Computation with Probes and Goals: A Parsing Perspective

This paper examines issues in parsing architecture for a left-to-right implementation of the probe-goal Case agreement model, a theory in the Minimalist Program (MP). Computation from a parsing perspective imposes special constraints. For example, in left-to-right parsing, the assembly of phrase structure must proceed through elementary tree composition, rather than using using the generative operations merge and move directly. On-line processing also poses challenges for the incremental computation of probe/goal relations. We describe an implemented parser that computes these relations and assembles phrase structure, whilst respecting the incremental and left-to-right nature of parsing. The model employs two novel mechanisms, a Move and a Probe box, to implement efficient parsing, without “lookback” or unnecessary search of the derivational history.