Minimalist Theory Research Articles

Hyperactivity and Hyperagreement in Bantu

Many Bantu languages exhibit A-movements and patterns of iterating agreement that are disallowed in Indo-European languages. In Minimalist theory, both agreement and movement are constrained by an Activity requirement stipulating that goals in Agree relations must have an unchecked uninterpretable feature. For Indo-European DPs the sole Activity feature in A-relations is Case; but I argue here that grammatical gender, a component of Bantu noun class, is uninterpretable too. Case and nominal gender differ in that the latter enters the syntax already valued. Assuming goal deactivation is a consequence of syntactic valuation, we derive the result that gender is an infinitely reusable Activity feature. Adjunction of Bantu N to D makes gender visible to all clause-level probes, and Bantu DPs are therefore able to A-move more freely than their Indo-European counterparts and to value iterating agreement. The proposals provide a unitary explanation for the existence in Bantu of Subject Object Reversal, locative inversion controlling subject agreement, hyper-raising, concord, left-edge agreement with operators, and multiple subject agreement. The syntax of gender argues that uninterpretable features need not be deleted from a syntactic object bound for the Conceptual–Intentional interface.

A Minimalist Interpretation of In Seok Yang's Ideas

This paper discusses the main points of In?Seok Yang’s ground-breaking work, Korean Syntax(1972), which can be viewed as an monumental work in Korean syntax within the early Chomskyan framework, and evaluates its significance within the recent minimalist theory. As it turns out, Yang’s arguments about Multiple Case Constructions can be re?illuminated as a cartographic structures of Specs within IP, similar to the cartographic structures recently suggested by Rizzi(1997, 2004). Other important aspects of Yang’s theory concern sentential complementation constructions, in which he argued for clausal reduction and verbal compounding, and some of which provide significant dilemma in modern GB or minimalist frameworks. Some other Korean constructions involving so?called Equi?subject constructions offer other dilemmas, but some of them may in fact be shown to support little υ analysis within recent minimalist framework.

The Minimalist Theory of Truth: Challenges and Concerns

AbstractMinimalism is currently the received deflationary theory of truth. On minimalism, truth is a transparent concept and a deflated property of truth bearers. In this paper, I situate minimalism within current deflationary debate about truth by contrasting it with its main alternative – the redundancy theory of truth (according to which truth is a transparent concept but not a property). I also outline three of the primary challenges facing minimalism, its formulation, explanatory adequacy and stability, and draw some lessons for the soundness of its conception of truth.

Syntax-Phonology Interface of Wh-questions

Since the advance of the Minimalist Program, the prosody of wh-questions has drawn much attention from both syntacticians and phonologists as they bear special significance for the illumination of the syntax-phonology interface. The prosodic properties of wh-questions in Busan Korean are particularly interesting in that they reflect syntactic information quite faithfully but with differentiating devices of intonation contour. Based on the experimental investigation of the correlation of wh-scope and prosody in Busan Korean, I will show what kind of syntactic information has direct relevance for the prosodic system, how it affects parametric differences among dialects, and how the nature of the correlation of wh-scopeand prosody can be captured in the current minimalist theory.

The logic of parametric theories

'Parameters in minimalist theory: The case of Scandinavian' (henceforth, PMT), by Anders Holmberg, is an interesting attempt to defend the view that 'deep parameters' should be part of the grammatical system. PMT argues that parameters should be seen as points of 'underspecification', and in part as 3 rd factor effects in the sense of Chomsky (2005) - thus casting doubts on attempts to locate parametric variation in the lexicon and at the interfaces. In our view, however, PMT does not quite make the case for a 'deep parameter'. In examining this case, we also seek to clarify the relationship between parametric theories and acquisition, and more generally 'underspecification'.

Staging the Image: Video in Contemporary Performance

At a post-show Talkback at P.S. 122 in New York City’s East Village in February 2009, director Peter Born addressed the short video sequence that was used in Pent Up:A Revenge Dance, a show written and performed by his wife, Okwui Okpokwasili. He said, “A lot of theatre uses it, but I think, if you can express it another way, then why use video?” It’s a simple rhetorical question, one that betrays Born’s minimalist theory in terms of the medium. But the answers, exposed through a survey of video’s wider use in contemporary live performance, are actually quite deep and varied. In our technology-saturated visual environment, the question is not whether video will be used in performance (it will), or whether this is a trend that may pass (like ever-expanding online culture, it won’t), but rather, how savvy performers and directors can use moving images to create powerful, visually interesting, critical, or otherwise fresh and authentic works on stage. Several recent New York City performances shed light on the positively exploited potential of video in performance, while others serve to reveal common missteps and abuses of the ubiquitous medium.

THE ROLE OFISIN THE ACQUISITION OF FINITENESS BY ADULT TURKISH LEARNERS OF DUTCH

This article deals with the interlanguage of adult second language (L2) learners acquiring finiteness. Due to the inaccessibility of bound inflectional morphology, learners use free morphology to mark a syntactic relationship as well as person and number features separately from the thematic verb, expressed by a pattern likethe manisgo. Results from longitudinally collected production data of Turkish learners of Dutch are reported and present evidence for the claim that (a) verb movement and production of inflectional morphology develop separately in various developmental steps and (b) finite forms in nonfinite contexts (and vice versa) are by-products of this development. Moreover, allis-patterns in different Germanic languages can be explained by the application of minimalist theory of verb movement and recent views on morphology.Is-patterns that correspond neither to the first language nor to the L2—a poverty-of-the-stimulus problem—turn out to be possible in other languages of the world and are constrained by Universal Grammar.

A Study on Double Object Constructions in English within the framework of Minimalist Theory

A Study on Double Object Constructions in English within the framework of Minimalist Theory

Applicatives

AbstractAn applicative is a syntactic element adding an extra object to a clause. In some cases, the direct and applied objects are generated within a small clause; in others, the applied object is generated outside the main verb phrase. Symmetric applicatives allow either object to move to the subject position of a passive clause; asymmetric applicatives allow only one object to move. Within Minimalist theory, syntactic movement is constrained by the Minimal Link Condition (MLC). In the simplest case, the MLC allows only the highest argument to move to subject position. However, the lower object can do so if the higher object is ineligible for movement, or if the lower one moves over it via a syntactic escape hatch. A surprising interaction of binding and movement provides independent evidence for this analysis. A new phase‐based approach seeks to illuminate the nature of syntactic domains by connecting movement in applicatives with their semantic and phonological properties.

What about a (really) minimalist theory of language acquisition?

The Minimalist Program introduced a new concept of language and added new content to the innateness position concerning our linguistic capacity. It also redefined the metatheoretical role of the theory of acquisition within generative grammar. This article explores at length all these issues and

Construal by Syntactic Operations (N. Hornstein, Move! A Minimalist Theory of Construal)

Construal by Syntactic Operations (N. Hornstein, Move! A Minimalist Theory of Construal)

Social-movement Unionism in Theory and in Sweden

Many union leaders and observers of unionism in industrially advanced countries have recently argued for stronger links between unions and social movements but their arguments leave the nature of social movements underspecified. This article reviews the literature on social movements and argues in favour of a minimalist theory of the social actor rather than choose between American and European approaches to studying social movements. Both Melucci's European approach and McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly's American approach to integrating the European and American schools of thought on social movements are inadequate to the task of specifying social-movement unionism. Hindess's minimalist theory of the social actor and articulated arenas of conflict offers a stronger approach to understanding social-movement unionism and appreciating its strategic pertinence in particular times and places. Two episodes of contention in Sweden illustrate the advantages of a minimalist theory of articulated social-movement unionism.

NPs as just NPs

The hypothesis initially defended in [Abney, S.P., 1987. The English noun phrase in its sentential aspects. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT] that determiners, quantifiers, and adjectives are heads and NP is their syntactic complement became one of the standard analyses within P&P and early minimalist syntax, but, examined in an unprejudiced way, causes more difficulties than it solves at both the empirical and the conceptual level. Without rejecting the head status of articles and the DP view of nominals, Kayne [Kayne, R., 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA], Cinque [Cinque, G., 1995. On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance noun phrase. In: Cinque, G. (Ed.), Italian Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 287–309] and others have subsequently proposed that demonstratives, quantifiers, possessives, and adjectives be considered phrasal specifiers of various functional projections, rather than heads, with only articles treated as heads of DP, and such is now the standard view within Chomskian generative grammar, but the specifier theory is itself subject to serious objections. This work evaluates afresh the pros and cons of both accounts, but finally rejects them to return to the earlier NP analysis of NPs and the traditional view of articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, adjectives, PPs and relative clauses as modifiers of the noun, which, under the theory of modification presented in [Escribano, J.L.G., 2004. Head-final effects and the nature of modification. Journal of Linguistics 40, 1–43], accounts for the facts quite well and meets the Occamian ideals of Minimalist Theory rather better than current competitors.

Europe's Borders

This article argues that the social construction of the borders of Europe is the combined effect of a historical trajectory in which the construction of its outer and its inner boundaries interact. These boundaries make sense to the people because they have a narrative plausibility. On such narrative resonance, real hard borders are grounded. The idea of narrative boundary construction is embedded in a minimalist theory of identity that claims that anything can serve as a boundary within a historically specific situation. The only restriction regarding boundary construction is that a new boundary continues the narrative – either in a continuous or a discontinuous way, either as conservative caring for a tradition or as a revolutionary break with a tradition. This radical break with substantialist notions of Europe's borders and identity implies that such trajectories do not imply any necessity. Whether the European integration process is continuing an old narrative or whether it points towards a specific discontinuity in the further telling of Europe's story, is historically contingent. Europe has just to continue to tell a story about itself that makes narrative sense.

The Interfaces: Deriving and Interpreting Omitted Structures (review)

Reviewed by: The interfaces: Deriving and interpreting omitted structures ed. by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler José Luis González Escribano The interfaces: Deriving and interpreting omitted structures. Ed. by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler. (Linguistics today 61.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. vi, 399. ISBN 1588113302. $144 (Hb). This collection contains thirteen (broadly) minimalist papers on ellipsis. Mostly English and German data are discussed, but virtually all types of ellipsis are referred to (VP-ellipsis, comparative deletion, ACD, gapping, pseudo-gapping, sluicing, right-node raising, etc.); the interaction between ellipsis and focus-structure is specially discussed in Part 3, and the argumentation leads to numerous interesting excursions into related syntactic and semantic matters, which makes the book unusually dense and rich. The volume opens with a table of contents (v–vi), followed by the editors’ ‘Exploring the interfaces [End Page 222] from the perspective of omitted structures’ (1–26), which discusses the role ellipsis plays in the ongoing minimalist debate about the architecture of the grammar, offers a taxonomy of generative approaches to the topic, and summarizes the papers. Unfortunately, this introduction is too sketchy to be illuminating, but several of the papers contain clearer overviews of previous work that partly make up for this deficiency. The papers are grouped into three parts. Part 1 contains four that (broadly) treat ellipsis as PF-deletion: Christopher Kennedy’s ‘Ellipsis and syntactic representation’ (29–53), Jason Merchant’s ‘Subject-auxiliary inversion in comparatives and PF output constraints’ (55–77), Chris Wilder’s ‘Antecedent-containment and ellipsis’ (79–119), and Katharina Hartmann’s ‘Background matching in right node raising constructions’ (121–51). The four papers in Part 2 take ellipsis to be a core syntactic operation. They are Caterina Donati’s ‘Merge copy’ (155–75), Winfrid Lechner’s ‘Phrase structure paradoxes, movement and ellipsis’ (177–203), Uli Sauerland’s ‘Unpronounced heads in relative clauses’ (205–25), and Luis López and Susanne Winkler’s ‘Variation at the syntax-semantics interface: Evidence from gapping’ (227–48). Finally, Part 3 consists of five papers that (broadly) approach ellipsis from the angle of information structure. These papers include: Daniel Hardt’s ‘Ellipsis and the structure of discourse’ (251–62), Maribel Romero’s ‘Correlate restriction and definiteness effect in ellipsis’ (263–300), Kerstin Schwabe’s ‘F-marking and specificity in sluicing constructions’ (301–19), Satoshi Tomioka’s ‘The semantics of Japanese null pronouns and its cross-linguistic implications’ (321–39), and Petra Gretsch’s ‘Omission impossible? Topic and focus in focal ellipsis’ (341–65). Endnotes appear with each paper, but all of the references are listed at the end of the book (367–87), followed by a name index (389–93) and a subject index (395–99), which is particularly useful given the density and richness of the content. The quality of the contributions is high, the data subtle, the references abundant and up-to-date, and all the obvious research alternatives in the current scene represented, so, on the whole, the volume is informative and offers a representative sample of recent ellipsis-related work within generative theory. However, no attempt has been made to integrate the results into a coherent whole or evaluate their compatibility with standard minimalist theory, which, given the presumed theoretical homogeneity of the contributors, is disappointing. As to formal matters, the general appearance of the volume is, as usual in the series, outstanding, but there are quite a few editorial oversights and occasionally unintelligible short passages that should have been avoided in a book of this quality and price. José Luis González Escribano University of Oviedo Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America

Local Democracy and the Public Services

This article explores the relationship between democratic participation and responsiveness. Data from Icelandic local governments is used to examine the assumptions of three different theories of democracy: the minimalist theory, the theory of party democracy and theories of participatory democracy. No support was found for the minimalist theory that merely the competitive element is sufficient to bring about responsive organisations. Party democracy receives some support in that party membership tends to increase the satisfaction of citizens with their local government. Party members, however, are only a small proportion of the electorate. Direct participation tends to increase the knowledge and satisfaction of the citizens but size and the non-representative nature of activists pose a problem for the theory.

The Criminal Law as Last Resort

In this article I examine one condition a minimalist theory of criminalization might contain: the criminal law should be used only as a last resort. I discuss how this principle should be interpreted and the reasons we have to accept it. I conclude that a theory of criminalization should probably include the (appropriately construed) last resort principle. But this conclusion will prove disappointing to those who hope to employ this principle to bring about fundamental reform in the substantive criminal law. I argue that the last resort principle may not help to reverse the growth of the criminal law to any degree that could not be achieved more directly and less controversially by other principles that a theory of criminalization is generally thought to include. Unless we reject others parts of conventional wisdom about crime and punishment, the application of a last resort principle is unlikely to bring about sweeping changes that theorists might have anticipated.

Disquotationalism, Minimalism, and the Finite Minimal Theory

Recently, Paul Horwich has developed the minimalist theory of truth, according to which the truth predicate does not express a Substantive property, though it may be used as a grammatical expedient. Minimalism shares these Claims with Quine's disquotationalism; it differs from disquotationalism primarily in holding that truth-bearers are propositions, rather than sentences. Despite potential ontological worries, allowing that propositions bear truth gives Horwich aprima facieresponse to several important objections to disquotationalism. In section I of this paper, disquotationalism is given a careful exegesis, in which seven known objections are traced to the disquotational Schema, and two new objections are raised. A version of disquotationalism which avoids two of the seven known objections is recommended. In section II, an examination of minimalism shows that it faces eight of the nine objections facing disquotationalism, plus a new objection.

The Second Time Around: Minimalism and L2 Acquisition (review)

Reviewed by: The second time around: Minimalism and L2 acquisition by Julia Herschensohn John M. Lipski The second time around: Minimalism and L2 acquisition. By Julia Herschensohn (Language acquisition and language disorders 21.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000. Pp. xiii, 287. This book applies minimalist theory to second language acquisition, claiming that L2 acquisition in a sense replicates the learning of the first language in that UG circumscribes the learning process. Herschensohn assumes the availability of UG throughout the L2 acquisition process, together with the minimalist notion that syntax is acquired via morphological features and functional categories. The book contains seven substantive chapters and a concluding chapter. The first chapter surveys the principal theoretical issues in L2 acquisition from a generative perspective including poverty of the stimulus, the modularity of language, universal grammar, and the compatibility of minimalist theory with L2 research. The second chapter, ‘Critical age and L1/L2 differences’, surveys theories on the existence of an inexorable critical period for complete L2 acquisition, as well as the ‘critical difference hypothesis’, according to which the learning of a second language differs substantially from the acquisition of the first language. H accepts both notions, albeit with some qualification, but also acknowledges the possibility of near-native L2 attainment within the normal range of second-language learning. The third chapter, ‘Generative theory from Aspects to minimalism’, surveys recent syntactic theories, with special attention to parameter setting and the accessibility of UG in first- and second-language acquisition. H asserts that the minimalist program provides a better account of L2 acquisition than does the principles and parameters model since the latter derives from UG only form, and not strategies. The minimalist theory proposes that all language variation is morpholexical, and all parametric variation arises from the lexicon. The ‘incompleteness’ of L2 acquisition follows from the fact that parameters are not ‘reset’ but rather gradually acquired as the second-language learner’s lexical store increases. Ch. 4, ‘The stages of first and second language acquisition’, presents a model of language development within a generative framework. L1 acquisition follows the ‘coalition model’, which progresses successively through acoustic packaging, linguistic mapping, and complex syntactic analysis. The first stage involves phonemic contrasts but also the lexical-functional distinction, derived from acoustic cues. The second stage corresponds roughly to the ‘two word utterance’ period, in which functional categories are very scarce; H acknowledges the lack of consensus on whether functional categories are underlyingly present at this developmental point, suggesting that functional categories are projected only when essential. The final stage leads to adult-like syntax, including elaborate morphological paradigms and full use of functional categories. Parameters are set in L1 as morphology is acquired, with full morphology and set parameters emerging simultaneously. L2 acquisition follows the ‘constructionist’ approach in which parameters are slowly (re-)set as morphology—hence syntax—is acquired through the expanding L2 lexicon. Constructionism also involves three stages: L2 transfer; an intermediate period in which many morphological features are underspecified, and L1 parameter settings gradually disappear; and full L2 feature specification, thus parameter resetting. Since the minimalist program asserts that cross-linguistic differences are morpholexical, L2 learners presumably are more erratic in their use of morpholexical features than in their acquisition of L2 syntax; the chapter ‘Parameter shifting in L2 acquisition’ explores this prediction, focusing on the process of acquisition (morpholexical expansion) rather than on the final outcome (reset parameters). H reviews the literature on three prominent parametric differences: [End Page 182] verb raising, V2 in Germanic languages, and null subjects in Spanish; in the last case H postulates the unity of null subjects, that-trace violations, and VS word order among L1 speakers despite a considerable body of evidence which suggests that the three phenomena are not linked crosslinguistically (or among L2 speakers) as a single parameter. In all cases L2 parameter resetting is not crucially dependent on acquisition of morphology, as in initial L1 acquisition. The constructionist hypothesis claims that these acquisitional differences result from the intermediate stage of feature underspecification, between L1 transfer and the final L2 grammar. All interlanguage grammars are constrained by UG, and L2 learners ultimately acquire parametric settings (through grammaticality judgments) not available in the input data...

The category DP in Xhosa and Northern Sotho

This article investigates the morphosyntactic realisation of definiteness in Xhosa and Northern Sotho, representative of African languages, characterised respectively by the presence and absence of a noun class preprefix (i.e. initial vowel). The Minimalist theory (Chomsky, 1995) is employed as theoretical framework for the study. It is argued that definiteness in these African languages is realised morphosyntactically by the definite morpheme (l)a- which typically occurs as stem of the demonstrative, and which also appears in the inflectional morphology of nominal modifiers such as the adjective, nominal relative and verbal (clausal) relative. It is proposed that the definite morpheme -a- is a functional category Det(erminer) that heads argument Determiner phrases (DPs) dominating an NP. Evidence for this view is invoked from a range of definiteness phenomena in Xhosa, where the absence of the noun preprefix correlates with the non-occurrence of the definite morpheme -a- in the inflectional morphology of nominal modifiers, and from phenomena relating to the omissibility of the complementiser in relative clause constructions in Northern Sotho.