Locality in Minimalist Syntax

Locality in Minimalist Syntax PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226157X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This minimalist study proposes that the computational system of human language must consist of strictly local operations. In this highly original reanalysis of minimalist syntax, Thomas Stroik considers the optimal design properties for human language. Taking as his starting point Chomsky's minimalist assumption that the syntactic component of a language generates representations for sentences that are interpreted at perceptual and conceptual interfaces, Stroik investigates how these representations can be generated most parsimoniously. Countering the prevailing analyses of minimalist syntax, he argues that the computational properties of human language consist only of strictly local Merge operations that lack both look-back and look-forward properties. All grammatical operations reduce to a single sort of locally defined feature-checking operation, and all grammatical properties are the cumulative effects of local grammatical operations. As Stroik demonstrates, reducing syntactic operations to local operations with a single property—merging lexical material into syntactic derivations—not only radically increases the computational efficiency of the syntactic component, but it also optimally simplifies the design of the computational system. Locality in Minimalist Syntax explains a range of syntactic phenomena that have long resisted previous generative theories, including that-trace effects, superiority effects, and the interpretations available for multiple-wh constructions. It also introduces the Survive Principle, an important new concept for syntactic analysis, and provides something considered impossible in minimalist syntax: a locality account of displacement phenomena.

Locality in Minimalist Syntax

Locality in Minimalist Syntax PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226157X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
This minimalist study proposes that the computational system of human language must consist of strictly local operations. In this highly original reanalysis of minimalist syntax, Thomas Stroik considers the optimal design properties for human language. Taking as his starting point Chomsky's minimalist assumption that the syntactic component of a language generates representations for sentences that are interpreted at perceptual and conceptual interfaces, Stroik investigates how these representations can be generated most parsimoniously. Countering the prevailing analyses of minimalist syntax, he argues that the computational properties of human language consist only of strictly local Merge operations that lack both look-back and look-forward properties. All grammatical operations reduce to a single sort of locally defined feature-checking operation, and all grammatical properties are the cumulative effects of local grammatical operations. As Stroik demonstrates, reducing syntactic operations to local operations with a single property—merging lexical material into syntactic derivations—not only radically increases the computational efficiency of the syntactic component, but it also optimally simplifies the design of the computational system. Locality in Minimalist Syntax explains a range of syntactic phenomena that have long resisted previous generative theories, including that-trace effects, superiority effects, and the interpretations available for multiple-wh constructions. It also introduces the Survive Principle, an important new concept for syntactic analysis, and provides something considered impossible in minimalist syntax: a locality account of displacement phenomena.

Understanding Minimalist Syntax

Understanding Minimalist Syntax PDF Author: Cedric Boeckx
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470765801
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Understanding Minimalist Syntax introduces the logic of the Minimalist Program by analyzing well-known descriptive generalizations about long-distance dependencies. An introduction to the logic of the minimalist program - arguably the most important branch of syntax Proposes a new theory of how long-distance dependencies are formed, with implications for theories of locality, and the minimalist program as a whole Introduces the logic of the minimalist program by analyzing well-known descriptive generalizations about long-distance dependencies, and asks why they should be true of natural languages Rich in empirical coverage, which will be welcomed by experts in the field, yet accessible enough for students looking for an introduction to the minimalist program.

Prolific Domains

Prolific Domains PDF Author: Kleanthes K. Grohmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227898
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Standard conceptions of Locality aim to establish that a dependency between two positions may not span too long a distance. This book explores the opposite conception, Anti-Locality: Don't move too close. The model of clause structure, syntactic computation, and locality concerns Kleanthes Grohmann develops makes crucial use of derivational sub-domains, Prolific Domains, each encapsulating particular context information (thematic, agreement, discourse). The Anti-Locality Hypothesis is the attempt to exclude anti-local movement from the grammar by banning movement within a Prolific Domain, a Bare Output Condition. The flexible application of the operation Spell Out, coupled with an innovative view on grammatical formatives, leads to a natural caveat: Copy Spell Out. Grohmann explores a theory of Anti-Locality relevant to all three Prolific Domains in the clausal layer as well as the nominal layer, and offers a unified account of Standard and Anti-Locality regarding clause-internal movement and operations across clause boundaries, revisiting successive cyclicity.

Locality in Minimalist Syntax

Locality in Minimalist Syntax PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: Linguistic Inquiry Monographs
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Providing a reanalysis of minimalist syntax, Thomas Stroik considers the optimal design properties for human language.

Agree to Agree

Agree to Agree PDF Author: Peter W. Smith
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961102147
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Agreement is a pervasive phenomenon across natural languages. Depending on one’s definition of what constitutes agreement, it is either found in virtually every natural language that we know of, or it is at least found in a great many. Either way, it seems to be a core part of the system that underpins our syntactic knowledge. Since the introduction of the operation of Agree in Chomsky (2000), agreement phenomena and the mechanism that underlies agreement have garnered a lot of attention in the Minimalist literature and have received different theoretical treatments at different stages. Since then, many different phenomena involving dependencies between elements in syntax, including movement or not, have been accounted for using Agree. The mechanism of Agree thus provides a powerful tool to model dependencies between syntactic elements far beyond φ-feature agreement. The articles collected in this volume further explore these topics and contribute to the ongoing debates surrounding agreement. The authors gathered in this book are internationally reknown experts in the field of Agreement.

The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax

The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax PDF Author: Marcel den Dikken
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107354587
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1412

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Book Description
Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

Long-distance Dependencies

Long-distance Dependencies PDF Author: Mihoko Zushi
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780815340485
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism PDF Author: Cedric Boeckx
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199549362
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Book Description
This Handbook provides a complete assessment of the current achievements and challenges of the Minimalist Program. Leading researchers explore the origins of the program, the course of its research, and its connections with other disciplines, such as developmental biology, cognitive science, computational science, and philosophy of mind.

Interfaces + Recursion = Language?

Interfaces + Recursion = Language? PDF Author: Uli Sauerland
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110207559
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Human language is a phenomenon of immense richness: It provides finely nuanced means of expression that underlie the formation of culture and society; it is subject to subtle, unexpected constraints like syntactic islands and cross-over phenomena; different mutually-unintelligeable individual languages are numerous; and the descriptions of individual languages occupy thousands of pages. Recent work in linguistics, however, has tried to argue that despite all appearances to the contrary, the human biological capacity for language may be reducible to a small inventory of core cognitive competencies. The most radical version of this view has emerged from the Minimalist Program: The claim that language consists of only the ability to generate recursive structures by a computational mechanism. On this view, all other properties of language must result from the interaction at the interfaces of that mechanism and other mental systems not exclusively devoted to language. Since language could then be described as the simplest recursive system satisfying the requirements of the interfaces, one can speak of the Minimalist Equation: Interfaces + Recursion = Language. The question whether all the richness of language can be reduced to that minimalist equation has already inspired several fruitful lines of research that led to important new results. While a full assessment of the minimalist equation will require evidence from many different areas of inquiry, this volume focuses especially on the perspective of syntax and semantics. Within the minimalist architecture, this places our concern with the core computational mechanism and the (LF-)interface where recursive structures are fed to interpretation. Specific questions that the papers address are: What kind of recursive structures can the core generator form? How can we determine what the simplest recursive system is? How can properties of language that used to be ascribed to the recursive generator be reduced to interface properties? What effects do syntactic operations have on semantic interpretation? To what extent do models of semantic interpretation support the LF-interface conditions postulated by minimalist syntax?

Core Syntax

Core Syntax PDF Author: David Adger
Publisher: Oxford University
ISBN: 9780199243709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
This fast-track introduction to syntax assumes no prior knowledge of linguistic theory. It is designed for specialist undergraduates and for those coming to linguistics for the first time as graduates.