A Unified Representation for Continuity and Discontinuity: Syntactic and Computational Motivations

The correspondence principle is proposed to enable a unified representation of the representational principles from PSG, DG, and CG . To that end, the paper first illustrates a series of steps in achieving a unified representation for a discontinuous subordinate clause from Turkish as an illustrative case. This affords a new way of approach ing discontinuity in natural language from a theoretical point of view that unites and integrates the basic tenets of PSG, DG, and CG, with significant consequences for syntactic analysis. The n this paper demonstrates that a unified representation can simplify computational complexity with regards to the neurocognitive representation and processing of both continuous and discontinuous sentences vis - à - vis the basic principles of PSG, DG, and CG. 1 Introduction Discontinuity refers to a case of non - adjacency when a predicate and its argument (s) are not adjacent as per the linear order of the sentence -- predicate structure here may apply to constituents such as verb phrases, noun phrases, adjective phrases, etc. It is typically observed in free word order languages including Australian languages such as W arlpiri, Jiwarli, Turkish (Hale, 1982, 1983; Nordlinger, 2014). Figure 1 depicts a schematic representation of continuity and discontinuity.