Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory - Böcker

1.1. AIMS AND ASSUMPTIONS This book presents an analysis of infinitival complement constructions in Old French (OF) from the perspective of the Government-Binding (GB) framework. It aims, therefore, to establish within the terms of the GB framework just how the OF constructions are to be characterized and in just what sense they can or cannot be compared with the corresponding constructions in other Romance languages. The GB framework is an articulated theory about the structure of language which is based on the view that the aim of research into language is to construct a description of language which accurately reflects its essential nature. Whilst we know that individual languages may appear to be superficially very different, we also know that all languages are capable of expressing complex concepts and that all children acquire mastery of the language or languages to which they are exposed. The task, therefore, is to determine both the properties which languages have in common and the bounds within which they may differ. In the pursuit of these aims, the study of various languages of the Romance family has provided a rich source of material for the develop­ ment of the descriptive apparatus. Evidence of the contribution supplied by such work is apparent in references to Romance material in Chomsky (1981, 1982), in volumes such as Jaeggli (1982), Rizzi (1982a), Kayne (1984b), Burzio (1986), and in numerous papers devoted to particular constructions in a variety of Romance languages.

1.1. AIMS AND ASSUMPTIONS This book presents an analysis of infinitival complement constructions in Old French (OF) from the perspective of the Government-Binding (GB) framework. It aims, therefore, to establish within the terms of the GB framework just how the OF constructions are to be characterized and in just what sense they can or cannot be compared with the corresponding constructions in other Romance languages. The GB framework is an articulated theory about the structure of language which is based on the view that the aim of research into language is to construct a description of language which accurately reflects its essential nature. Whilst we know that individual languages may appear to be superficially very different, we also know that all languages are capable of expressing complex concepts and that all children acquire mastery of the language or languages to which they are exposed. The task, therefore, is to determine both the properties which languages have in common and the bounds within which they may differ. In the pursuit of these aims, the study of various languages of the Romance family has provided a rich source of material for the develop­ ment of the descriptive apparatus. Evidence of the contribution supplied by such work is apparent in references to Romance material in Chomsky (1981, 1982), in volumes such as Jaeggli (1982), Rizzi (1982a), Kayne (1984b), Burzio (1986), and in numerous papers devoted to particular constructions in a variety of Romance languages.

Recent developments in generative grammar have been very stimulating. The current theory defines a small set of principles that apply to all human languages. Efforts have been made to demonstrate the adequacy of this theory for a wide range of languages. We thus see an interesting interface of theory and empirical data: the study of natural languages contributes to defining the properties of Universal Grammar and the predictions of the theory help in uncovering generalizations regarding natural languages. This book aims to add to this exciting development by showing how the analysis of Mandarin Chinese constituent structures helps to define Case Theory and how interesting generalizations concerning Chinese grammar are uncovered through verification of the theoretical predictions. Starting from the inadequacy of work by Koopman, Li, and Travis on the effect of Case directionality on word order, the book shows that a detailed study of Chinese constituent structures allows us to reduce the phrase structure component to a minimal statement concerning the position of the head in a given phrase. It argues that in a given language the constituent structures can be adequately captured by the interaction of Case Theory, Theta Theory, Government Theory, and X Theory. Long­ standing controversies concerning Chinese basic word order are resolved by showing that underlying word order generalizations can differ from surface word order generalizations.

The articles collected in this book are concerned with the issues of restrictiveness and learnability within generative grammar, specifically, within Chomsky's 'Extended Standard Theory'. These issues have been central to syntactic research for decades and they are even more central now as results on syntactic theory, on learnability, and on acquisition begin to converge. I hope that this book can provide researchers in all of these areas with some insight into the evolution of ideas about these issues. The articles appear in their original form, with the following exceptions: A few typographical and other minor errors have been corrected; bibliog­ raphic references have been updated and a unified bibliography provided. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my vast intellec­ tual debt to Noam Chomsky. My research would not have been possible without his work, his advice, and his guidance. Next, I offer deep thanks to Chomsky and my other co-authors represented here: Bob Fiengo, Joe Kupin, Bob Freidin, and Mamoru Saito. I am grateful, indeed, for the opportunity to collaborate with such outstanding linguists, and, more immediately, for their permission to reprint their co-authored articles. I also offer general thanks to the holders of the copyrights of the reprinted material. Specific acknowledgements appear on a separate page.

The articles collected in this book are concerned with the issues of restrictiveness and learnability within generative grammar, specifically, within Chomsky's 'Extended Standard Theory'. These issues have been central to syntactic research for decades and they are even more central now as results on syntactic theory, on learnability, and on acquisition begin to converge. I hope that this book can provide researchers in all of these areas with some insight into the evolution of ideas about these issues. The articles appear in their original form, with the following exceptions: A few typographical and other minor errors have been corrected; bibliog­ raphic references have been updated and a unified bibliography provided. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my vast intellec­ tual debt to Noam Chomsky. My research would not have been possible without his work, his advice, and his guidance. Next, I offer deep thanks to Chomsky and my other co-authors represented here: Bob Fiengo, Joe Kupin, Bob Freidin, and Mamoru Saito. I am grateful, indeed, for the opportunity to collaborate with such outstanding linguists, and, more immediately, for their permission to reprint their co-authored articles. I also offer general thanks to the holders of the copyrights of the reprinted material. Specific acknowledgements appear on a separate page.

Derivation or Representation? Hubert Haider & Klaus Netter 1 The Issue Derivation and Representation - these keywords refer both to a conceptual as well as to an empirical issue. Transformational grammar was in its outset (Chomsky 1957, 1975) a derivational theory which characterized a well-formed sentence by its derivation, i.e. a set of syntactic representations defined by a set of rules that map one representation into another. The set of mapping­ rules, the transformations, eventually became more and more abstract and were trivialized into a single one, namely "move a" , a general movement-rule. The constraints on movement were singled out in systems of principles that ap­ ply to the resulting representations, i.e. the configurations containing a moved element and its extraction site, the trace. The introduction of trace-theory (d. Chomsky 1977, ch.3 §17, ch. 4) in principle opened up the possibility of com­ pletely abandoning movement and generating the possible outputs of movement directly, i.e. as structures that contain gaps representing the extraction sites.

Warlpiri is a Pama-Nyungan language (Ngarrka group) spo- ken by over 3,000 people in Central Australia. Neighbour- ing languages (all Pama-Nyungan) include its closest relatives, Warlmanpa and Ngardily, to the north-east and west respec- tively, Warumungu (Warumungic) and the Arandic languages, Kaytetye and Alyawarr, to the east, the Western Desert lan- guages, Pintupi and Kukatja, to the south and west respectively, the Ngumbin language Jaru to the north-west, the Arandic lan- guage, Anmatyerre, to the south-east, and the Ngumbin lan- guages, Gurindji and Mudburra, to the north. Warlpiri country encompasses a huge area of semi-desert stretching west of Tennant Creek to the Western Australian border. For the Warlpiri, this country is filled with meaning. Jukurrpa (often translated as 'Dreaming') beings travel across it, creating and changing the landscape in their passing. Songs, dances, painting, stories and journeys celebrate the jukurrpa and the country. The Warlpiri language is also from the jukurrpa; it is the language spoken by the jukurrpa beings on their travels through Warlpiri country.

This book represents the culmination of an extended period of field work on the Palauan language, carried out while I was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. The book was born as a short term paper written in 1982; from a forgettable infancy, that paper grew and grew, reaching the age of majority in my dissertation at the end of 1985. Some of its offspring have gone off on their own, as indepen­ dent papers, as course materials, or as thoughts that have not yet com­ pletely materialized. Some have been disowned. The full adulthood of this study of Palauan is realized in the present book. Virtually every section of the dissertation has been rewritten, updated, or otherwise (I hope) improved. Where the dissertation was still struggling with various problems, the book has found solutions. The aim of the book remains, however, to give broad coverage of Palauan, with emphasis on A' binding, rather than to focus narrowly on a few highly specific theoretical issues. I hope to have achieved a balance between presenting the language clearly and nonprejudicially, and deal­ ing with various of its properties in current theoretical terms. If I have, the book should prove to be a resource for further typological study of the phenomena it describes.

O. PRELIMINARY REMARKS Initial drafts of the papers in this collection were presented in a con­ ference entitled 'Views on Phrase Structure', held at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in March, 1989. Eleven of the twenty-three partici­ pants in the conference were able to contribute to this volume. The purpose of the conference was to explore theories of phrase structure in their relation to other subsystems of grammar and/or systems of nonlinguistic knowledge. Some of the grammatical subsystems which the authors consider are theta-theory, movement, Case, and binding; a number of papers address how the conceptual system and/or aspects of language use may interact. Unifying the various approaches and perspectives is an attempt to furnish hypotheses concerning prin­ ciples of phrase structure with some sort of independent justification. 1. PHRASE STRUCTURE THEORY: A BRIEF HISTORY A basic outline for a theory of phrase structure theory is accepted by all of the authors here; it is known as 'X-bar theory'. The concepts of X-bar theory are expressed in some form by a number of pre-generative linguists. For example, Bloomfield (1933) contrasted endocentric struc­ tures such as noun phrases and verb phrases with those he considered exocentric, e. g. prepositional phrases and clauses. Jespersen (1933), while presenting a functional system of description (in terms of 'ranks', where rank one is 'nominal', for example), clarified the relations among the head of a phrase, its modifier, and a phrase which modifies the modifier.

The study of parasitic gap constructions (e. g. these are the reports; which you corrected _; before filing _i) has been a very lively area of research over the last decade. The impetus behind this lies mostly in the margi­ nality of the construction. Clearly, the intuitions that native speakers have about parasitic gaps do not stem from direct instruction; hence, it is reasoned, such knowledge follows from the restrictions imposed by Universal Grammar. Furthermore, it is unlikely that any principle of Universal Grammar refers specifically to parasitic gap constructions; their syntactic and interpretive properties must instead follow entirely from independent principles. My own interest in the phenomenon was sparked a few years ago, when, in a novel, I came across a sentence like the following: Chait un armateur; dont Ie prestige _; reposait largement sur la fortune _;, 'he was a shipbuilder of whom the prestige was largely based on the wealth'. As the indices indicate, the interpretation of the French sentence is un­ ambiguous: both the prestige and the wealth necessarily pertain to the same individual. In this aspect, the sentence much resembles the English parasitic gap construction above: in the former case too, the comple­ ments of correct and file must corefer with the noun phrase heading the relative (the reports). Yet, there is an important difference between the two constructions. Verbs like correct and file subcategorize their com­ plements.

A collection of articles written by the author over the last 20 years on a wide range of issues in Japanese syntax and semantics. Many of the papers challenge prevailing opinion and some were in fact instrumental in changing perspectives within the broader linguistic community. Some of the papers address particular structures in Japanese, such as passives, relative clauses and double-subject constructions. All the papers, however, go beyond the description to place those constructions in a theoretical context. This volume should be of interest both to students of Japanese linguistics and to specialists in general syntactic theory and semantics.

An analysis of the development of a number of English and French constructions involving various kinds of subject-verb inversion. The analysis is framed in terms of the principles-and-parameters approach to syntactic theory, and provides strong support for the adoption of this approach in the description and explanation of language change. The book is divided into three parts. The first part presents an overall framework for the analysis of inversion constructions and motivates, on the basis of synchronic data, several parameters which distinguish among the various Romance and Germanic languages. The second part shows how several near-simultaneous syntactic changes in the history of French can be explained as a change in one of the parameters introduced in Chapter One. A notable aspect of this analysis is the way in which the distribution of null subjects is shown to relate to verb-placement. The third part of the book treats verb-movement in the history of English, arguing in detail that the attested changes in this area are due to a change in the internal structure of "infl", a proposal which has important ramifications for the theory of functional heads.Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on the theoretical questions raised by language change. In this connection, the two notions of diachronic reanalysis and parametric change are distinguished.

The goals of this study are twofold. First, it investigates the internal structure of words and clauses in Standard Arabic (SA), in the light of recent developments of Government and Binding Theory (GB). Second, it argues for a specific theory of typological variation. SA morphology is essentially non-concatenative, but word formation is hierarchical. Unmarked word order is VS(O), but it alternates with SVO. Sentences are verbless as well as verbal. Arguments can be null. The rich and complex agreement system interacts significantly with word order, pronominal incorporation, and expletive structures. SA's productive Case system raises interesting issues for Case theory. The DP system exhibits intriguing complementary distributions between overt determiners, genitive complements, and possessive markers. Tense, Aspect, Modal, and negation properties interact in significant ways. Different Case checking strategies are licensed in the same functional domain. These descriptive ingredients, compared to those of Germanic and Romance in particular, provide new grounds for analyzing typologically related or non-related languages.Within the invariant system of principles and the set of parameter specifications provided by Universal Grammar, the burden of learning is placed on functional categories. A system of Multi-valued Functional Parametrization is used to account for cross-linguisitic variation. The focus of SA's "own" descriptive problems turns out to raise comparative and theoretical questions. Issues are framed within the GB model, but unnecessary technicalities are avoided. The book is accessible to linguists and students broadly interested in general, Semitic, and Arabic linguistics, in addition to those concerned with the development of the GB field.

This book combines several strands of my work, both individually and in collaboration with various people, over the last couple of years. To a very large extent, I have been inspired by the many talks, classes, appointments and other interactions that took place in the exciting intellectual environ­ ment that grew up among the linguists working in Geneva in the period 1989-90. It is impossible to mention by name everyone who influenced the devel­ opment of this material, but I'd particularly like to thank the students in my class 'linguistique diachronique' during that period, who had to suffer through preliminary versions of much of this book, and often seemed to understand what I was getting at better than I did. Luigi Rizzi did more than anyone else to create the unique atmosphere here in the last couple of years, and so he deserves our gratitude for that; he was also my collaborator on the synchronic work on French inversion that inspired much of this book; he also read the whole manuscript in draft form and gave detailed comments; he is also, as anyone working in current comparative syntax knows, a wellspring of knowledge, ideas and inspiration. Maria-Teresa Guasti also read the entire manuscript and gave me invaluable comments. Sten Vikner was a great help, for much more than just Danish data. Special thanks also to Adriana Belletti, Anna Cardinaletti, Liliane Haegeman and Cecilia Poletto.

Case, Scope, and Binding investigates the relation between syntax and semantics within a framework which combines the syntactic Government-Binding theory with a novel cross-linguistic theory of case and semantics. It is argued that case assignment, agreement, syntactic binding relations, as well as the minimum scopes of operators, are all determined by the relations which hold at the level of s-structure. Cross-linguistic variation with respect to these phenomena is due to corresponding variations at the s-structure level. The minimum scope of an operator cannot exceed its c-command domain at s-structure, but may be reduced by certain semantic mechanisms. The availability of any wider scope option depends on the possibility of movement at LF. The proposed theory is tested in detail against the facts of Inuit (Eskimo-Aleut family), an ergative language with typologically unusual scope and binding relations. For linguists and philosophers interested in syntax, semantics, or the syntax-semantics interface.

In recent years, numerous important innovations in generative grammar have originated within the field of Germanic syntax. The 13 comparative studies in this volume aim to demonstrate how much the field has grown both in quantity and quality within the last decade. The topics investigated include the phrase structure of clauses and nominal phrases, morphological and abstract case, binding, and different types of movement (verb movement, scrambling, object shift, extraposition, and topicalization). The studies often cut across the division between Germanic SVO languages and Germanic SOV languages, thus opening new perspectives on the field, and non-Germanic languages such as Bengali and Italian are also included in the discussion.

Chapter 5: Irish Noun Phrases ...266 5. 0 Introduction 266 5. 0. 1 Irish Nominal Paradigms...269 5. 0. 2 Prepositional Phrases: Two Types of Mutation Context ...273 5. 1 Construct State Nominals and DP Projections...282 5. 1. 1 Rightward Specifiers 286 5. 1. 2 Adjective Placement...288 5. 1. 3 Possessive Particles 305 5. 1. 4 Demonstrative Licensing and Interpretation...311 5. 1. 5 Head-movement and ICM Effects 315 5. 2 Summary 322 Appendix ...323 References 342 Index of Names and Subjects 359 PREFACE This bookis based on my 1991 USCdissertation. Since thattime, there have been two major theoretical developments that bear directly on the analysesoriginallydevelopedin the dissertation. These aretheinceptionof the 'Minimalist Program' of Chomsky (1992, 1993), and the recent 'Antisymmetry' proposals presented in Kayne (1993). Taken in conjunction with the many criticisms and suggestions ofreviewers, these proposals have prompted significant revisions ofthe earlier work:. Every chapter has been substantially revised, the introductory chapter has been replaced, and Chapters 2, 3 and 5 offer completely new analyses of the originalmaterial.The book comprises a set of theoretical studies of aspects of Modern Irish syntax. I have tried to present a coherent and consistent treatmentof the Irishfacts; abookin which the particularsofIrish syntax- which are in many cases quiteeccentric from an Englishperspective- are shown to inform more general theoreticalissues. I also hope to have offered to the non-Celticist a reasonably complete overview of the major syntactic structures ofIrish, with some indication and analysisofthe more importantdialectdifferences.

Chapter 5: Irish Noun Phrases ...266 5. 0 Introduction 266 5. 0. 1 Irish Nominal Paradigms...269 5. 0. 2 Prepositional Phrases: Two Types of Mutation Context ...273 5. 1 Construct State Nominals and DP Projections...282 5. 1. 1 Rightward Specifiers 286 5. 1. 2 Adjective Placement...288 5. 1. 3 Possessive Particles 305 5. 1. 4 Demonstrative Licensing and Interpretation...311 5. 1. 5 Head-movement and ICM Effects 315 5. 2 Summary 322 Appendix ...323 References 342 Index of Names and Subjects 359 PREFACE This bookis based on my 1991 USCdissertation. Since thattime, there have been two major theoretical developments that bear directly on the analysesoriginallydevelopedin the dissertation. These aretheinceptionof the 'Minimalist Program' of Chomsky (1992, 1993), and the recent 'Antisymmetry' proposals presented in Kayne (1993). Taken in conjunction with the many criticisms and suggestions ofreviewers, these proposals have prompted significant revisions ofthe earlier work:. Every chapter has been substantially revised, the introductory chapter has been replaced, and Chapters 2, 3 and 5 offer completely new analyses of the originalmaterial.The book comprises a set of theoretical studies of aspects of Modern Irish syntax. I have tried to present a coherent and consistent treatmentof the Irishfacts; abookin which the particularsofIrish syntax- which are in many cases quiteeccentric from an Englishperspective- are shown to inform more general theoreticalissues. I also hope to have offered to the non-Celticist a reasonably complete overview of the major syntactic structures ofIrish, with some indication and analysisofthe more importantdialectdifferences.

The relation between phrase structure and the lexicon has always been an area of prime concern in syntactic theory, but never more so than in the recently developed minimalist framework, where the lexicon is largely reduced to configurational and computational properties of the grammar. Taking this perspective as their point of departure, the authors of this volume address relevant issues, including the mapping between thematic information and phrase structure, the way in which the configurational character of functional categories determines interpretation in a theory of phrase structure, and methodological discussions about core assumptions of phrase structure itself. Some of the essential themes that emerge are that projection and interpretation go hand in hand (a successful projection in an interpretable one), and that, to a large extent, phrase structure itself encodes lexical information and determines interpretation in the thematic domain. This book is intended for theoreticians in syntax, semantics and language acquisition, and in related fields.

This work provides a detailed treatment of the syntax of focusing particles in a cross-linguistic perspective. The derivation of logical forms is shown to be under the control, not only of the ECP and subjacency, but also of directionality of government and the particular word-order parameter that holds in a given language: head-final languages systematically disallow certain derivations or readings that are available in head-initial languages. The reason is that heads that deviate in their selection properties from canonical head-finality project a directionality barrier. Various strategies are explored by which this barrier can be circumvented. Although the theory is developed mainly on the basis of the head position in German, it can be directly used to explain constraints on the scope of Wh-in-situ in Bengali and closely related languages.

Illustrating the diversity and productivity of research within the principles and parameters framework of generative grammar, the papers in this volume address a varied set of issues in the study of comparative grammar, including the theories of binding, case and government, the parametric effects of inflection, the syntactic properties of infinitival constructions, the analysis of expletives and of clitics, and the interpretation of anaphoric properties at the level of Logical Form. The collection employs several different research strategies, ranging from a broad survey of related constructions in a wide range of languages to the close analysis of an unusual construction in a single language and its consequences for the theory of universal grammar. Some of the papers collected here are commentaries on others, or responses to commentaries.

This work is an introduction to the "state of the art" of Chinese linguistics, focusing especially on developments since the 1970s. Chinese is one of the few languages, outside of the languages of the Indo-European family, that have a long tradition of linguistic scholarship of their own. This tradition has continued to date and continues to bring new results, often with interesting (though unnoticed) consequences for linguistic theories developed in the West. The study of modern Chinese is characterized by attempts to understand the nature of Chinese in light of explicit linguistic theories and how the study may in turn help shape the future of mainstream linguistic theory. The ten chapters collected in this volume address a major area in both traditional and current theoretical research, as well as areas that represent newly cultivated frontiers in cognitive science: language diversity, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. This volume can be used both as a textbook for upper-division or graduate introduction to Chinese linguistics, and as a reference handbook for the linguist or general reader who would like to know about the current state of Chinese linguistic research.

The past decade and a half has witnessed a great deal of renewed interest in the study of Chinese linguistics, not only in the traditional areas of philological studies and in theoretically oriented areas of syn­ chronic grammar and language change but also in the cultivation of new frontiers in related areas of the cognitive sciences. There is a significant increase in the number of students studying one area or another of the linguistic structure of Chinese in various linguistic programs in the United States, Europe, Australia and in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. Several new academic departments devoted to the study of linguistics have been established in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the past few years. The increasing research and study activities have also resulted in a number of national and international conferences, including the North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL), which has been held annually in the United States; the International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL), which has had its fourth meeting since it was launched by Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 1990; the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (lACL), created in Singapore in 1992 and now incorporated in Irvine, California, which has held its annual meetings at major institutions in Asia, Europe, and the US.

The study of A-movement is receiving a lot of attention in research under the stimulus of the Minimalist Program. This book provides a principled account of case absorption that gives a precise characterization of the similarities between causative and passive. It further shows that raising and ECM also involve case absorption, demonstrating the central role that case absorption places in the theory of A-movement. "Case Absorption and WH- Agreement" is also a first systematic attempt to put a tight constraint on WH-agreement, surveying a wide range of phenomena discussed in the literature to show that despite the superficial morpho-syntactic multiplicity of its realization, WH-agreement is highly restricted because it arises through the interaction between case theory and A-bar processes. This book targets researchers who are interested in the latest developments in the principles-and-parameters approach, as well as those who want to understand central issues in the theory of A-movement.

This text discusses the phenomenon of Dutch, present in many Germanic languages, that the finite verb is fronted in main clauses but not in embedded clauses. The theoretical framework adopted is the so-called Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995), the latest developmental stage of generative grammar. Taking issue with previous analyses, the author argues that phrase structure in Dutch is uniformly head initial, and that the finite verb moves to different positions in subject initial main clauses and in inversion constructions. The book contains discussion of theoretical issues in connection with the Minimalist Program, such as the relation between syntax and morphology, the nature of syntactic licensing, and the structure of the functional domain. At the same time, it offers a survey of the properties of Dutch syntax, a discussion of previous analyses of Dutch syntax and material from dialects of Dutch and other Germanic languages.