Heine-B.-Cognitive-Foundations-of-Grammar.pdf

2020

PhD Dissertation, University of East London, 2007

Grammar is more than just order and hierarchy; it is a way of expressing complex multidimensional schemas in one dimension. The need to communicate these schemas is the concern of language, but how they are communicated is the concern of grammar. Because grammar does not necessarily rely on the preexistence of language, it is possible for the elements of grammar to be prototyped as features of other mental systems before language appears. These elements can then be exapted as needed for language. So the genesis of language and the genesis of grammar do not necessarily need to be considered as a single process.

Johnson analyses Gapping as resulting &om Across-the-Board verb movement fiom conjoined VPs: binding domain (contrast wJ(10) for Gapping): 20. Robinl could speak French [CP before shel could Russian] We point this out primarily because Levin gives the above as the principal argument for not showing PG and Gapping as related. We have seen, though, that we can capture the similarities between the two fiom the fact that they both involve ATB Vto-I, while capturing the important daerences with the claim that the ATE3 proceeds fiom dflerent types of conjuncts. 4. Pseudogapping: NOT a Special Case of VPE Lam& (1 995,1999) has offered an interesting analysis of PG as a special case of Verb Phrase Ellipsis (WE). Here, we show several problems for Lasnik's idea that the new analysis does not face. Lasntk shows PG as a two-step process: 1) overt raising of a verbal complement to [Spec, Agr-oP], followed by 2) WE. So a sample derivation becomes: 2 1. Robin could speak French and [TP Kim could [AGR-OP Italian,-311 However, this forces the prediction that any and all languages with PG must have W E as well. This prediction simply does not bear out: 22. German a. Robin konnte Russiche sprechen bevor Kim Franzoesich konnte could Russian speak before French could 'Robin could speak Russian before Kim could French' b. *Robin ksnne Fisch essen, und Kim k(inne auch W' Ebad.) 'Robin can eat fish, and Kim can also' 23. Latvian a Vina var runat angliski, un v i d var italiani (PG good) She can speak English, and he can Italian b. *Vina var runat angliski, un ving var ari (VPE bad) She can speak English, and he can also Our analysis (apparently correctly) connects PG with Gapping, rather than WE, in the implicational universal. Lasnik's analysis faces other empirical problems as well. Lasnik relies on [Spec, Agr-oP] a s a landing site for the overt movement of the surface right remnant. The following examples, though, prove unlikely candidates for such overt raising: 24. a. You behaved shamefully, but I did behaw [ADW bravely] b. This new road will lead to Clovis, and that one will lette [PP to Fresno] c. Robin is likely to win, and Kim is k k l y [IP to lose] d. Pat may believe now that every cloud has a silver lining, but she will tomorrow believe [CP that no good can ever come to people in this evil, evil world] None of the above bracketed elements has Case or Agreement features normally associated with AgrP. If one loosens the concept of the role of Agr-oP @amk appeals to an EPP feature checked there), problems remain. Adverbs do not make good subjects, so the (a) form would not seem to allow raising to [Spec, Agr-oP]. In (d), we see an extraposed clausal complement, which cannot have [Spec, Agr-oP] as its landing site. Furthermore, contrary to the expectations of Las~uk's analysis, PG and W E differ in important empirical ways. For instance, PG shows island effects, whereas W E does not: 25. a. Robin can speak Russian, and I know [a fXend [who can ff3ettk &&kl&m too]] b. *Robin can speak Russian, and I know [a friend [who can ff3ettk Italian]] 26. a. Robin will fascinate the children, and I believe [the claim [that Kim will too]] b. ?*Robin will fascinate the children, and I believe [the claim [that Kim will hsektik the adults]] For us, the illformed PG examples fall out under general constraints on movement. Since W E does not involve movement, no such problem exists. Also, as Levin (1 986:54) notes, WE readily allows for more than one supporting auxiliary, while PG does not. The following contrast: 27. a. Robin has been playing the oboe, and Kim has been phyk&w eeee too b. ?*Robin has been playing the oboe, and Kim has been p h p g the bassoon 28. a. Pat could have been drinking beer, and Kim could have been. . €lmhgk% too b. *Pat could have been drinking beer, and Kim could have been gin Lasnik equates PG with VPE and hence cannot explain the above contrasts. For us, PG involves V-to-1 movement. We take I as including TP and Agr-sP. Note that to amve at the (b) forms above, the ATB Verb movement would have to have as its landing site a projection below IP (perhaps an Asp head position) The degradation follows, then, from a suboptimal landing site. 5. Conclusion Pseudogapping and Gapping are the same, but different. They are the same in that they both involve ATB V-to-I movement; they are different in that PG shows asymmetric ATB movement. Our unification of PG as essentially a marked type of Gapping enables us to make a number of correct predictions, and avoids the set of problems facing's Lasnik's VPE-spirited analysis of PG.

Language, 2005

2007

1980

These papers deal with a variety of topics bearing on modality in a variety of languages and language families. While-all languages have ways of expressing modality, that is, such notions as possibility, necessity, and contingency, this phenomenon has been the object of little systematic linguistic analysis. These papers are presented with the hope that they will stimulate comments from the profession.

Linguists often act as if they had to choose between different approaches or frameworks or research communities, and sometimes these choices appear as "commitments" or firm beliefs. In particular, structuralists, functionalists and generativists have often regarded each other's work as if the approaches were competitors rather than potentially complementary. Here I note that they can be complementary and that there is no reason for ideological divisions in the field of linguistics. However, it is important to keep structural analyses distinct from biocognitive explanations, as these have often been conflated.

On Nature and Language, 2002

Editors' introduction: some concepts and issues in linguistic theory 1 The study of language in a biological setting Dominant linguistics paradigms in the first half of the twentieth century had centered their attention on Saussurean "Langue," a social object of which individual speakers have only a partial mastery. Ever since the 1950s, generative grammar shifted the focus of linguistic research onto the systems of linguistic knowledge possessed by individual speakers, and onto the "Language Faculty," the species-specific capacity to master and use a natural language (Chomsky 1959). In this perspective, language is a natural object, a component of the human mind, physically represented in the brain and part of the biological endowment of the species. Within such guidelines, linguistics is part of individual psychology and of the cognitive sciences; its ultimate aim is to characterize a central component of human nature, defined in a biological setting. The idea of focusing on the Language Faculty was not new; it had its roots in the classical rationalist perspective of studying language as a "mirror of the mind," as a domain offering a privileged access to the study of human cognition. In order to stress such roots, Chomsky