What data structures are the simplest?

[janmato]

In 'Adam's Tongue' by Bickerton, the author mentions a possible mental model for multiword communication called "beads on a string" and contrasts that with a Chomskian "merge", where you take two words and mentally arrange them on a tree to make a new idea and then reapply that merge to everything else in the sentence until you get a great big tree.

The data structure for a tree is a familiar data structure, it's the same as XML and many other hierarchial data structures.

What is the data structure for the "beads on a string" model? Is it like a directed graph? An unordered set (and the uttered one is just a randomly selected possible form of it)?

[skymandr]

(01-06-2013 06:02 AM)janmato Wrote:  What is the data structure for the "beads on a string" model? Is it like a directed graph? An unordered set (and the uttered one is just a randomly selected possible form of it)?

Sounds like a linked list to me. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list)