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Volume 30, Issue 1
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  • E-ISSN: 1569-9676
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Abstract

Word order, argument structure and unbounded dependencies are among the most important topics in linguistics because they touch upon the core of the syntax-semantics interface. One question is whether “marked” word order patterns, such as vs. require special treatment by the grammar or not. Mainstream linguistics answers this question affirmatively: in the marked order, some mechanism is necessary for “extracting” from its original argument position, and a special placement rule (e.g. topicalization) is needed for putting the constituent in clause-preceding position. This paper takes an opposing view and argues that such formal complexity is only required for analyses that are based on syntactic trees. A tree is a rigid data structure that only allows information to be shared between local nodes, hence it is inadequate for non-local dependencies and can only allow restricted word order variations. A on the other hand, offers a more powerful representation device that allows word order variations – even unbounded dependencies – to be analyzed as the side-effect of how language users combine the same rules in different ways in order to satisfy their communicative needs. This claim is substantiated through a computational implementation of English argument structure constructions in Fluid Construction Grammar that can handle both comprehension and formulation.

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2016-12-19
2024-04-19

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Chopping down the syntax tree
Belgian Journal of Linguistics 30, 15 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.30.02van
/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.30.02van
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