Transformational Grammar

In recent years, dependency grammars have established themselves as valuable tools in theoretical and computational linguistics. To many linguists, dependency grammars and the more standard constituency-based formalisms are notational variants. We argue that, beyond considerations of formal equivalence, cognition may also serve as a background for a genuine comparison between these different views of syntax. In this paper, we review and evaluate some of the most common arguments and evidence employed to advocate for the cognitive or neural reality of dependency (...) grammars in linguistics, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. We then raise the possibility that the abilities to represent and track, alternatively or in parallel, constituency and dependency structures co-exist in human cognition and are constitutive of syntactic competence. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic models of grammar are based on the view that an explicit characterization of a language comes in the form of the recursive enumeration of strings in that language. That recur-sive enumeration is carried out by a procedure which strongly generates a set of structural de-scriptions Σ and weakly generates a set of strings S; a grammar is thus a function that pairs an element of Σ with elements of S. Structural descriptions are obtained by means of Context-Free phrase structure (...) rules or via recursive combinatorics and structure is assumed to be uniform: binary branching trees all the way down. In this work we will analyse natural language constructions for which such a rigid conception of phrase structure is descriptively inadequate, and pro-pose a solution for the problem of phrase structure grammars assigning too much or too little structure to natural language strings: we propose that the grammar can oscillate between levels of computational complexity in local domains, which correspond to elementary trees in a lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar. (shrink)

A familiar trope of cognitive science, linguistics, and the philosophy of psychology over the past forty or so years has been the idea of the mind as a modular system-that is, one consisting of functionally specialized subsystems responsible for processing different classes of input, or handling specific cognitive tasks like vision, language, logic, music, and so on. However, one of the major achievements of neuroscience has been the discovery that the brain has incredible powers of renewal and reorganization. This "neuroplasticity," (...) in its various forms, has challenged many of the orthodox conceptions of the mind which originally led cognitive scientists to postulate hardwired mental modules. -/- This book examines how such discoveries have changed the way we think about the structure of the mind. It contends that the mind is more supple than prevailing theories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence acknowledge. The book uses language as a test case. The claim that language is cognitively special has often been understood as the claim that it is underpinned by dedicated-and innate-cognitive mechanisms. Zerilli offers a fresh take on how our linguistic abilities could be domain-general: enabled by a composite of very small and redundant cognitive subsystems, few if any of which are likely to be specialized for language. In arguing for this position, however, the book takes seriously various cases suggesting that language dissociates from other cognitive faculties. -/- Accessibly written, The Adaptable Mind is a fascinating account of neuroplasticity, neural reuse, the modularity of mind, the evolution of language, and faculty psychology. (shrink)

This paper argues that the theory of phrase structure a certain linguistic approach assumes implies taking a stance on the formal nature of the computational procedures that generate that phrase structure. We will proceed by critically evaluating theories of phrase structure and labeling -which implies taking a structure as a unit for the purposes of further computations-, and building on and opposing to the proposals we review, we will claim that syntactic objects are not computationally uniform, and therefore the computational (...) system in charge of establishing dependencies between symbolic objects within the mind is not uniform as well. We argue in favor of a linguistic-cognitive model which dynamically chooses different grammars based on the complexity of the input, and is capable of assigning a mixed phrase marker to an object that presents more than one computational pattern. Empirical evidence is provided in favor of our approach to phrase structure building, and further implications for a theory of labeling and predication are discussed as prolegomena to further research. (shrink)

In this paper we will analyze the conceptual and computational motivations of the property of displacement in natural languages from a revisited perspective. We will account for displacement phenomena proposing our own version of displacement-as-external token Merge, as opposed to the traditional displacement-as-literal movement or, more recently, displacement-as-copy and Merge (Chomsky 1995; Kitahara 1997; Nunes 2004). As far as empirical data is concerned, we will provide a brief analysis of parasitic gaps and their derivation, comparing our proposal with previous accounts (...) making particular stress on the idea that operations are not feature-driven in a highly constrained syntactic component, but interface-driven, syntax being free and unbounded. (shrink)

In this paper I will try to outline the basic tenets of Radical Minimalism, exploring previous ideas in further depth. I will assume orthodox Minimalism, and take that as a point of departure for new inquiries. I will test Radical Minimalism by analyzing what I consider to be the one and only generative mechanism in the human mind: the operation merge. I will review previous literature that has addressed this topic and then present our own proposal, trying to derive the (...) conceptual necessity and the properties of merge and label from interface conditions. I will also address the question of feature interpretability, and see if I can dispense with that in order to build a radically minimalist theory. I will also present our theory of derivation by phases in radically minimalist terms, which will implicate positing only principled operations and deriving everything from the dynamics of the derivation in interaction with interface requirements. My ultimate goal will be to integrate the study of language and the study of the physical universe, as a physical system among many others with which language should optimally share characteristics, operations and principles that I take to be universal. (shrink)

The article traces interpretative mechanisms hidden in Chomsky's Transformational Model. The framework is that of epistemological criticism, investigating the intertwining of interpretation, context and intuition. My hypothesis is that the Transformational Model is an example of a quasi-axiomatic, intuition-based grammar. It is not a scientific model of Competence but a scientistic description of Performance (teleological corpora). The scientistic décor is thus an eristic stratagem to hide arbitrary interpretation. The discussion is empirically substantiated by analyzing the notion of grammaticality, the tectonics (...) of the Transformational Model and the phenomenology of countable/uncountable nouns. Key Words: interpretative mechanisms • intuition • epistemology • transformational model • context • Dasein • performance • competence. (shrink)

The article shows that the arugument of a verb can be projected in diffrent ways according to the meaning (agentive or not) of the predicate. An analysis is developed which suggests a modification of the projection principle according to which this principle is in part an interpretative principle, not a principle of the core grammmar.

0. Introductory remarks. I assume that every serious theory of language must give some explicit account of the relationship between expressions in the language described and expressions in some interpreted language which spells out the semantics of the language.1 Let's call this relationship the translation relation. Theories differ as to how this relation is specified. In the Aspects theory of syntax, taken together with a Katz-Postal view of "semantic rules", it was assumed that the relation was defined on deep structures. (...) Serious problems led to modifications of this view in several directions. Chomsky's latest papers assume that a modified 'intermediate structure' is transformed by rules of interpretation to a level of representation called 'logical form'. Common to all of these approaches is the assumption that the translation rules are defined initially on syntactic structures of one sort or another. Let us call this assumption the configurational hypothesis: the translation rules all have the form: [183]. (shrink)

According to the neogrammarians and de Saussure, all linguistic change is either sound change, analogy, or borrowing.1 Meillet (1912) identified a class of changes that don’t fit into any of these three categories. Like analogical changes, they are endogenous innovations directly affecting morphology and syntax, but unlike analogical changes, they are not based on any pre-existing patterns in the language. Meillet proposed that they represent a fourth type of change, which he called GRAMMATICALIZATION. Its essential property for him was that (...) it gives rise to new grammatical categories — that is, to categories previously unexpressed in the language — and thereby transforms its overall system. (shrink)