The Nature of Syntactic Representation

494 Pages·1982·25.913 MB·Synthese Language Library 15

by  Avery D. Andrews (auth.), Pauline Jacobson, Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.)

THE NATURE OF SYNTACTIC REPRESENTATION
SYNTHESE LANGUAGE LIBRARY
TEXTS AND STUDIES IN
LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY
Managing Editors:
J AAKKO HINTIKKA, Florida State University
STANLEY PETERS, The University of Texas at Austin
Editorial Board:
EMMON BACH, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
JOAN BRESNAN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOHN LYONS, University of Sussex
JULIUS M. E. MORAVCSIK, Stanford University
PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University
DANA SCOTT, Oxford University
VOLUME 15
THE NATURE OF
SYNTACTIC
REPRESENTATION
Edited by
PAULINE JACOBSON
Dept. of Linguistics, Brown University, Providence
and
GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT : HOLLAND / BOSTON: U.S.A.
LONDON: ENGLAND
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main Entry under title:
The Nature of syntactic representation.
(Synthese language library; v. 15)
Rev. papers from a conference held at Brown University in May 1979.
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Syntax-Addresses, essays,
lectures. 2. Generative grammar-·Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Jacobson, Pauline I., 1947- II. Pullum, Geoffrey K. Ill. Series.
P291.N3 415 81-15753
ISBN-I3: 978-90-277-1290-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7707-5
001: 10.1007/978-94-009-7707-5
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
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All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
No part of the material protected by thIs copyright notice may be reproduced or
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T ABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE Vll
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION lX
AVER Y D. ANDREWS/ Long Distance Agreement in
Modem Icelandic 1
EMMON BACH/Purpose Clauses and Control 35
ROBIN COOPER/ Binding in Who1ewheat* Syntax
(*unenriched with inaudibi1ia) 59
DAVID DOWTY / Grammatical Relations and Montagu~:
Grammar 79
GERALD GAZDAR/Phrase Structure Grammar 131
PAULINE JACOBSON/Evidence for Gaps 187
JOAN MALING and ANNIE ZAENEN / A Phrase Structure
Account of Scandinavian Extraction Phenomena 229
DAVID M. PERLMUTTER/Syntactic Representation,
Syntactic Levels, and the Notion of Subject 283
PAUL M. POSTAL/Some Arc Pair Grammar Descriptions 341
IVAN A. SAG / A Semantic Theory of "NP-movement"
Dependencies 427
INDEX 467
v
PREFACE
The work collected in this book represents the results of some intensive
recent work on the syntax of natural languages. The authors' differing
viewpoints have in common the program of revising current conceptions of
syntactic representation so that the role of transformational derivations is
reduced or eliminated. The fact that the papers cross-refer to each other a
good deal, and that authors assuming quite different fram{:works are aware
of each other's results and address themselves to shared problems, is partly
the result of a conference on the nature of syntactic representation that was
held at Brown University in May 1979 with the express purpose of bringing
together different lines of research in syntax. The papers in this volume
mostly arise out of work that was presented in preliminary form at that
conference, though much rewriting and further research has been done in
the interim period.
Two papers are included because although they were not given even in
preliminary form at the conference, it has become clear since then that they
interrelate with the work of the conference so much that they cannot
reasonably be left out: Gerald Gazdar's statement of his program for
phrase structure description of natural language forms the theoretical basis
that is assumed by Maling and Zaenen and by Sag, and David Dowty's
paper represents a bridge between the relational grammar exemplified here
in the papers by Perlmutter and Postal on the one hand and the Montague
influenced description to be found in the contributions of Bach, Cooper,
Sag, and others. These connections might be kept in mind when determin
ing an order in which to read the papers, which are arrang,ed in alphabetical
order of author's surname rather than in any attempt at a logically
determined ordering. The logical connections among the papers are
brought out in our Editorial Introduction.
We wish to thank the National Science Foundation for the grant that
made the conference possible; Brown University and its linguistics students
for hosting the conference and helping to make it a success; and all the
participants at the conference - not only those whose work is included in
this volume, but all those whose presentations or discussant sessions
enriched the conference, including Judith Aissen, Peter Cole, Leland
Vll
Vlll PREFACE
George, Jane Grimshaw, Gabriella Hermon, David Johnson, Jaklin
Kornfilt, Jerry Morgan, Frederick Newmeyer, Edwin Williams, and
Arnold Zwicky.
December 1980 PAULINE JACOBSON
GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
The work collected in this book represents a sampling of recent research in
syntax that challenges a position that we will call the classical theory of
transformational-generative grammar (a term that we define below). This
position has dominated syntactic research during much of the last twenty
years. The studies in this book are for the most part concerned with
developing alternatives to it. Without abandoning the goals or methods of
generative grammar, they strike out in directions that depart radically from
the classical theory in at least certain respects, and in s(~veral cases they
reject transformational grammar completely.
The claim that defines what we call the classical theory (on which the
definitive source is Chomsky (1965)) is that the syntactic representation of
a sentence is (nothing more than) an ordered set of constituent structure
trees called a derivation, where the first member of a derivation is by
definition a deep structure and the last is by definition a surface structure.
Each tree consists of a set of labelled nodes associated with a pair of
relations (dominates and precedes). The sequence of trees that constitute
well-formed derivations are those licensed by a set of transformations.
Much of the research within the classical theory focussed on claims
about properties of derivations and on constraints on the transformational
operations that defined them. For example, proposals concerning rule
ordering and the cycle assumed the existence of transformational de
rivations, and sought to characterize them more precisely.
In the classical theory there is no limit set on the number of distinct
structures a derivation may contain, and the descriptive latitude that arises
out of this property of the model has been exploited to the full in
transformational work. In countless transformational studies, descriptive
problems were tackled by postulating extra stages in the dl~rivation of some
class of sentences, or, in some modifications of the basic theory, by allowing
"global derivational constraints" that refer to non-adjacent stages within a
derivation.
Starting in about the mid 1970's, two main lines of research arose which
led away from the assumptions of the classical theory. The studies in this
volume exemplify both of these lines, carrying them in some cases to their
IX
x EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
logical conclusions. One such line challenges the role of step-by-step
derivations and the roles of the various intermediate levels which are
defined by derivations. Research along this line has shown that many of the
generalizations classically captured in terms of derivations can instead be
captured by components of the grammar other than the transformational
one. For example, Brame (1978) and Bresnan (1978) have both argued that
the lexicon is the component that accounts for most of what is classically
accounted for by transformations. Others have suggested that an enriched
notion of semantics can capture many of these generalizations; a good deal
of the research within the tradition known as Montague grammar has been
in this direction. Work within what has come to be known as trace theory
has also suggested that the role of derivations can be reduced by positing an
enriched level of surface structure; this is the position taken in, fo; example,
Chomsky (1977, 1980).
The second line of research questions the importance of constituent
structure in syntactic description and challenges the claim that precedence
and dominance are the right, or the only, primitive relations in syntactic
representation. For example, research within the tradition of relational
grammar has suggested that notions like subject and object are primitives of
linguistic theory. (These notions are now also used in the lexically-based
theory of Bresnan (1978, 1981).)
These two lines of inquiry are logically independent; one could readily
envisage a theory in which derivations are completely abandoned but
constituent structure is not. One could also envisage a theory in which
constituent structure trees are replaced by some other way of representing
syntactic form, but derivations are still assumed. And of course, one might
consider rejecting both constituent structure and derivations in favor of
something else. Although there is no consensus among the contributors to
this book concerning which of these directions to take, there is broad
agreement about the strategy of departing significantly from the reliance on
derivational description that characterizes the classical theory.
The first paper in this book, by Andrews, adopts a framework being
deVeloped by Bresnan and Kaplan (see Bresnan (1981)) in which the
lexicon assumes a very large part of the burden borne by transformational
rules in the classical theory. Andrews discusses the "long-distance agree
ment" facts of Icelandic, a language in which (as in classical Greek)
predicative adjectives and participles agree in morphological features with
their subjects, and continue to display this agreement even in sentences
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION xi
where they are widely separated from their subjects in constructions that
would be analyzed transformationally in terms of movement,
In the classical theory, such facts were not readily accounted for. An NP
might be raised out of its clause into a position where it was a matrix object
(perhaps several clauses up from its deep structure position), and would
receive accusative case marking on the basis of its derived position.
However, a predicative adjective or participle in the clause in which the NP
originated would then show accusative case in agreement with this NP,
despite the fact that the NP was no longer in the same clause as this
predicate (nor even within some fixed distance from it). Global rules were
proposed to expand the descriptive power of the classical theory so that it
could deal with such facts (Lakoff (1970), Andrews (1971), and the
question oflong-distance agreement sparked much controversy concerning.
the expressive power necessary in a linguistic theory.
What Andrews shows in the paper presented here is that a much more
restricted theory than the classical theory can in fact deal with long
distance agreement. He first discusses how various phenomena classically
accounted for by transformations like Passive and Raising can be treated
without the use of transformations, and goes on to exhibit a way of stating
agreement dependencies. He then shows that the absence of "NP
movement" transformations becomes an asset rather than a liability;
crudely, predicative adjectives and participles can only agree with the case
that their subjects have in virtue of their "derived" positions, because the
"derived" positions of NP's are the only positions they ever have.
The fact that rather recalcitrant syntactic facts sometimes submit to
description and explanation more readily without the use of transfor
mations than with raises a significant issue. Andrews is presupposing that
natural languages can be adequately described without transformations.
But until quite recently most generative grammarians have assumed that
phrase structure grammars without transformations simply do not have
the expressive power needed to describe natural languages at all. Gerald
Gazdar's contribution to this volume sets out to refute this assumption by
showing that natural languages can in fact be adequately characterized by
phrase structure grammars - indeed, probably by context-free grammars.
Gazdar begins by making a number of points concerning the generative
capacity of grammars and the relations between generative capacity and
issues like parasability and learnability. He introduces a number of
elaborations and extensions of phrase structure rules which allow for the
capturing of various linguistic generalizations without increasing the gene-