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In defence of single mothers1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Robert D. Borsley
Robert D. Borsley
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University
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Extract

In an important theoretical discussion, Sampson (1975) argues against what he terms the ‘single-mother condition’. This is the condition that no node may have more than one mother. It is central to the definition of a tree, as the term is normally understood in linguistic theory. Sampson argues that the condition should be abandoned, and that what he terms ‘semitrees’, graphs in which nodes have more than one mother, should be permitted as representations of linguistic structure.2 He argues for this innovation on the basis of certain anaphoric phenomena. In this note, I want to take a critical look at his argument. I will suggest that the semitree approach to anaphoric phenomena that he sketches is untenable, and hence that these phenomena provide no motivation for an abandonment of the single-mother condition.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 95 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

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