Displacement Calculus

The Lambek calculus provides a foundation for categorial grammar in the form of a logic of concatenation. But natural language is characterized by dependencies which may also be discontinuous. In this paper we introduce the displacement calculus, a generalization of Lambek calculus, which preserves its good proof-theoretic properties while embracing discontinuiity and subsuming it. We illustrate linguistic applications and prove Cut-elimination, the subformula property, and decidability