Problems of projection

The paper investigates a number of asymmetries in the behavior of subjects in Germanic, Celtic/Arabic, Romance, and Greek. The languages under investigation divide into two main groups with respect to a cluster of properties, including the availability of pro-drop with referential subjects, the possibility of VSO/VOS orders, the A/A′ status of subjects in SVO orders, the presence/absence of Definiteness Restriction (DR)-effects in unaccusative constructions, the existence of verb-raising independently of V-2, and others. We argue that the key factor in this split is a parametrization in the way the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) is checked: move/merge XP vs. move/merge X0. The first option is taken in Germanic, the second in Celtic, Greek, and Romance. According to our proposal, the EPP relates to checking of a nominal feature of AGR (cf. Chomsky 1995), and move/merge X0 languages satisfy the EPP via V-raising, as their verbal agreement morphology includes the requisite nominal feature (cf. Taraldsen 1978). Moreover, we demonstrate that the further differences that exist between Celtic/Arabic on the one hand and Romance/Greek on the other are related to the parametric availability of Spec,TP for subjects (cf. Jonas and Bobaljik 1993, Bobaljik and Jonas 1996). In Celtic and Arabic, Spec,TP for subjects is licensed, resulting in VSO orders with VP external subjects. In Greek and Romance, Spec,TP is not licensed, resulting in 'subject inverted' orders with VP internal subjects. In other words, we show that within the class of move/merge X0 languages, a further partition emerges which is due to the same parameter dividing Germanic languages into two major classes. We demonstrate that combining the proposed EPP/AGR parameter with the Spec,TP parameter gives four language-types with distinct properties.

Parametrizing Agr: Word Order, V-Movement and Epp-Checking

The handbook of pragmatics , The handbook of pragmatics , کتابخانه دیجیتال جندی شاپور اهواز

Handbook of Pragmatics

It is widely assumed that human learning and the structure of human languages are intimately related. This relationship is frequently suggested to derive from a language-specific biological endowment, which encodes universal, but communicatively arbitrary, principles of language structure (a Universal Grammar or UG). How might such a UG have evolved? We argue that UG could not have arisen either by biological adaptation or non-adaptationist genetic processes, resulting in a logical problem of language evolution. Specifically, as the processes of language change are much more rapid than processes of genetic change, language constitutes a "moving target" both over time and across different human populations, and, hence, cannot provide a stable environment to which language genes could have adapted. We conclude that a biologically determined UG is not evolutionarily viable. Instead, the original motivation for UG - the mesh between learners and languages - arises because language has been shaped to fit the human brain, rather than vice versa. Following Darwin, we view language itself as a complex and interdependent "organism," which evolves under selectional pressures from human learning and processing mechanisms. That is, languages themselves are shaped by severe selectional pressure from each generation of language users and learners. This suggests that apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may result from general learning and processing biases deriving from the structure of thought processes, perceptuo-motor factors, cognitive limitations, and pragmatics.

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Language as shaped by the brain

The problem that has virtually defined the serious study of language since its ancient origins, if only implicitly, is to identify the specific nature of this distinctive human possession. Within the “biolinguistic perspective” that began to take shape fifty years ago, the concern is transmuted into the effort to determine the genetic endowment of the faculty of language FL, understood to be a “cognitive organ,” in this case virtually shared among humans and in crucial respects unique to them, hence a kind of species property. So construed, language is I-language, a state of FL, and universal grammar (UG) is reinterpreted as the theory of the initial state of FL. The term “biolinguistics” itself was coined in 1974 by Massimo Piattelli-Palmerini as the topic for an international conference he organized for the Royaumont Institute in Paris and MIT, bringing together evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, linguists, and others concerned with language and biology, one of many such initiatives, before and since, which sought to explore the extent to which apparent principles of language are unique to this cognitive system, one of “the basic questions to be asked from the biological point of view,” as discussed there, and crucial for the study of development of language in the individual and its evolution in the species.1 Within the biolinguistic framework, methodological considerations of simplicity, elegance, etc., can often be reframed as empirical theses concerning organic systems generally. For example, Morris Halle’s classical argument against postulating a linguistic level of structuralist phonemics was that it required unmotivated redundancy of rules, taken to be a violation of natural methodological assumptions. Similarly conclusions about ordering and cyclicity of phonological and syntactic rule systems from the 1950s were justified on the methodological grounds that they reduce descriptive complexity and eliminate stipulations. In such cases, the issues can be recast as metaphysical rather than epistemological: Is that how the world works? The issues can then be subjected to comparative analysis and related to principles of biology more generally, and perhaps even more fundamental principles

/pdf/approaching-ug-from-below-2s3kog4oyg.pdf

Approaching UG from Below

This article explains the conditions on the binding of pronouns, simplex anaphors, and complex anaphors, distinguishing the roles of the computational system, interpretive procedures, and discourse storage. It argues for a general principle of economy counting interpretive steps. Locality conditions on binding are shown to follow from this economy principle and independent principles of (minimalist) syntax, providing the means to encode certain dependencies, most economically, within the computational system. It shows that the role of complex anaphors in licensing reflexivization follows from an interpretive condition holding at the conceptual-intentional (C-I)interface.

Primitives of Binding

"The Representation of (In)definiteness" collects the most important current research, reflecting a wide range of approaches, on a central theoretical issue in linguistics: characterizing the distinction between definite and indefinite expressions. The authors of these 11 original essays, which draw on current work in theoretical syntax and semantics, were charged by the editors to take more than usual heed of alternative analyses offered by other theories, thereby promoting cross-fertilization of syntactic and semantic ideas, concepts, and argumentation. The project as a whole is grounded in the belief that explicit comparison of seemingly incompatible approaches is essential to improve our understanding of the nature and structure of natural language. Eric J. Reuland and Alice ter Meulen are Professors of Linguistics at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the University of Washington respectively. "The Representation of (In)definiteness" is fourteenth in the series Current Studies in Linguistics, edited by Samuel Jay Keyser.

The representation of (in)definiteness

A study on anaphoric dependencies that derives the conditions on anaphora in natural language from the design properties of the language system. Pronouns and anaphors (including reflexives such as himself and herself) may or must depend on antecedents for their interpretation. These dependencies are subject to conditions that prima facie show substantial crosslinguistic variation. In this monograph, Eric Reuland presents a theory of how these anaphoric dependencies are represented in natural language in a way that does justice to the the variation one finds across languages. He explains the conditions on these dependencies in terms of elementary properties of the computational system of natural language. He shows that the encoding of anaphoric dependencies makes use of components of the language system that all reflect different cognitive capacities; thus the empirical research he reports on offers insights into the design of the language system. Reuland's account reduces the conditions on binding to independent properties of the grammar, none of which is specific to binding. He offers a principled account of the roles of the lexicon, syntax, semantics, and the discourse component in the encoding of anaphoric dependencies; a window into the overall organization of the grammar and the roles of linguistic and extralinguistic factors; a new typology of anaphoric expressions; a view of crosslinguistic variation (examining facts in a range of languages, from English, Dutch, Frisian, German, and Scandinavian languages to Fijian, Georgian, and Malayalam) that shows unity in diversity.

Anaphora and Language Design

Introduction It has been known for quite some time that the binding theory developed in Chomsky (1981) and subsequent work does not account for the full range of binding facts (cf. Maling (1982), Giorgi (1984), Chomsky (1986a), Everaert (1986a), and others): The scope of conditions A and B is limited to binding within the domain of the first accessible subject, the local domain . Therefore, non-clausebounded reflexives, which are commonly referred to as long-distance (LD-) anaphors in languages as diverse as Icelandic, Finnish, Polish, Latin, Chinese, Japanese, etc., cannot be captured (see the various contributions in this volume for discussion and references). Even within the domain to which conditions A and B apply, language does not fully live up to their predictions. In a number of environments pronouns can be found where condition B excludes them. Well-known examples are English sentences of the type John saw the snake near him , reflexive verbs in Dutch and French which allow locally bound first and second person pronouns in object position, and Frisian, where this latitude also obtains with third person object pronouns (see Everaert (chapter 4), and Bouchard (1984)). For years, a unified theory of the various anaphors across languages seemed somewhat unfeasible, in view of the massive differences reported concerning their distribution, particularly in the case of LD-anaphors. A major breakthrough, however, has been the discovery that a distinction is needed between logophoric processes and structural binding relations.

Long-distance anaphora: Anaphors and logophors: an argument structure perspective

1. Long distance anaphora: an overview Eric Reuland and Jan Koster 2. Containment and connectedness anaphors Lars Hellan 3. Long distance reflexives and the typology of NPs Hoskulder Thrainsson 4. Contextual determination of the anaphor/pronominal distinction Martin Eaveraert 5. On the interaction between antecedent government and binding: the case of long distance reflexivization Pierre Pica 6. Binding in Polish Ewa Reinders-Machowska 7. Anaphors in binary trees: an analysis of Czech reflexives Jindrick Toman 8. Latin long distance anaphora Elena Benedicto 9. Prepositions, binding and theta-marking Allessandra Giorgi 10. Locality, parameters and some issues in Italian syntax Rita Manzini 11. Long distance binding in Finnish Marlies Van Steenbergen 12. The primacy condition on anaphors and pronominal variable binding E. Kiss Katalin 13. On the local nature of the long distance reflexive in Chinese C. T. James Huang and C. C. Jane Tang 14. Anaphors and logophors: an argument structure perspective Tanya Reinhart and Eric Reuland.

Eric Reuland

Papers

Primitives of Binding

The representation of (in)definiteness

Anaphora and Language Design

Long-distance anaphora: Anaphors and logophors: an argument structure perspective

Long-distance anaphora