Many variants of categorial grammar assume an underlying logic which is associative and linear. In relation to left extraction, the former property is challenged by island domains, which involve nonassociativity, and the latter property is challenged by parasitic gaps, which involve nonlinearity. We present a version of type logical grammar including ‘structural inhibition’ for nonassociativity...

The nonassociativity of the octonion algebra necessitates a bimodule representation, in which each element is represented by a left and a right multiplier. This representation can then be used to generate gauge transformations for the purpose of constructing a field theory symmetric under a gauged octonion algebra, the nonassociativity of which appears as a failure of the representation to clos...

Recently we have reformulated the octonions as quasissociative algebras (quasialgebras) living in a symmetric monoidal category. In this note we provide further examples of quasialgebras, namely ones where the nonassociativity is induced by a Z Z n-grading and a nontrivial 3-cocycle.

Characterizations of ‘almost associative’ binary operations generating a minimal clone are given for two interpretations of the term ‘almost associative’. One of them uses the associative spectrum, the other one uses the index of nonassociativity to measure how far an operation is from being associative.

The sequence A000975 in OEIS can be defined by A1 = 1, An+1 = 2An if n is odd, and An+1 = 2An + 1 if n is even. This sequence satisfies other recurrence relations, admits some closed formulas, and is known to enumerate several interesting families of objects. We provide a new interpretation of this sequence using a binary operation defined by a⊖ b := −a− b. We show that the number of distinct r...

The octonions are the largest of the four normed division algebras. While somewhat neglected due to their nonassociativity, they stand at the crossroads of many interesting fields of mathematics. Here we describe them and their relation to Clifford algebras and spinors, Bott periodicity, projective and Lorentzian geometry, Jordan algebras, and the exceptional Lie groups. We also touch upon thei...