Abstract

Over the last ten or fifteen years there has been a shift in generative linguistics away from formalisms based on a procedural interpretation of grammars towards constraint-based formalisms|formalisms that define languages by specifying a set of constraints that characterize the set of well-formed structures analyzing the strings in the language. A natural extension of this trend is to define this set of structures model-theoretically -- to define it as the set of mathematical structures that satisfy some set of logical axioms. This approach raises a number of questions about the nature of linguistic theories and the role of grammar formalisms in expressing them. We argue here that the crux of what theories of syntax have to say about language lies in the abstract properties of the sets of structures they license. This is the level that is most directly connected to the empirical basis of these theories and it is the level at which it is possible to make meaningful comparisons between the approaches. From this point of view, grammar formalisms (or formal frameworks) are primarily means of presenting these properties. Many of the apparent distinctions between formalisms,

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