Linguistic Variation Yearbook - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2003

Linguistic variation derives from properties of the physical and conceptual make-up of human beings which were adapted to produce language. This adaptative approach is contrasted with the Minimalist Program, in which properties specific to language are said to be different from anything found in the organic world (Chomsky 1995). Six basic cases are compared. Whereas the analysis in the Minimalist Program is ultimately a listing of construction-specific features, the adaptative approach relies on properties of the initial state which are logically prior to linguistic theory and provide a strong basis for causal relations that explain why languages vary, and why they vary in the particular ways they do in these six cases.

It is argued that the structure of the sentence in English as well as Finnish is C [Pol [T...]], where Pol(arity) has negative or affirmative value. Yes/no questions are derived, universally, by movement of a wh-marked Pol to C, deriving an operator-variable relation between C and Pol. No category with interpretable features can intervene between C and Pol, as it would block the crucial relation between C and Pol. It is argued, with reference to Finnish, that we do not need to assume any head with uninterpretable features such as AgrS between C and Pol, either. For English, the theory is based on Zwicky & Pullum’s 1983 arguments that the negation -n’t in English is an inflection, combined with the analysis of inflected words as derived by head movement and incorporation of a lexical head in the inflectional head.

Malayalam, an SOV language, moves its wh-phrases to a Focus position immediately to the left of V (linearly speaking). Multiple wh-phrases are “stacked” in this position. Wh-extraction from an embedded clause is not possible. When a wh-phrase in an embedded clause has matrix scope, scope-marking is done by two movements: the wh-phrase moves to the Focus position in the embedded clause, and the embedded clause is pied-piped to the Focus position in the matrix clause. It is shown that the device of “Attract” by EPP is inadequate (by itself) to describe these movements (or multiple wh-fronting). We suggest a supplementary device. “Association with focus”, the algorithm by which the question operator accesses question words, is (we suggest) a kind of ‘probe’. In languages which employ strong focusing devices, the question operator’s probe “looks at” only Focus positions. In these languages, wh-phrases must cluster in Focus positions in order to be interpreted.

The present paper addresses some foundational issues on the status of parametric linguistics, understood as a partially independent new branch of formal grammar and of the cognitive sciences more generally. Chomsky’s (1964) original three levels of adequacy are extended to five and it is then suggested that the theory of parameters, being able to deal with cultural variation, is in the best position to achieve adequacy at the fourth proposed level, one connected with historical explanations, and some methods to pursue this goal are proposed. The development of parametric linguistics is viewed as a major step toward the potential application of the Galilean style of formal grammar both to the study of linguistic history and to other domains of cognitive science and cultural anthropology.

In this paper I point out a word order paradox in Serbo-Croatian and propose a solution to it. I show that there are data indicating that the subject must move overtly to the highest projection in the split IP, as well as data indicating that it can remain in SpecVP overtly. I argue that the key to resolving the paradox lies in a mechanism of pronunciation of lower copies motivated by PF considerations, similar to the one proposed in Franks (1998) and Bošković (2001, 2002). The mechanism entails that PF has a preference for pronunciation of the highest copy of elements moved in syntax, but that a lower copy can be pronounced in order to avoid a PF violation. I show that in Serbo-Croatian, a PF factor that can affect copy deletion is prosody. The proposed analysis captures extremely free word order of SC as well as discourse effects of scrambling.

A new theory of parametric variation is developed to explain certain differences between English and Japanese. Under a syntactic approach to derivational morphology, a fundamental hypothesis is proposed which states that Japanese is a ‘nominal language’, where all verbs are derived from nouns, and thus differs from English, where verbs and their nominal counterparts are derived from common roots in a parallel way. More specifically, it is argued that whereas in English verbs are derived by verbalization of simple roots, in Japanese they are derived by verbalization of nominalized roots. It is proposed that a parameter couched in terms of selectional relations between syntactic heads is responsible for the difference. It is shown that this parametric difference, coupled with syntactic principles, makes it follow that all Japanese nouns are non-θ-markers, which in turn explains unexpected properties related to the distribution of arguments in Japanese nominals. It is also shown that the proposed approach provides a simple account of the properties exhibited by lexical and null arguments in Japanese clauses that would otherwise remain mysterious.

This paper presents cross-linguistic arguments for distinguishing between two types of wh-adverbials: causal how, causal why, and epistemic why pattern together in taking an IP scope, functioning as operators, whereas method how, manner how, and purpose why pattern together in taking a VP scope, functioning as predicates of underlying events. For the former group, there is always a cause-effect relation underpinning their syntactic distributions across languages, which is semantically realized as a causative predicate taking two events as its arguments, i.e., a cause event and an effect event. In a causal question, it is the cause event that is bound by the question operator; in a resultative question, the effect event is bound instead. For the latter group, they surface as conjuncts of main predicates in Tsou, which in turn argues for a neo-Davidsonian treatment of adjunct association in syntax (Parsons 1990). The fact that a conjunctive how can be construed as either a manner/method question or a resultative question in Tsou further argues for an independent semantic module in grammar in the vein of Culicover and Jackendoff (1997).