Abstract
This paper is a preliminary exploration of how English specifiers and heads are linearized at the PF interface. In particular, it argues that linearization may reflect underlying grammatical relationships of agreement and selection. To evaluate this proposal, it uses the theoretical lens of relational theory and empirically, topicalization constructions in English which have somewhat paradoxical properties with respect to the perceived relative positioning of the head and specifier of TopP. These paradoxes can be explained by the linearization proposal in this paper. However, before accepting the proposed solution it is necessary to ensure that the proposal can be consistently applied to other spec-head relationships in English; the paper therefore includes a discussion of double object constructions as well as the relative spec-head orders of CP, TP, vP, VP and PP.
Highlights
Within the Principles and Parameters framework, the Head Parameter allows, in principle, for either heads or specifiers to occur on the left or right
If the continuity or theoretical development is denied there remains the second approach from a more mathematical modelling tradition, namely to explore the properties of the system resulting from its axioms, e.g. that instead of linearization being a function of asymmetric c-command, I will explore the consequences of taking linearization to be a function of the asymmetric relations instantiated by AGREE and MERGE
Since functional dependencies are encoded in syntactic representations in terms of MERGE and AGREE, I will adopt the null hypothesis that linearization is a one-to-one mapping between normalized functional dependency pairs and linear order6
Summary
Within the Principles and Parameters framework, the Head Parameter allows, in principle, for either heads or specifiers to occur on the left or right. Kayne (1994) notes that even within single languages, head-complement orders are much more stable and harmonic than head-specifier (head-Spec) orders. One response to this was the Antisymmetry framework, mapping asymmetric c-command to linear order in a one-to-one way (Kayne 1994:6). Notwithstanding the success of the Antisymmetric program, in what follows I will explore one such alternative which encodes the asymmetry directly into a grammatical system It does so by the following suggestion, to be explored in more detail in the rest of the paper: that syntactic relationships are directionally asymmetric and that the directionality of a syntactic relation is reflected in word order. I shall adopt the second approach, exploring some of the “interesting” properties of a certain type of grammatical system
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