Search the web for DPNG, and there’s a fair chance you’d end up on the Galapagos Islands, at the D[irección del] P[arque] N[acional] G[alápagos], to be more precise. Depending on one’s conception of the universe, this may or may not be entirely accidental, for – as the DPNG(alapagos) have it – their concern is with the “... conservation of [...] the biological diversity of the archipelago for the benefit of humankind, the local population, science and education.” Substitute ‘intellectual diversity’ and ‘field of linguistics’ for ‘biological diversity’ and ‘archipelago’ respectively, and you are not all that far off from where you are now: the homesite of  Dependency Phonology (DP) and Notional Grammar (NG) (= Notionally-grounded Dependency Grammar).

The purpose of this site is the dissemination of information on Dependency Phonology and Notional(ly-grounded Dependency) Grammar – modes of phonological and grammatical theorizing which are driven by the assumption that the grouping of the basic elements of phonological and grammatical structure into classes and the tactic combination of members of these classes into constructions is determined by their phonetic and notional substance respectively.

While DP enjoys some familiarity among workers in phonology (as witnessed by the fact that it has found its way into a number of phonology textbooks), the community has been somewhat slow in embracing its theoretical analogue in syntax, Notional(ly-grounded Dependency) Grammar. NG's basic tenet has it that the categories of the syntax are semantically or notionally ‘grounded’, just as phonological categories are phonetically. According to NG, then, the minimal requirement of a syntactic theory, viz. accounting for the distributional properties of syntactic classes, can only be met by a conception of syntactic categories which attributes to them notional, ontological content. NG thus offers a distinct perspective of bridging the divide between ‘functionalist’ and ‘formalist’ (though perhaps not ‘autonomist’) approaches to syntax.

The Dependency Phonology and Notional Grammar pages host information such as basic introductions, selected papers and pre-publications, as well as relevant links to work outside of DP and NG (the latter being included here – for the sake of intellectual diversity – as an antidote to ‘collective amnesia’ [G.Pullum]).