Symmetry in the Asymmetric Universe: Remarks on Kayne (2022)

The MIT Press eBooks, 2014

Proceedings of the 15th Amsterdam …, 2005

ASYMMETRIES IN LANGUAGE USE REVEAL ASYMMETRIES IN THE GRAMMAR PETRA HENDRIKS1, HELEN DE HOOP2 & MONIQUE LAMERS2 1CLCG 2CLS University of Groningen Radboud University Nijmegen P. Hendriks@ rug. nl{H. deHoop, M. Lamers}@ let. ru. nl ...

Identity Relations in Grammar, 2014

To my knowledge, Sportiche (1983) makes the first attempt at incorporating the concept of symmetry into transformational generative syntax. It is not until Kayne (1994), however, that the topics of symmetry and asymmetry are seriously examined in generative grammar (For topics related to (a)symmetry in (bio-)linguistics,

Unpublished Ph D. Thesis at University of Southern …, 1998

2008

This paper argues that syntactic brackets are interpreted as prosodic boundaries, which block phonological changes such as Rendaku (sequential voicing) in Japanese, and Lateralization and n-Insertion in Korean. It is pointed out that there are symmetry and asymmetry between left-branching and right-branching structure with respect to their blocking effect. The symmetry of left/right-branching is explained by the mapping theory developed in Tokizaki (1999, 2006). It is argued that the asymmetry of left/right-branching is due to the fact that junctures between words are shorter in left-branching structure than in right-branching structure. This analysis has interesting consequences for possible patterns in phonological changes, the asymmetric nature of syntax, and typological correlations between word orders and syllable structure.

According to the classical view, the nature of the grammar is independent of its use. A puzzle for this view is the observation that in language acquisition production sometimes precedes comprehension. Children who use subject-object status to determine word order in production not necessarily use word order to determine subject-object status in comprehension. On the basis of results from first language acquisition as well as adult sentence processing, we show that the role of grammar in production can be different from the role of the same grammar in comprehension.

Revista Linguíʃtica, 2017

In Syntactic Structures, Chomsky argues for the autonomy of syntax with respect to semantics on the one hand, and phonology on the other. In this paper, we argue that the autonomy of syntax is further supported by the derivation of sometime unpronounced functional categories. We propose an analysis of the pronunciation/silence of coordinate conjunction and prepositions in additive cardinal numerals and time counting expressions. We provide independent justifications for our analysis as well as we identify extensions to recursive DP coordination and co-compounds. The analysis relies on structural asymmetries derived by the computational procedure of the Language Faculty and is enforced by principles of efficient computation.

I discuss the concepts involved in the theory of unmarked word order developed over the last 10 years by G. Cinque. The major necessary addition to the theory as stated by Cinque is the notion of a morphosyntactic class of satellites. The theory is then applied to verb clusters in Germanic. It is shown that clusters consisting of modals, auxiliaries, main verbs, and particles fall nicely under the theory but clusters involving other, more lexical restructuring verbs do not.

Greenberg's (1963) Universal 20 can be roughly summarized as 'fixed word order preceding the head; variable word order following it'. The cross-linguistic distribution of scrambling/case adjacency displays the opposite pattern: there is variable word order preceding the head (scrambling), and fixed word order following it (case adjacency). These generalizations are of course not on a par: Universal 20 describes cross-linguistic word order variation, while scrambling is a language-internal phenomenon. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated that popular analyses of Universal 20 and scrambling/case adjacency are incompatible. This incompatibility can be avoided if (i) the idea of a single functional hierarchy spanning the entire verbal extended projection is rejected (see also Bobaljik 1999), and (ii) the syntax is sensitive to linear order (thus allowing constraints that require some element to precede another). In the resulting proposal, the position of the head is associat...

2009

Holmberg's Generalization (Holmberg 1986) was originally stated to describe the "object shift" phenomena found in the modern Scandinavian languages. This dissertation argues that object shift is merely a subcase of scrambling, a type of adjunction, and that Holmberg's Generalization is a subcase of a universal constraint, the "Generalized Holmberg Constraint" (GHC), which prohibits leftward scrambling across c-commanding functional heads. The existence of such a constraint turns out to have ramifications far beyond the analysis of scrambling itself, and the predictions it makes ultimately form an extended argument in favor of a universal antisymmetric approach to phrase structure (Kayne 1994). The most important evidence for the GHC comes from diachronic data. The study presents quantitative data from the history of Yiddish and English to show that, in cases where a language undergoes major changes in its clause structure, the GHC remains an active and stable constraint in the language, indicating its status as a universal. Once a phrase structure change begins, the resulting variation within a single speech community, and even within individuals, immediately shows the effect of the GHC on scrambling. vii active and stable constraint in the language, indicating its status as a universal. Once a phrase structure change begins, the resulting variation within a single speech community, and even within individuals, immediately shows the effect of the GHC on scrambling. The latter portion of the study argues that the GHC is not merely a constraint on scrambling, but rather a much more general constraint on the way syntactic computations progress, the "Conservation of C-Command." The Conservation of C-Command finds a natural cross-linguistic formulation only if we adopt an antisymmetric approach to languages with head-final phrase structures. This approach turns out to have consequences for a variety of other problems of syntactic analysis, including the West Germanic Verb (Projection) Raising construction and Heavy NP Shift. This dissertation accounts for the typology of scrambling found in the world's languages and during periods of language change, and shows that the way in which scrambling is constrained provides insight into basic properties of phrase structure. In addition, it constitutes an extended argument for the autonomy of syntax: while prosodic and pragmatic considerations favor leftward scrambling in a number of contexts, a language's inventory of functional heads puts a strict upper bound on whether scrambling can respond to these considerations.