Generalized transformations and beyond : reflections on minimalist syntax

220 Pages·2002·11.702 MB·English

by  Gärtner, Hans-Martin

Hans-Martin Gärtner
Generalized Transformations
and Beyond
studia grammatica
Herausgegeben von Manfred Bierwisch
unter Mitwirkung von
Hubert Haider, Stuttgart
Paul Kiparsky, Stanford
Angelika Kratzer, Amherst
Jürgen Kunze, Berlin
David Pesetsky, Cambridge (Massachusetts)
Dieter Wunderlich, Düsseldorf
studia grammatica 46
Generalized
Transformations
and Beyond
Reflections on Minimalist Syntax
Akademie Verlag
D 30
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Gärtner, Hans-Martin :
Generalized transformations and beyond : reflections on
minimalist syntax / Hans-Martin Gärtner. -
Berlin : Akad. Verl., 2002
(Studia grammatica ; 46)
Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 1997
ISBN 3-05-003246-4
ISSN 0081-6469
© Akademie Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2002
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Contents
1 Introduction 9
1.1 Conceptual Background 13
2MinimalistSyntax 19
2.1 Goals of Linguistic Theory 20
2.2 Interfaces and Well-Formedness 23
2.3 Structure and Levels 28
2.4 D-Structure, Checking, and the Theta Criterion 36
2.4.1 Idioms (An Excursus) 43
2.5 Minimalist Operations 1 45
2.5.1 Project-a, Move-a, and Generalized Transformation 46
2.5.2 Constraints on Transformations: Cyclicity 51
2.6 Minimalist Operations II 56
2.6.1 Lexical Items, Numerations, and Inclusiveness 56
2.6.2 Select, Merge, and Move 60
2.6.3 Labels, Projections, Categories, and Adjunction 69
2.6.4 Intermediate Projections and Visibility 78
2.7 Chains and the Power of Copying 84
2.7.1 Identity, Uniformity, and Legitimate LF Objects 85
2.7.2 Locality, Countercyclicity, and Checking Resources 95
2.7.3 Restraining the Power of Copying 99
2.7.4 Feature Movement, Satisfy, and Agree (An Excursus) 101
2.8 (Restricted) Economy 105
2.9 Summary 110
3 The Syntax of Multiconstituency and Multidominance 117
3.1 Narrow Syntax 118
3.2 Varieties of Multiconstituency and Multidominance 119
3.2.1 Structure Sharing (An Excursus) 137
3.3 DoIC or DoED? 145
3.3.1 DoIC 146
3.3.2 Extensionality and Graphs as "Pictures" of Sets 161
3.3.3 DoED 166
3.4 Some Elaborations of MC/MD-Syntax 171
3.4.1 C-Command 172
3.4.2 X°-Movement 177
3.4.3 Linear Precedence 182
3.5 Some Objections to MC/MD-Syntax 184
3.6 Summary 194
4 Conclusion 201
References 205
Index 215
Preface
The following study is a revised version of my dissertion. I would like to express my
thanks, first of all, to my supervisors, Günther Grewendorf and Manfred Bierwisch, for
support and patience as well as the inspiring intellectual climate they have been able to
create and foster at Gräfstrasse and Jägerstrasse, respectively. Thanks also to the
remaining people on my thesis committee, Helen Leuninger, Eckhard Lobsien, and
Marlies Hellinger.
Next, I would like to especially thank Marcus Kracht for his unfailing readiness to
share his enormous knowledge and enthusiasm. Major thanks goes to John Frampton,
whose input at an early stage put me on my track. Next, Reinhard Blutner, Anatoli
Strigin, and Chris Wilder deserve my gratitude for providing such broad and fascinating
perspectives on linguistics as well as being available for help with tricky questions.
Thanks also to the wider groups of linguists I had the pleasure to interact with and
learn from. Damir Cavar, Kathrin Cooper, Christine Erb, Michael Gamon, Katharina
Hartmann, Thomas Köhn, Young-Mee Park, Joachim Säbel, Stephan Schmidt, Ruth
Seibert, and Jochen Zeller in Frankfurt. Artemis Alexiadou, Kai-Uwe Alter, Assinja
Demjjanow, Johannes Dölling, Gerhard Jäger, Ursula Kleinhenz, Paul Law, Annette
Lessmöllmann, Christine Maassen, André Meinunger, Renate Musan, Chris Piñón,
Michal Starke, and Ilse Zimmermann in Berlin. Joanna Blaszczak, Gisbert Fanselow,
Susann Fischer, Thomas Hanneforth, Shin-Sook Kim, Jens Michaelis, Matthias
Schlesewsky, Peter Staudacher, and Christian Wartena in Potsdam.
Further thanks goes to the wider community of linguists, GGS attendants, and guests
at the ASG-Berlin, in particular, Josef Bayer, Daniel Biiring, Hubert Haider, Paul
Kiparsky, Gereon Müller, Jairo Nunes, Christer Platzack, Wolfgang Sternefeld, and
Sten Vikner.
Very special thanks for linguistic company and friendship over the years to Markus
Steinbach and Ralf Vogel.
I'm greatly indebted to the Max-Planck Gesellschaft zur Förderung der
Wissenschaften, which supported my work for over three years with utmost generosity.
Also to the Department of Linguistics at Stanford for hosting me during the last stages
of finishing this book. Part of these materials have been presented at the GGS-Meeting
in Salzburg 1998, and WCCFL 18 in Tucson 1999. Thanks to the audiences for
comments and suggestions.
I dedicate this book to my parents.

1 Introduction
At most mere minimum. Meremost minimum.
(Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho)
Suppose you get up one morning and decide to write a dissertation. You sharpen a set of
pencils and arrange them neatly next to a pile of radically blank sheets of paper. As you
take a sip from your cup of tea, there is a knocking on the door, and before you have a
chance of pretending that you want to be disturbed, somebody rushes in and asks you:
Ql: How "perfect" is language?
"Not very!" you answer after some deliberation. "Otherwise writing a dissertation
wouldn't be such a demanding task, not to speak of reading one."
Now, Ql is the key question raised by Chomsky (1995a, p.9) in defining the
"minimalist program." And that is what this dissertation is meant to contribute to. Of
course, "language" has to be taken in the technical sense of "I-language," or
"competence," established in generative linguistics. The point of Ql, then, is to
hypothetically assume that "I-language" were the minimal device capable of relating
sound and meaning, the task "language" is taken to haVe to fulfill by "virtual conceptual
necessity." And, the follow-up claim to this is that such a hypothetical assumption has
major repercussions for syntactic frameworks like "Government-Binding Theory" (GB)
(cf. Chomsky 1981). In particular, the phrase structural and transformational component
of GB have to be unified in roughly the following way.
Starting from a pool of lexical items, linguistic expressions are built by two
operations, "binary-" and "singulary transformations." The former, called "generalized
transformations" in earlier frameworks (cf. Chomsky 1975/1955') and "Merge" in
current minimalist theory, applies to two objects and combines them into a larger
whole. This is illustrated in (1).
(1) BT«x,p)
a P (a,P)
A singulary transformation, called "Move" in minimalist theory, applies to a single
complex structure a, locates a substructure P inside a, lifts p out of a, combines it with
a into a larger whole, and leaves a recording "trace" or "copy" of P in the original
position of p. This is sketched in (2).
10 Introduction
(2) ST((„p))
(ap) -> ( Pi (a (COPY P) ) )
The challenge for minimalism is to rebuild syntactic theory around these two
procedures with minimal recourse to auxiliary technical devices. The way Chomsky
(1995a) goes about meeting this challenge will be the core issue of the first, "reflective"
part of this study (= section 2). The main thrust of this section is two-fold.
First, the "bottom-up" perspective on Merge and Move unveils a property they share,
potentially leading to further unification. In graph-theoretic terms, this property consists
in the constant addition of a new "root node." This is brought out by the transitions in
(3) and (4), corresponding to Merge and Move, respectively.
(3) a b.
a
(4) a. a b.
a
(COPY P)
Picking up terminology from earlier frameworks, this property can be called "strictest
cyclicity." In negative form it figures in one of the main hypotheses of this study,
namely, H3 (cf. sections 2.5.2, 2.7.2).
Hypothesis 3: There are no counter-cyclic syntactic operations (=H3)
Secondly, the copying part of Move is considered problematic. This has to do with the
"resource sensitivity" of minimalist syntax, according to which Move can only apply if
it leads to the elimination, or "checking," of certain features. Thus, take a to be a
"functor," *F, and P an "argument," F*. The idea is that the two counterparts cancel
against each other as soon as they are brought into local contact, i.e. [ F* *F ] —> [ F F ].
As soon as these "checking resources" are eliminated, no further, "superfluous"
operations can apply. If any such resources survive computation, on the other hand, the
output is ill-formed. Thus, consider again a transition like (4), where *F and F* replace
a and P, respectively.
*p
(5) a.
p*
(COPY F*)