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CTL5402  SYNTAX and MORPHOLOGY

Haihua PAN (Dr.), CTL, CityU., HK

Office: Rm B7618; Phone: 2788 8795; Email:  cthpan@cityu.edu.hk

INTRODUCTION

Basic Notions in Syntax and Linguistic Theory

    1.  Goals of Linguistic Theory (cf. Van Valin & LaPolla 1997)

• Describing linguistic phenomena (passive sentences, wh-questions, etc.)
• Explaining linguistic phenomena
• Understanding the cognitive basis of language (processing, knowledge, acquisition)
• Inductive vs. Deductive theories (inductive: data ---> hypothesis, deductive: hypothesis ---> data)
• Types of explanation criteria (economy: simplicity, motivation: independent evidence, predictiveness: broader coverage even unseen data)

 

    2.  Levels of Adequacy in Linguistic Theory (cf. Chomsky 1965, Dik 1978, 1991)

• Observational adequacy: a grammar can accept or reject a sentence
• Descriptive adequacy: assigning structures to sentences that match native speakers' intuition about structure and meaning
• Explanatory adequacy: can explain how the facts are the way they are and how they arise in the mind og the speaker and hearers

• Psychological  adequacy (acquisition, processing, production, interpretation, etc.)
• Pragmatic  adequacy (compatible with a pragmatic theory of verbal communication)
• Typological  adequacy

 

    3.  Linguistic Competence vs. Performance (cf. Chomsky 1965)

         I-language vs. E-language (cf. Chomsky 1986)

• Linguistic competence is a native speaker's knowledge of language
• Linguistic Performance is the actual use of language on particular occasions. 
• E(xternal)-language corresponds roughly to the pretheoretical idea of what a language is. It consists of the overt phenomena of linguistic interaction in the social-cultural realm.
• I(nternal)-language (the grammar) is an abstract object accessible only through native speakers' intuitions, and in this view, only I-language falls within the scope of linguistic study. Thus, linguistics is the science of grammar, not of language.
• Universals are generalizations about I-languages, e.g. properties of grammars; they are not about E-languages, e.g. properties of languages.    

 

    4.  Infinite Rule-governed Creativity

• Finite number of rules, but infinite number of sentences
• Recursive rules
• examples: NP ---> Det N PP, PP ---> P NP, VP ---> V NP InfP, InfP ---> to VP, etc.

 

    5.  Principles and Parameters (cf. Haegeman 1994)

• Principles in Universal Grammar (UG) refer to absolute universals and notions that do not vary from one language to the next, e.g. Empty Category Principle (ECP), (Extended) Projection Principle.
• Parameters in UG refer to language-specific properties which are not fully determined by UG but which vary cross-linguistically, and for these properties a range of choices is made available by UG, the pro-drop parameter, head-final/head-initial parameter.
• Some principle can also be parameterized, e.g. Subjacency Principle can have a parameter for the bounding node which is S for English but S-bar for French.

 

    6.  Levels of Syntactic Representation

    References

Chomsky, N. 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, N. 1986 Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York: Praeger.

Dik, Simon C. 1978 Functional Grammar. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Dik, Simon C. 1991 Functional Grammar, In Droste and Joseph, eds., 247-74.

Haegeman,  L. 1994 Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Blackwell.

Van Valin, R.D. Jr. & R.J. LaPolla, Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge University Press.