Regimes of derivation in syntax and morphology

191 Pages·2011·1.795 MB·English

by  Edwin Williams

Regimes of Derivation in
Syntax and Morphology
Routledge Leading Linguists
EDITED BY CARLOS P. OTERO, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
1. Essays on Syntax and Semantics 11. Logical Form and Linguistic
James Higginbotham Theory
Robert May
2. Partitions and Atoms of
Clause Structure 12. Generative Grammar
Subjects, Agreement, Case and Clitics Theory and its History
Dominique Sportiche Robert Freidin
3. The Syntax of Specifi ers and Heads 13. Theoretical Comparative Syntax
Collected Essays of Hilda J. Koopman Studies in Macroparameters
Hilda J. Koopman Naoki Fukui
4. Confi gurations of Sentential 14. A Unifi cation of Morphology
Complementation and Syntax
Perspectives from Romance Languages Investigations into Romance and
Johan Rooryck Albanian Dialects
M. Rita Manzini and
5. Essays in Syntactic Theory Leonardo M. Savoia
Samuel David Epstein
15. Aspects of the Syntax of
6. On Syntax and Semantics Agreement
Richard K. Larson Cedric Boeckx
7. Comparative Syntax and 16. Structures and Strategies
Language Acquisition Adriana Belletti
Luigi Rizzi
17. Between Syntax and Semantics
8. Minimalist Investigations in C.- T. James Huang
Linguistic Theory
Howard Lasnik 18. Regimes of Derivation in Syntax
and Morphology
9. Derivations Edwin Williams
Exploring the Dynamics of Syntax
Juan Uriagereka
10. Towards an Elegant Syntax
Michael Brody
Regimes of Derivation in
Syntax and Morphology
Edwin Williams

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, Edwin.
Regimes of derivation in syntax and morphology / by Edwin Williams.
p. cm. — (Routledge leading linguists; 18)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general—Syntax. 2. Grammar, Comparative and
general—Morphology. 3. Generative grammar. I. Title.
P291.W55 2011
415—dc22
2010034372
ISBN 0-203-83079-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-88723-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-83079-6 (ebk)
Contents
Introduction 1
PART I
Morphology and Derivation
1 Dumping Lexicalism 13
2 Derivational Prefi xes Are Projective, Not Realizational 42
3 Merge and Mirrors 67
PART II
Functional Structure and Derivation
4 Subjects of Different Heights 113
5 There Is No Alternative to Cartography 132

6 Scope and Verb Meanings 144
7 Islands Regained 166
Notes 175
References 179
Index 183

Introduction
There is a redundancy in theory that I think Minimalists have over-
looked. In syntactic derivation a structure is built up which is a perfect
mirror of the derivation itself: every Merge is recorded in that structure,
and every Move. It is only after the syntactic derivation that rules of
Morphosyntax (and possibly stylistic rules) muddy the perfect mirror of
derivation in structure. This structure should be eliminated on Minimal-
ist grounds. But given that it serves as the input to Morphosyntax and
also to semantics (two different interfaces, if you like) the question of its
existence seems off the table.
But there is a way. Semantics can directly interpret the derivation itself,
rather than the structure it builds (Chapter 6). And morphosyntax can be
carried on in tight tandem with, though modularly separate from, the syn-
tactic derivation—Morphosyntax is the spell-out instructions for the Merge
operation and consists of the single parameterized rule called COMBINE
(Chapter 3). Under that arrangement the “tree” representing the syntactic
structure of a sentence is eliminated as an object in the theory, and with
it goes the temptation to manipulate that tree for various descriptive pur-
poses. Early Minimalist thinking eliminated Deep Structure and Surface
Structure; here we entertain eliminating any syntactic structure that is not
morphosyntactically interpreted structure.
In the following seven chapters I will expose an integrated theory of

syntax and morphosyntax aimed at that goal. It differs from standard
accounts in very particular ways and offers very particular advantages.
First, it differs in how it portions out things between syntax and morpho-
syntax, and so requires a broad exposition of the two components and
their relation. For example, Affi x Hopping and Verb Raising turn out to
be both morphosyntactic—they are parametrically different instances
of COMBINE, the spell-out instructions of Merge (Chapter 3). Another
difference is in how Functional Structure (F-structure) is related to deri-
vation: F-structure has a more fundamental role than template of clause
structure; it is the “clock” that “times” events in the workspace (Chapter
5). Derivational timing brings many things into the same room. Since
all phrases are derived in the same workspace, they all in effect have the
2 Regimes of Derivation in Syntax and Morphology
same F-structure, despite appearances. Even classic islands fall under the
purview of clocked derivations (Chapter 7).
F-structure can be mistaken for the template of the clause, because it
times the sequence of (merges) that build up the clause; if these merges
are simple adjunctions, and there is no morphosyntax to mess things up,
the structure will refl ect the clock. But making the abstraction from tem-
plate to clock has powerful consequences. For one thing, every phrase
type, not just clauses, is built up to be beat of the same clock. In the
more traditional framework, this means that every phrase has the same
F-structure, a radical generalization for which there are unfortunately
only modest hints at the moment; these hints are explored in Chapters
3 and 6.
The theory is a development of the conception of derivation initiated
in Williams (2003). In the chapters of the present book that conception is
pushed into new explanatory postures, is supplemented with a substantive
theory of morphosyntax (Chapter 3), and is partially formalized (Chapter
6, Appendix).
The advantages of the resulting system are as follows:
1. A tame morphosyntax, with no recourse to general rule-rewriting
systems;
2. An architectural derivation of islands and other localities, and sub-
stantive predictions about reconstructive behavior of movements,
including remnant movements and generalized improper movement;
3. Substantive predictions about the difference in semantic and syntactic
behavior of DPs, clauses, and PPs;
4. A principled account of the Word/Phrase distinction in the “Deriva-
tional/Infl ectional” dimension.
These advantages can be obtained by the following theoretical commitments:
1. Interpreting F-structure not directly as the “spine” of the clause, but
rather as the timing metric of the workspace responsible for the sequenc-

ing of derivational events (hence the term “clocked derivations”);
2. Positing distinct embedding schemes for clauses and DPs, called “Level
Embedding” and “Co-generation,” respectively, in Williams (2003);
3. Developing a parameterized non-ruled-based morphosyntax which
works in tandem with syntactic derivation but is modularly separated
from it.
The program suggested by the advantages might be misguided, but it
is encouraging that it turns out that that program highly determines the
commitments. However, the commitments entail reconfi guring the gram-
matical system on a broad scale, and so a book about it seems appropri-
ate. The necessity of a modular separation of word syntax from phrase
Introduction 3
syntax is the subject of the fi rst chapter, with Distributed Morphology
(DM) as a foil. Several defects of DM are highlighted—its failure to cap-
ture scope properties of affi xes, its incoherent treatment of idioms, and
its failure to capitalize on the properties of different levels of organiza-
tion—and it is suggested that these all in fact fl ow from the rejection
of Lexicalism.
The second chapter, “Derivational Prefi xes Are Projective, Not Real-
izational,” makes the same case by comparing the different behavior of
similar affi xes across languages; in particular, the Greek prefi x ksana-
and the English prefi x re- behave in quite different ways that can only
be made sense of in a modular theory, and in fact in a theory in which
derivational morphology is “projective.” A “projective” system is one in
which the surface morphemes are combined by regular rule to give the
complex forms and their properties. “Projective” has come to be con-
trasted with “realizational,” where a realizational morphology is one in
which the surface morphemes are assigned to abstract (i.e., not phono-
logically realized) structures by rule. This chapter resurrects the classic
distinction between derivational morphology and infl ectional morphol-
ogy, infl ectional morphology being that morphology that arises by virtue
of phrasal syntactic derivation. This distinction is a troublesome one,
but I think a necessary one. Both DM (as in represented in, for example,
the works cited in Chapter 1) and “extreme” lexicalism (as in the work
of Peter Ackema and others) deny the distinction and thereby evade the
need to defi ne it. There are many obstacles to a semantic defi nition of the
distinction, and this chapter provides one more: two essentially synony-
mous prefi xes, English re- and Greek ksana-, belong to different systems
and have different properties as a result. Importantly, it turns out that
it is not simply a matter of one being “higher” in F-structure than the
other; rather, they belong to different systems altogether: re- needs a
“telic word” (repaint, *relaugh), not a telic phrase (*remade Bill sad),
and that distinction can only be the word/phrase distinction. As the
chapter makes clear, telicity is a concept relevant at every level of struc-
ture (V, VP, clause, word, stem) and so cannot by itself be used to draw

the difference between the two prefi xes.
The third chapter is an essay in developing the notion of infl ectional
morphology that will be adequate to the conception of syntactic deriva-
tion that is the subject of Part II of the book. It is also the chapter that
unifi es the features of the model: given lexical modularity, and given the
sort of derivation proposed in the second chapter, how is the surface order
of words and morphemes achieved? If syntactic structure is eliminated,
then the only way to perform morphosyntax is to spell out each Merge
operation as it happens. The mechanism which accomplishes this, called
COMBINE, is parameterized in appropriate ways to give rise to the dif-
ferent styles of organization that are found across languages. It captures
mirror relations between morphology and syntax (and between syntax and