemer" in that sense Also, although they're both verbs, the grammar of these words is different So we have to say that meaning is important So what is the best way to explain all of this? Is it transform or unify? Let's think about transformations first You can see the word "Taro" in purple What happens if we? transform this sentence? Well, basically we move the word or we merge it in a different place But don't forget the meanings of words are really different Their grammar and their meaning is different Transformational grammars, don't really worry very much about the differences in meaning They focus on the grammar So here a word is merged in a different place We'll talk about UG in this video we mean unification grammar, not Universal grammar unification grammar What about unification grammars? Well UGs don't have movement No movement at all — so how do they handle things? Well they have lots of details details about grammar and details about meaning Lots of details, it sounds bad, and it is Is there anything good about unification grammars? Well everything boils down to matching unifying Merging information It's all basically the same thing Transformational grammars Also have pattern matching and they also have movement or merging in different places So UGs are kind of simpler in a sense In this transformation you're merging the same word a second time in a higher position It IS a kind of unification Look at this sentence for example How do unification grammars explain this sentence? Oh no! It's complicated Terrible! Transformation must be better We can simplify all this Unification grammars have lots of information inside words Then when you put the words together all the information inside the words matches or unifies As you can see, the same information appears in lots of different places Also information about grammar (or syntax) and meaning (or semantics) basically works together Meaning and grammar are basically part of the same package So when you unify the same information appears in lots of different places It looks complicated Transformations must be better The problem is that meaning always seems to get in the way
We cannot just ignore meaning Because unification grammars unify grammatical and semantic information, it's easier to explain some things The semantic structure of some words may be different That's difficult to explain if you only look at the grammar So although unification grammars appear very complicated They may have some value For example we can see how the meaning of words may be different and how the meaning interacts with the grammar Also if we can think of transformations, or the merging of information in different places, as a kind of unification Pattern matching then maybe unification grammars give us a better way to understand our knowledge of language
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