1Authors’ note: This document is an uncorrected prepublication version of the manuscript of Simpler Syntax, by Peter W. Culicover and Ray Jackendoff (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005). The actual published book will have a different organization, in that the longer chapters are broken into two chapters. Please do not cite this version, but the published version. Chapter One Why Simpler Syntax? 1.1. Different notions of simplicity Within the tradition of generative grammar, the most prominent focus of linguistic research has been the syntactic component, the part of language concerned with the grammatical organization of words and phrases. The present study will develop and defend a view of the syntactic component that is on one hand thoroughly within the generative tradition, but that is on the other hand markedly at odds with views of syntax that have developed in mainstream generative grammar (MGG).1 Our approach concurs in many respects with many alternative theories of generative syntax, most notably Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag 1987, 1994), Lexical-Functional Grammar (Bresnan 1982a, 2001), and Construction Grammar (Fillmore 1988; Fillmore and Kay 1993; Zwicky 1994; Goldberg 1995, 2005); it also shares commonalities with others such as Autolexical Syntax (Sadock 1991, 2003) and Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). We will refer to this collection on occasion as “the alternative generative theories”. The differences between our approach and the mainstream can be divided roughly into two major aspects, which it is important to distinguish. The first aspect is technological: what formal devices does the theory adopt for its description of language? The second, deeper and more difficult to characterize precisely, is the theory’s vision of what language is “like”. Insofar as possible, we will attempt to sort out what in our approach to syntax is technological and what is conceptual, and in which of these respects we concur with and differ from both MGG and the alternative theories. There is of course interplay between technology and conceptualization. On one hand, a formal theory is chosen in part to reflect one’s vision of the phenomena. On the other hand, the scientific success of a formal theory is measured in part by its ability to generalize or “scale up” to an ever broader range of data. Although the same initial vision may be served equally by two or more alternative technologies (they are superficially “notational variants”), different choices of formal apparatus often lend themselves to different potential extensions. In turn, some extensions may lead to fundamental changes in one’s vision of the phenomena, including how the theory integrates with neighboring fields, one important criterion for theoretical success. Another important criterion for theoretical success, of course, is Occam’s Razor: “Do not multiply (theoretical) entities beyond necessity.” The problem in describing language is: Which entities should not be multiplied? What counts as2simple? We can see four criteria, which, though they often overlap, turn out to lead in different directions: (1) a. Minimize the distinct components of grammar. b. Minimize the class of possible grammars. c. Minimize the distinct principles of grammar. d. Minimize the amount of structure generated by the grammar. Position (1a) is advocated in Paul Postal’s paper “The Best Theory” (1972). He argues that Generative Semantics, which derives surface structure directly from semantic structure by transformations interspersed with lexical insertion, is inherently superior to the (Extended) Standard Theory (Chomsky 1972b, Jackendoff 1972), which has separate components for generating surface structure from deep structure, for relating deep structure to some aspects of semantics, and for relating surface structure to other aspects of semantics. Chomsky’s (1972b) reply is that the goal should really be to minimize the class of possible grammars (1b), and a better way to achieve this goal is to have more components, each of limited scope. He justifies this goal on grounds of learnability, an issue to which we will return shortly. One way to achieve a more limited class of possible grammars is to have fewer principles of grammar that languages can choose from. This goal (1c) is taken as primary in Principles and Parameters Theory (Chomsky 1981), part of whose vision is that crosslinguistic syntactic variation is tightly constrained. In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993/1995) this goal is carried further, attempting to minimize not only the principles responsible for crosslinguistic variation but the entire set of principles necessary to characterize syntactic structure. In part, these goals are just good science: one always tries to characterize natural phenomena in maximally general and explanatory terms. But in recent years, the agenda has gone further, attempting to characterize language as in some sense a “perfect” system for relating sound and meaning, with a “Galilean” vision of an extremely simple Grand Unified Theory that accounts for all relevant phenomena. Although the principles that characterize syntactic structure in mainstream research are relatively general, the actual syntactic structures ascribed to sentences have turned out to be not at all simple. The derivation of sentences is regarded as justifiably complex and abstract, and even surface structures are full of complexity that does not show in the phonological output. Chapter 2 will show how this position has developed over the fifty-year history of MGG. The present work explores a different priority: Simple Syntax Hypothesis (SSH): The most explanatory syntactic theory is one that imputes the minimum structure necessary to mediate between phonology and meaning. The simplification of structure comes with a price: the characterization of syntactic3structure requires a multitude of principles, of varying degrees of regularity. This is a radical break from the spirit of mainstream generative grammar. Our overall vision of language conforms not to the majestic Galilean perspective but rather to a view, attributed to François Jacob, of biology as a “tinkerer.” The language faculty, developed over evolutionary time, provides human communities with a “toolkit” of possibilities for cobbling together languages over