Evolutionary Linguistic Theory - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2020

This article discusses language universality and language variation, and suggests that there is no feature variation in initial syntax, featural variation arising by metamorphosis under transfer from syntax to PF-morphology. In particular, it explores the Zero Hypothesis, stating that Universal Grammar, UG, only provides two building elements, Root Zero and Edge Feature Zero, zero, as they are purely structural/formal elements with no semantic content in UG. Their potential content is provided by the Concept Mine, a mind-internal but language-external department. UG and narrow syntax has access to the Concept Mine, and this Syntax-Concept Access is unique to humans, a prerequisite for the evolution of language (Section 1). A related idea (also in Section 1) is coined the Generalized Edge Feature Approach, GEFA. It states that Merge always involves at least one edge feature, which precludes symmetric structures and enables Simplest Merge (no Pair-Merge, no Hilbert epsilon operator). The article advocates that there is no syntactic feature selection (Section 2), all syntactic features being universally accessible in the Concept Mine, via Root Zero and Edge Feature Zero. In contrast, there is feature selection in PF (including morphology), yielding variation (Section 3), Gender being a clear example (Section 4). However, there is a widely neglected syntax-to-PF-morphology metamorphosis (Section 5), such that morphological features like [past] are distinct from albeit related to syntactic features like Speech Time. Parameters operate on selected PF features, and not on purely syntactic features, so parameter setting is plausibly closely tied to the syntax-to-PF-morphology metamorphosis (the concluding Section 6). It is suggested that parameters are on the externalization side of language, part of or related to the sensory-motor system, facilitating motoric learning in language acquisition.

It is an old and widespread assumption in historical linguistics that hypotactic structures evolved out from paratactic structures. In more recent times, the parataxis-to-hypotaxis hypothesis was associated with the assumption that syntactic structures are discourse-based. This means that hypotactic structures evolved via syntacticization, i.e., via “a process by which flat, paratactic discourse-pragmatic structures transform over time into tight, hierarchic syntactic structures” (Givón 1979: 82f.). One special aspect of this assumption is that complementizers are held to have grammaticalized from nouns, verbs, prepositions, or pronouns in bi-sentential, paratactic source structures. In this paper, I will re-evaluate the existing evidence for the parataxis-to-hypotaxis hypothesis with special focus on the emergence of complementizers. The result of the re-evaluation is that in all cases, where we have enough historical data to reconstruct the development in detail, we have to assume a source structure that already displays subordination. In most cases, the subordinate clause is a relative clause suggesting that relativization is probably the oldest form of subordination. The over-all result of the re-evaluation is that there is no reliable evidence at all for the parataxis-to-hypotaxis hypothesis in its current form.

This paper offers a review of a current understanding of the content and the form of linguistic roots. It first updates and buttresses the case against semantic content of uncategorised roots and for Late Insertion of roots; then it investigates how native speakers identify roots. More specifically, the idea that roots may be polysemous or may encode the shadow of a denotation, namely the common denominator of the denotations of words derived from it, is refuted on the basis of conceptual and empirical arguments from a number of languages. Subsequently, the existence of a spectrum of content to which roots belong, with roots ranging from contentless to semantically specific and concrete, is also shown to be illusory, and to result from the actual productivity, hence diversity, of the words derived from it. Arguments for Late Insertion of roots are then reviewed and updated, divorcing roots from the forms that realise them. These arguments are systematically combined with the semantic contentlessness of roots in support of Acquaviva’s analysis of them as abstract indices, i.e. as the syntax-internal criteria of lexical identity. This account is taken to its logical conclusion in the final section: if roots are indeed abstract indices, then they cannot be identified either by the semantic content they realise within grammatical structures or by their forms. An account is therefore advanced according to which roots are identified just once by native speakers over their lexicon at a given moment and on the basis of three heuristic principles: one form-based, one based on the feature content and the exponence of the structures in which roots are embedded, and one taking care of root suppletion.

One of the most common ways of morphological marking is affixation, morphemes are classified according to their position. In languages with affixal morphology, suffixes and prefixes are the most common types of affixes. Despite several proposals, it has been impossible to identify solid generalisations about the behaviour of prefixes, in opposition to suffixes. This article argues that the reason is that our traditional definitions of suffix and prefix are based on pre-theoretical, surface criteria that have been given up in other areas of linguistics: defining a morpheme as a prefix does not tell us anything about its grammatical nature, as that label does not take into consideration the structural configuration underlying the morpheme. Once the structural configuration is taken into account, solid generalisations begin to emerge. The article illustrates the advantages of this approach through a study of the interaction between vowel harmony and affixes.