Towards a speaker model of FG 329model, the point of departure is a fully specified underlying representation
(UR), with all the predicates and operators present. The morphosyntactic
templates and the corresponding placement rules are also retained, albeit in
another guise. A major contrast with the standard approach is that our
model is dynamic rather than static in the sense that the top-down, left-to-
right order in which elements of the corresponding URs are expressed
plays a decisive role in determining the final shape of the expression. It is
shown that at least some of the problems that the original model runs into
can be solved by this dynamicity. It provides both a set of constraints on
what may and may not be found in expressions and a way of getting the
right information at the right place during expression. An almost logical
implication of this dynamicity is the integration of phase I (form genera-
tion) and phase II (linearization) into one process, interleaving form and
order operations.
Another aspect that distinguishes the dynamic model from the standard
approach is that the templates necessary for the expression of underlying
representations are combined into a tree-like structure as in Figure 1 below.
Although such a hierarchical organization of templates has always been
possible in theory – and may even have been implied; see also Hengeveld
(this volume: Figure 6) – it has never to our knowledge been explicitly in-
troduced as such, nor has any other form of constituent structure been
posited within FG. Although Figure 1 may be seen as the traditional (static)
representation of the constituent structure underlying the corresponding
expression, in our case it attempts to code the history of the process leading
to that expression. Thus, at any level in the tree, the corresponding expres-
sion pattern (‘template’) is selected on the basis of the actual information
contained in some specific part of the UR. The respective elements of that
part of the UR are then distributed over the slots of the pattern on the basis
of slot specific selection rules (‘placement rules’). For each (filled) slot in
the pattern this process is repeated recursively until no further distribution
is possible. This recursive process of slot filling and template selection is
represented statically in Figure 1 for the (simplified) underlying representa-
tion in (3).
(3) [Decl E 1 : [X 1 : [Pres e 1 : [Progr [expand [V]
(Def Pl x 1 : tree [N]: (Prox Sg x 2 : theory [N])POSS)ZERO,SUBJECT ] ] ] ] ]
‘The trees of this theory are expanding.’
In Figure 1 below, templates are found as a row of categories at the re-
spective levels of expansion. P1 VFIN VINFIN on the second row, for