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2 results

  • 2 - Tools and Particulars

  • Norbert Hornstein, University of Maryland, Baltimore
  • Book:
    The Merge Hypothesis
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024, pp 47-74

  • Summary

    This chapter identifies the central theoretical-empirical claim of MP, the Merge Hypothesis (MH). It rehearses the motivations for a simple combination operation that takes two objects, combines them in the simplest way possible, and treats the combination so constructed as capable of further combination. I review and explicate the claim that the simplest combination operation would do no more than combine its inputs. This means that the combination operation should not impose a serial order on what it combines, nor should it change the properties of what it combines in any way (as either would involve more than “mere” combination). So construing “simplicity” implies the No Tampering Condition (a principle that forbids changing the structures of the elements combined) and supports the idea that expressions so formed have set-like structure. I further provide a more technical specification of the combination operation by specifying its inductive definition. I then show how to derive a bunch of recognized properties of natural language Gs from this Merge conception of combination and review eight of these, again largely following and elaborating Chomsky’s earlier suggestions.

  • 6 - Lexical-Functional Grammar

  • from Part II - Modern generative approaches to the study of sentence structure
  • Edited by Marcel den Dikken, City University of New York
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax
    Published online:
    05 August 2013
    Print publication:
    25 July 2013, pp 162-201

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the earliest generative approaches, namely those explicated in Syntactic Structures and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. It examines some relevant differences between these two theories and discusses some general properties of transformations. The chapter reviews the syntax/semantics interface in early generative grammar and beyond. It also discusses the role in the evolving theories of rules and filters versus principles. In Principles and Parameters theory, Chomsky explicitly introduced economy principles for the first time. A major Minimalist concern involves the driving force for syntactic movement. The chapter also offers two economy principles: Relativized Minimality and the Extension Condition. It illustrates Rizzi's groundbreaking work by way of a phenomenon called Superiority, which has often been analyzed as a Relativized Minimality effect. Another potential example of an economy condition relates to the Extension Condition. This condition requires that a transformational operation extends the tree upwards.