Formal Syntax and Syntactic TheoryLinguistics 5450January 14, 2003Questions1. What is syntax?2. What is a formal model of syntax?3. Why should linguists pursue a formal model of syntax?4. What does formal syntax enable us to explain?5. What kinds of categories can be used in formal syntax?6. What phenomena should a formal model represent?I. Syntax.A. Meaningful word order. Is it something more than that?B. Infinity. What is the difference between RECURSION and ITERATION?II. What is a formal model of syntax?A. Formal models are GENERATIVE. Prior to Chomsky (1957, 1962), linguists wereprimarily concerned with accounting for the data within a given corpus. Chomskyproposed that analysts must expand the enterprise beyond the corpus.• A generative grammar is one which defines the possible syntacticstructures in a language.• Such a grammar seeks to describe competence and the creative capacitywhich is intrinsic to competence.• The difference between competence and performance.When you consider the greatest good, it’s better off to let them do stuff.One of the sleaziest thing I think I did...She became seriously ill as well as her assistant did too.She complains too much that I can’t ignore her.in a promptly manner2• The generative grammar is a model of the competence of the nativespeaker.• We are attempting to model what it is that people act like they know.B. A formal model is based on SYMBOLS and RULES OF COMBINATION.C. Formal models tend assume that LICENSING RELATIONSHIPS ARE LOCAL.I was so upset that I really yelled at them.D. Formal models tend to focus on CONSTITUENTS and HIERARCHICALSTRUCTURE rather than DEPENDENCIES.The history of syntactic investigation is marked by a small number of centraldiscoveries which created the syntactician’s research agenda. One can dividethese discoveries into two groups: the discovery of hierarchical constituentstructure, and the discovery that elements may occupy more than one positionwithin this hierarchy, which the literature calls movement. —David Pesetsky,“OT and Syntax: Movement and Pronunciation in Optimality Theory”• ‘Discontinuous constituency’fi English ‘particle movement’She ate up the pizzaShe ate the pizza upfi Latin preposition phrases and noun phrasesQuanto in pectore hanc rem meo magis how-much:ABL in heart:ABL this:ACC matter:ACC my:ABL morevoluto, tanto mi aegritudo auctiorponder:1SG:PRES:IND:ACT that-much:ablme:dat grief:nom greater:nomest in animo.is:3SG:PRES:ACT:IND in soul:ABL“The more I turn this matter over in my heart, the greater the grief in my soul.”—Plautus,Captivi• Feature passingPeople died of Small Pox for hundreds of years.*A person died of small pox for hundreds of years.• Representation of function in terms of ‘phrases’I like tapioca. In what sense is tapioca a noun phrase?III. Why formalize?3A. To capture generalizations. Formalism is a restatement of the facts at a tighterlevel of generalization. Such a restatement has obvious, commonsensical advantagesover a mere list of the facts (Chomsky’s levels of adequacy):1. Maximum clarity2. Maximum economy3. Maximum generality4. Maximum exposure of correlations between ‘separate facts’5. Fragility: What would it would mean for the theory to make the wrong prediction?B. To describe exactly HOW a sentence means. Fulfilling the terms of Jackendoff’sGRAMMATICAL CONSTRAINT (1983, 1990, 1997).Under the reasonable hypothesis that language serves the purpose oftransmitting information, it would be perverse not to take as a workingassumption that language is a relatively efficient and accurate encodingof the information it conveys. To give up this assumption is to refuse tolook for systematicity in the relationship between syntax andsemantics. A theory’s deviations from efficient encoding must berigorously justified, for what appears to be an irregular relationshipbetween syntax and semantics may turn out merely to be a bad theoryof one or the other. (1983: 14)C. Because sisterhood is powerful.IV. Does formalism e x p l a i n anything?A. Givon points out that a formalism is not an explanation, but a prelude to explanation.Formalism is a methodological commitment, not a theoretical one.B. What do we want to explain?• Why language has the structural properties it does.• Why are languages different when they are different and similar whenthey are similar?• How children learn language as effectively as they do without explicitnegative evidence (the poverty of stimulus problem)?C. Givon argues that the explanation must cast in terms distinct from those employed inthe formalism. In P&P, hardwiring is the response to the learnability question and theontology question. Givon holds that this type of ‘explanation’ is circular. Suppose abiologist says, “The human digestive system is built the way it is because its structure isin the genetic code”. Has the speaker explained anything?D. Innateness as explanation.• Chomsky distinguishes a generative grammar from a theory of grammars.• A theory of grammar aims to capture properties common to grammars.4• These properties are attributed to Universal Grammar: Principles andParameters.• Chomsky holds that UG is a human biological endowment.• Certain features of grammar are said to be part of genetic hardwiring, e.g.,STRUCTURE DEPENDENCY: Is the man who is leaving here?E. The problem of plasticity. Evidence from brain injury causes problems for a linguistictheory which presupposes innate localization of linguistic knowledge. E.g., children withpre- or perinatal brain injury are below controls on language performance but withinnormal limits. Aphasia studies point to differential effects of identical brain lesions onlanguage performance.F. Explanation outside the system. These would include reference to cognitiverepresentations (Talmy) or reference to functional constraints (e.g., the principle ofseparation of role and reference and avoidance of lexical subjects).G. Is learning your first language the same thing as learning its parameters?® Function first! Old forms assume new functions and formulas are gradually brokendown. Feldman (1998) on ‘filler formulas’: nInInI ‘Here she is’; nInInI bagels ‘Here are thebagels’.®