Syntactic Theories

This article surveys the philosophical literature on theoretical linguistics. The focus of the paper is centred around the major debates in the philosophy of linguistics, past and present, with specific relation to how they connect to the philosophy of science. Specific issues such as scientific realism in linguistics, the scientific status of grammars, the methodological underpinnings of formal semantics, and the integration of linguistics into the larger cognitive sciences form the crux of the discussion.

Most syntacticians, no matter their theoretical persuasion, agree that features are the most important units of analysis. Within Chomskyan generative grammar, the importance of features has grown steadily and within minimalism, it can be said that everything depends on features. They are obstacles in any interdisciplinary investigation concerning the nature of language and it is hard to imagine a syntactic description that does not explore them. For the first time, this book turns grammar upside down and proposes a new model (...) of syntax that is better suited for interdisciplinary interactions, and shows how syntax can proceed free of lexical influence. The empirical domain examined is vast, and all the fundamental units and properties of syntax are rethought. Opening up new avenues of investigation, this book will be invaluable to researchers and students in syntactic theory, and linguistics more broadly. (shrink)

This book fills a long standing need for a basic introduction to Cognitive Grammar that is current, authoritative, comprehensive, and approachable. It presents a synthesis that draws together and refines the descriptive and theoretical notions developed in this framework over the course of three decades. In a unified manner, it accommodates both the conceptual and the social-interactive basis of linguistic structure, as well as the need for both functional explanation and explicit structural description. Starting with the fundamentals, essential aspects of (...) the theory are systematically laid out with concrete illustrations and careful discussion of their rationale. Among the topics surveyed are conceptual semantics, grammatical classes, grammatical constructions, the lexicon-grammar continuum characterized as assemblies of symbolic structures, and the usage-based account of productivity, restrictions, and well-formedness. The theory's central claim - that grammar is inherently meaningful - is thereby shown to be viable. The framework is further elucidated through application to nominal structure, clause structure, and complex sentences. These are examined in broad perspective, with exemplification from English and numerous other languages. In line with the theory's general principles, they are discussed not only in terms of their structural characterization, but also their conceptual value and functional motivation. Other matters explored include discourse, the temporal dimension of language structure, and what grammar reveals about cognitive processes and the construction of our mental world. (shrink)

The label `semiotic grammar' captures a fundamental property of the grammars of human languages: not only is language a semiotic system in the familiar Saussurean sense, but its organizing system, its grammar, is also a semiotic system. This proposition, explicated in detail by William McGregor in this book, constitutes a new theory of grammar. Semiotic Grammar is `functional' rather than `formal' in its intellectual origins, approaches, and methods. It demonstrates, however, that neither a purely functional nor a purely formal account (...) of language is adequate, given the centrality of the sign as the fundamental unit of grammatical analysis. The author distinguishes four types of grammatical signs: experiential, logical, interpersonal, and textural. The signifiers of these signs are syntagmatic relationships of the following types, respectively: constituency, dependency, conjugational and linking. McGregor illustrates and exemplifies the theory with data from a variety of languages including English, Acehnese, Polish, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, and Mohawk; and from his pioneering research on Gooniyandi and Nyulnyul, two languages of the Kimberleys region of Western Australia. (shrink)

By the late 1980s, Government and Binding Theory - which was central to almost all research in generative grammar - threatened to become as large and as intricate as the language it described. To counter this, Noam Chomsky introduced a minimalist program with the aim of making explanations of language as simple and general as possible. It has since gained widespread acceptance, to the extent that the most recent first-year textbook in syntax is based on it. One of the areas (...) subjected to this minimalist scrutiny has been phrase structure, the fundamental basis of grammar. This book focuses on the most controversial area of phrase structure, the notion of specifiera notion encompassing the traditional categories of subjects, possessors, determiners, auxiliaries, and adjuncts. It examines what place the notion has in the new theory and how the projection of specifiers is to be eliminated or extended. The contributors draw on empirical, theoretical research in cross-linguistic phenomena and first and second language acquisition. The substantial introductory chapter provides an up-to-date account of minimalist syntactic theory and a critical evaluation of the notion of specifier within it. (shrink)

This state-of-the-art guide to some of the most exciting work in current linguistics explores how the core components of the language faculty interact. It examines how these interactions are reflected in linguistic and cognitive theory, considers what they reveal about the operations of language within the mind, and looks at their reflections in expression and communication. Leading international scholars present cutting-edge accounts of developments in the interfaces between phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. They bring to bear a rich (...) variety of methods and theoretical perspectives, focus on a broad array of issues and problems, and illustrate their arguments from a wide range of the world's languages. After the editors' introduction to its structure, scope, and content, the book is divided into four parts. The first, Sound, is concerned with the interfaces between phonetics and phonology, phonology and morphology, and phonology and syntax. Part II, Structure, considers the interactions of syntax with morphology, semantics, and the lexicon, and explores the status of the word and its representional status in the mind. Part III, Meaning, revisits the syntax-semantics interface from the perspective of compositionality, and looks at issues concerned with intonation, discourse, and context. The authors in the final part of the book, General Architectural Concerns, examine work on Universal Grammar, the overall model of language, and linguistic and associated theories of language and cognition. All scholars and advanced students of language will value this book, whether they are in linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, artificial intelligence, computational science, or informatics. (shrink)

A complement clause is used instead of a noun phrase; for example one can say either I heard [the result] or I heard [that England beat France]. Languages differ in the grammatical properties of complement clauses, and the types of verbs which take them. Some languages lack a complement clause construction but instead employ other construction types to achieve similar ends; these are called complementation strategies. The book explores the variety of types of complementation found across the languages of the (...) world, their grammatical properties and meanings. Detailed studies of particular languages, including Akkadian, Israeli, Jarawara, and Pennsylvania German, are framed by R. M. W. Dixon's introduction, which sets out the range of issues, and his conclusion, which draws together the evidence and the arguments. This book will interest scholars of typology, language universals, syntax, information structure, and language contact in departments of linguistics and anthropology, as well as advanced and graduate students taking courses in these subjects. (shrink)

The Minimalist Program for linguistic theory is Noam Chomsky's boldest and most radical version of his naturalistic approach to language. Cedric Boeckz examines its foundations, explains its underlying philosophy, exemplifies its methods, and considers the significance of its empirical results. He explores the roots and antecedents of the Program and shows how its methodologies parallel those of sciences such as physics and biology. He disentangles and clarifies current debates and issues around the nature of minimalist research in linguistics and shows (...) how the aims and ambitions of the Minimalist Program lie at the centre of the enterprise to understand how the human language faculty operates in the mind and is manifested in the world's languages.Professor Boeckx writes for advanced and graduate students of linguistics and for all those, in fields such as cognitive science and evolutionary biology, who want to know more about current developments in theoretical linguistics. (shrink)

According to the contemporary consensus, when reaching in the lexicon grammar looks for items like nouns, verbs, and prepositions while logic sees items like predicates, connectives, and quantifiers. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a single lexical category contemporary grammar and logic both make use of. I hope to show that while a perfect match between the lexical categories of grammar and logic is impossible there can be a substantial overlap. I propose semantic definitions for all the major parts (...) of speech . I argue that the differences among these categories can be captured in terms of distinctions recognized in logic. (shrink)

The format of this book is unusual, especially for a book about linguistics. The book is meant primarily as a research monograph aimed at linguists who have some background in formal semantics, e. g. Montague Grammar. However, I have two other audiences in mind. Linguists who have little or no experience of formal semantics, but who have worked through a basic mathematics for linguists course, should, perhaps with the help of a sympathetic Montague gramma rian, be able to discover enough (...) of how I have adapted some of the basic ideas in formal semantics to make the developments that I undertake in the rest of the book accessible. Logicians and computer scientists who know about model theoretic semantics and formal systems should be able to glean enough from Chapters I and II about linguistic concerns and techniques to be able to read the remainder of the book, again possibly with the help of a sympathetic Montague grammarian. However, readers should beware. Chapter II is not meant as a general introduction either to formal semantics or to linguistics and while much of the presentation there is going over ground that is already well covered in the literature, the particular formulation and the emphases are very much oriented to the developments to be undertaken later in the book. (shrink)

This thesis examines the syntactic structures within which a theory of predication may operate. The range of investigation includes saturation in adjectival structures, predicate nominal structures, genitive structures, and superlative nominal structures. ;A theory of adjectival structure and predication forms the basis for the remaining structures proposed in the thesis. It is assumed that when in construction with nouns adjectives are generated in either of two positions: as transitive heads of adjectival phrases, selecting noun phrase complements, or as intransitive heads (...) of adjectival phrases, adjoined to noun phrases. How saturation becomes complete in either of these two possible configurations is demonstrated via a theory of thematic role percolation and discharge in which thematic attributes of adjectives found in one position are distinct from the thematic attributes of adjectives found in the other position. ;The theory of syntactic structure and predication is extended to simple predicate nominals introduced by "indefinite" determiners . It is shown that the configurations for intransitive adjectives and the nouns they modify generalize to the appropriate structures for predicate nominals. This partially relies on analyses proposing a similarity in logical form between adjectival modification and the behavior of the indefinite determiners. ;A look at the class of predicate nominals introduced by a genitive reveals that their distribution is the same as that of simple predicate nominals. Similar structures to those of the predicate nominals introduced by determiners are proposed for the genitive variety of predicate nominal. The theory of saturation is shown to support the proposed structures for genitive constructions, and evidence from Swedish, Finnish and Greek provides some cross-linguistic support for the structural claims. ;Superlative nominals may occur in the same distribution as other predicate nominals . As an expansion on proposals made earlier in the thesis about adjectival structure and the structure of predicate nominals, predication structures are provided for these superlative nominals. The superlative complement is argued to be sister to the superlative morpheme in these structures, following several proposals in the recent literature. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of clause architecture within a theory of generative grammar. It discusses four major syntactic hypotheses that have crucial bearing on the design of phrase structure: the Agreement-based Case theory, the internal subject hypothesis , the uniform three-level X-bar theory, and a hypothesis about string vacuous head movement. ;After the introductory chapter, Chapter 2 through Chapter 4 discuss object positions in three typologically and genetically different languages, i.e. English, Zarma, and Japanese. It is argued that they (...) all possess Agreement Phrases for objects . A consideration of learnability suggests that the presence of AGRoP in these languages, particularly in Japanese, is not learnable from the data available to children. Thus, it is highly likely that UG is so construed that every language has AGR . ;Chapter 5 turns to subject positions. There is conflicting evidence regarding the base-position of the external argument. Some data indicate that the external argument originates in a position lower than its surface position. Other data suggest that its base-position is outside AGRoP which dominates the main verb and the internal arguments. If the ISH is correct in that all arguments of a predicate category originate within the maximal projection of this category, then the apparently contradicting data suggest that there are two verbs, hence two VPs, in a single clause . One verb is above AGRoP, and the other is below AGRoP. The so-called external argument is an argument of the upper V, and "internal arguments" are arguments of the lower V. ;Chapter 6 is concerned with X-bar theory. It is argued, contrary to the wide held view, that some functional categories allow more than one specifier position within their projections , and that the X-bar schema as such is not a part of Universal Grammar. ;Chapter 7 discusses string vacuous verb raising in head final languages. In particular, evidence is presented for overt verb raising in Japanese. Its consequences are also explored to various aspects of syntactic theory. (shrink)

This thesis argues for a reformulation of the A/A-bar distinction in the theory of syntax. In the first part of this thesis, it is shown that this reformulation is forced by both theoretical considerations raised by VP internal subject theories and also certain empirical considerations relating to scrambling operations in Hindi. Evidence for the reformulation includes locality constraints on movement, weak crossover phenomena, reconstruction effects and binding properties associated with movement. This evidence also leads to a new approach to the (...) study of scrambling phenomena. It is suggested that scrambling operations that move NPs may belong to two different kinds of syntactic operations--an operation that involves substituting the scrambled element into a SPEC of a functional projection internal to IP and an operation that adjoins the scrambled NP to a maximal projection . The approach developed here yields a framework that seems to be promising for the study of variation found with respect to scrambling phenomena in natural languages. ;The second part of this thesis argues that a language that does not have overt wh-movement at s-structure may not have wh-movement to SPEC CP at LF either. It is argued that in a language like Hindi, the wh-phrases simply undergo QR at LF. This operation adjoins a wh-phrase to the nearest IP. We show that this approach yields a number of consequences that are desirable in Hindi, a language that at first glance seems to be mixed between a language with overt wh-movement in syntax as well as wh-in-situ. We discuss some aspects of wide scope quantification in Hindi and some other languages and show that the absence of wh-movement to SPEC CP at LF yields certain effects that would be surprising under the approaches that permit wh-movement to SPEC CP at LF. (shrink)

In this paper, we shall present a generalization of phrase structure grammar, in which all functional categories have type restrictions, that is, their argument types are specific domains. In ordinary phrase structure grammar, there is just one universal domain of individuals. The grammar does not make a distinction between verbs and adjectives in terms of domains of applicability. Consequently, it fails to distinguish between sentences like every line intersects every line, which is well typed, and every line intersects every point, (...) which is ill typed.Our generalization relates to ordinary phrase structure grammar in the same way as the higherlevel constructive type theory of Martin-Löf relates to the simple type theory of Church . Simple type theory has been used in linguistics and related with phrase structure grammar, especially in the tradition based on the work of Montague .Our definition of the grammar will be more formal than Montague's in the sense that we shall use a formal metalanguage, that of constructive type theory, for defining both the object language and its interpretation. The grammar, both syntax and semantics, is thus readily implementable in the type-theoretical proof system ALF . Inside type theory, a distinction can be made between the object language and the model, in other words, between syntactic and semantic types. It will turn out that the object language cannot be defined independently of the model, as in ordinary Tarski semantics. This is a direct consequence of introducing the typing restrictions.The grammar presented here can be seen as a formal linguistic elaboration of the work presented in Ranta 1991 and 1994. The organization of generative grammar as categorial grammar followed by sugaring should now look more familiar to the linguist, as the grammatical formalism on which sugaring operates is no longer full type theory but a set of phrase structure trees. (shrink)

Relational grammar was proposed in Suppes as a semantical grammar for natural language. Fragments considered so far are restricted to distributive notions. In this article, relational grammar is extended to collective notions.

Adriana Belletti here collects work presented by top scholars at a workshop at the University of Siena in connection with a visit by Noam Chomsky. These eight articles go beyond strictly mapping syntactic properties, touching on broader theoretical questions related to Chomsky's Minimalist Program in particular. The reputation of the contributors, combined with the collection of cutting-edge research in one place, will interest scholars and students of generative linguistics.

By formalizing recent syntactic theories for natural languages in the tradition of Chomsky's Barriers, Stabler shows how their complexity can be handled without guesswork or oversimplification. He introduces logical representations of these theories together with special deductive techniques for exploring their consequences that will provide linguists with a valuable tool for deriving and testing theoretical predictions and for experimenting with alternative formulations of grammatical principles. Stabler's novel approach allows results to be deduced with straightforward calculations and provides a systematic framework (...) for tackling the problem of how speakers can infer the properties of an utterance from principles of the grammar. The special treatment of equality, induction principles, and inclusion of a general method for collecting structures from proofs means that sophisticated linguistic arguments can be carried out in detail, giving a rich perspective to issues in linguistic theory and parsing. (shrink)

We reconstruct “the classical transformational theory” of Chomsky, and fit it into the structuralist theory of science. We describe both the formal and the empirical features of this classical account, so that one basic hypothesis of this theory – where central notions are used – can be formulated, and in which Chomsky’s “classical” distinction between surface structure and deep structure is clarified. In the empirical claim of this theory are words, sentences and high-structured entities in an inseparable way intertwined. We (...) claim that the formal structure of a natural language is not approximately the same as that of an empirical theory in general. We clarify two special points which affect the structure of the notion of an empirical theory, namely: the delineation of intended applications and the fit between data and models. We hold that the concept of the empirical claim for a linguistic theory should be generalized in comparison with the “standard” structuralist approach. (shrink)

We defend that there is a link between the mathematical analytical models and the mathematical synthetic models that is peculiar to Chomsky’s grammar exposed in The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, CHG. To identify this link helps to identify the objects and the task of the grammars in CHG and also to detect some inadequacies in the exposition and conception underlying in CHG . In order to clarify these inadequacies, we defend that a grammar can be conceived as a theory (...) that assigns the values of its notions to the sentences of a language, and we propose the following basic relational notions for CHG: phrase structure, transformed structure, phonemic representation and phonetic representation. By means of the structural metatheory, we define the potential models and the actual models of CHG. (shrink)

The contemporary connectionist position regarding language has resulted in a kind of reconciliation between the behavioral interpretation of the nature and acquisition of language and the initial cognitive position that thought, or the capacity for thought, precedes the acquisition of a natural language. Behavior analysts believe that language is behaviorally reviewable, but thought is not unless it is considered nothing mare than sub-vocal language. Such a position is, of course, required by the behavior analytic epistemology, with the exception that visual (...) images can also be considered non language-linked thought. However, the communicative part of thought in which most of us are primarily interested is reducible to natural language so far as the behavior analytic position is concerned. Cognitivists, however, do not necessarily equate natural language with thought since children display concept learning and perceptual integration before they acquire language. Behavior analysts, as we have seen, make the distinction that pre-linguistic children and animals "know how," but only creatures with language "know that." Nevertheless, many cognitivists separate the processes of thought form those processes involved in the use of a natural language. Fodor holds thatLearning a language involves learning what the predicates of a language mean. Learning what the predicates of a language mean involves learning determination of the extension of these predicates. Learning a determination of the extension of the predicates involves learning that they fall under some truth rules. But one cannot learn that P falls under R unless one has a language in which P and R can be represented.Fodor concludes that there must be language elements already present in order for a child to learn a natural language. This implies that the organism comes equipped, presumably by the evolutionary development of the species, with certain basic language abilities. Having accepted one or more of a few variations of this argument, cognitively oriented researches turned to internal processes to account for much, but not all, of the nature of language. Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek have summarized a number of different types of theories concerned with the acquisition and use of language. Before these systems are discussed it is necessary to define a number of terms critical to their understanding. (shrink)