Properties in 5P

Résumé 0

This research report presents a formalism for the description of natural languages, called Properties. Properties are an alternative to formal grammars such as GPSG, HPSG, LFG, etc. A grammar of this type has a twofold function: it is intended to be both a description of some language and the declarative source of some algorithmic machinery that can process that language. Properties, on the contrary, allow to distinguish the two aspects and are strictly limited to the descriptive aspect. They consist in formulas about the categories in the strings of the described language, specifying uniqueness and optionality characteristics, and cooccurrence, agreement or linearity relations. Properties, as a formalism, are part of a larger framework: the 5P paradigm. The 5P paradigm is conceived as a mean to effectively place linguistics within the class of empirical sciences. It is outlined in section 2 and further discussed in section 9.