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Figure 1
The motif 6 pattern (figure 1) captures the notion of a syntactic category, in that
certain function words may be associated with certain syntactic categories (see Cann
2000). In figure 1, the function word ‘anchors’ the potential category members
{N1…N4} that share certain semantic similarities. Since general categories are
identified by overlapping multiple environments, the overlapping of motif 6 patterns
form an extended motif 204 (figure 2, left).
Figure 2
Figure 2 illustrates (non-exclusively) the environments that precede a noun. For the
nominal category to be posited, potential members must be represented by a single
discrete element. This process is achieved by isomorphism (Steele submitted; see
figure 2, right), where the nodes {N1…N4} are represented by a nominal category.
This argument extends to other general syntactic categories too. Since one may not
posit a felicitous, general syntactic category without also hypothesising an
inadmissible one, the rejection of general syntactic categories, from this perspective,
is theoretically inevitable.
References