Some thoughts on lexicase

This paper reviews The Case for Lexicase, the first comprehensive account of Lexicase, a formal, non-transformational theory of grammar developed by Starosta and colleagues since 1970. Lexicase models grammar through a lexicon where words are marked for the valency of their dependents, generating constructions up to the sentence level. Unlike more powerful or fragmentary theories, Lexicase is highly constrained and fully formalized, tested on over 40 languages. The theory’s approach to unbounded dependencies is discussed, though not fully addressed in the main text. Lexicase demonstrates that significant grammatical generalizations can be made within a tightly constrained framework. The book introduces numerous analyses, encouraging further exploration of Lexicase’s potential to account for language structure within a rigorous, generative model (AI generated abstract, Copilot)