Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2008
Swedish noun-phrases of the form (Det) (Adj)* N are examined in the light of recent work in generalized phrase-structure grammar. It is argued that simple generalizations about the phrase-structure of these NPs are lost by trying to account for the precise morphological possibilities by using phrase-structure rules mentioning categories marked with morphological features. What could be accounted for by two rules must be broken down into subcases which need seven rules, thereby obscuring the overall syntactic structure of the NPs. An alternative is suggested which maintains the simple syntax which generates morphologically ill-formed NPs but only allows morphologically well-formed ones to be interpreted. It is suggested that this system can be constrained so as to generate only context-free languages.