This paper discusses an alternate formalism for context-free phrase structure grammar. The author feels that if a grammar is stated completely explicitly it can be represented in the form of a relational network of the type proposed by Lamb. He discusses some formal properties of such networks and makes some revisions to Lamb's formulation which allow the formal properties and the structural complexity count to be kept as simple as possible. The notion of "hill climbing" on equivalence spaces defined by the formal properties and the complexity count is introduced as a model of the simplification part of language acquisition. The author suggests that using the complexity count he proposes, the process of simplification in disjunctive form is "non-uphill all the way." Thus he finds that the network approach not only gives a simpler overall system, but one which has the added advantage of starting linguists along the path of developing a detailed model of the process of language acquisition. (See related document AL 001 636.) (Author/DO)