Prologue to 'Reflections on Syntax'
joseph galasso2021, Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics, vol 101
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Abstract
While Joseph Galasso's new book 'Reflections on Syntax' certainly delivers a fresh attempt at revisiting traditional orthodoxy related to syntax and the generative grammar enterprise, in addition, here enclosed one will also find quite interesting and unorthodox views surrounding concepts of language in general. For instance, the perceived commonsensical view that it is the 'child that acquires language' gets turned on its head with the assertion that it is rather 'language which acquires the child'. This is not a new concept overall, as this has been suggested for the processing behind Creolization. However, such an expansion to child first language gives the flavor of suggesting that there are in reality all these multiple languages 'out there', each falling somewhere along a spectrum from a very basic and prosaic language-state to that of the adult target-state-and that the child's developmental process involves the act of an appropriate language-state being assigned to an appropriate child. These multilanguage-states are all legitimate in their own rights, as they are often observable instantiations of language typologies found across the world's languages (e.g., non-inflectional languages, Pro-drop, non-agreeing languages, etc.). The unique property which governs language has an immense recursive complexity, and it becomes quite difficult to ponder the exact nature of its origins. The unique property which governs recursive syntax is an outlier-it is a black-swan event. <> This book provides a fascinating and highly individual perspective on language. It deals with a wide range of topics including the philosophy of language, its biological basis and evolution, as well as language acquisition, language disorders, language processing and language universals. Andrew Radford, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University of Essex, UK. Galasso builds a beautiful explanatory edifice that, engagingly, weaves together empirical evidence and current abstract theory of grammar in the best tradition of science: it combines "a passion for abstraction with a devotion to detail". Implications for language acquisition, philosophy and every dimension of "biolinguistics" are skillfully incorporated with a core representation of the concept of recursion. It should be very useful for scholars and students alike. Tom Roeper, Professor of Linguistics, UMass, South College.
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My Acknowledgements go out to several people & experiences, all of which have in one way or another helped to inform my understanding of syntax. Noam Chomsky, particularly his Spring 1995 University College London lectures during which he unveiled his Minimalist Program stands out most in my memory. I can still recall the buzz in the room we all felt as young Ph.D. students at the time, as a type-o correction was still being hashed-out, under our breath, over the fresh manuscript—‘correcting an “A-position” to an “Ā-bar position”’, (it seems the bar had failed to be properly inserted in the draft manuscript above the A-argument position, and so we collectively talked about its subsequent correction, the error which was found on so and so page). Or, I can clearly recall another ‘daunting’ question of whether or not Icelandic had certain movement properties? (I don’t think we ever settled that question on the day). Chomsky’s opening remark was: ‘So, I see I have you all on the edge of your seats’ (a real fire-hazard to be sure: the auditorium was so packed that many of us had to squeeze tightly with our neighbor, two to a single seat). I remember Chomsky using the chalk-board only once that bright, London day— to draw a light verb vP with hovering multi specs, [spec>spec>vP…]: as he said, ‘This is now our minimalist theory’: I can still feel the collective jaw-drop in the room. Neil Smith at UCL never failed at the chance to have Chomsky near students whenever he came to London. Andrew Radford (my Ph.D. dissertation supervisor at Essex) knew ‘he was coming’—nothing could have prepared us for such a visit, but it is universally accepted (as he is the Cambridge University Press best-selling author of all Chomskyan syntax), that without Radford, a very large part of the theoretical-syntax community would have been even more desperately lost. Just as we were beginning, I think, to understand GB, we were now being informed to dismantle its very core, eliminating everything that was learned that generation: e.g., Spec-Head relations would surrender to probe-goal relations, AGR projections (AGR-O) would be forever lost to us, the idea that all was to be compressed into a prosaic Merge/Move-operation, etc., and much, much more—such once-prized concepts now being forever relegated to the dusty archives of Government & Binding. I thank Andrew for our wonderful ongoing correspondences, whether or not the topic is minimalist syntax, or just plain maximalist ‘life and such-like’. I thank Harald Clahsen who exposed our Essex research group to the important works of Steven Pinker and Gary Marcus at the time (among so many others who came to give talks on connectionism)…these guys were hot off the press back then. The pending debates with Jeff Elman, and the rest of the Southern California PDP-group, whose leanings towards ‘language as connectionism’ stimulated much of our discussion. My personal correspondences and/or ‘after- talk’ chats with the likes of Neil Smith, Nina Hyams, Alec Marantz and Tom Roeper were always so stimulating that after each of my/their visits, I always felt the impending impulse to immediately go home and draw syntactic trees: yes, light verb vP-trees, (with multi spec positions). I thank all my colleagues of the faculty of linguistics at California State University— Northridge, where I have been a proud part of this fine theoretical department over the past twenty years.
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(Note: These lectures include the 'Four-Sentences'). The chapters contained in this e-book derive from a series of accumulative course lectures given across several semesters to my graduate students of theoretical syntax, as well as to my many undergraduate students of child language acquisition, both at California State University Northridge, as well as Cal State Long Beach where I have lectured as an adjunct professor over the past twenty years. I’d like to thank all my students over the years that have helped shape these lectures. Our collective class discussions have better sharpened my own understanding of these issues. If these lectures in linguistics have improved at all since their first incarnation, it is only because they have benefited from the many discussions, multifaceted argumentation, and the steadfast persistence on seeking-out diverting points of departure on given topics—all respectively instigated by you, my students, over those years. The lectures are immensely Chomskyan in spirit, recursive-syntactic in nature, and are tethered to a framework which takes as the null hypothesis the notion that language is an innate, pre-determined biological system—a system which by definition is multi-complex, human-specific, and analogous to a philosophy highly commensurate of Descartes’ great proverbial adage which announces the calling for a ‘ghost-in-the-machine’. And for those today who wish-way Descartes’ Mind-body dualism as no longer tenable, Chomsky turns the table and suggests that all we have achieved thus far is exorcise the machine (via Newtonian mechanics), we have left the ghost intact. Hence, while philosophical dualism may be no longer tenable, it is not for the typical reasons assigned to the break. Rather, dispensing with a duality, all we are left with is the singular haunting ghost. (Chomsky 2002, p.53). <> Joseph Galasso is on the Linguistics Faculty at California State University, Northridge (and is an adjunct professor of linguistics at California State University, Long Beach). His main research involves issues surrounding early child language development. He is interested in pursuing certain ‘Minimalist Program’ assumptions (Chomsky 1995) which ask how such assumptions might explain observed early stages of morphosyntactic development in Children. His 2016 monograph is entitled ‘From Merge to Move: A minimalist perspective on the design of language and its role in early child syntax’. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, 59. His last monograph in the same theoretical series is entitled ‘Recursive Syntax’ LINCOM, 61.
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Final version available in: K. Allan (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp. 516-531, 2016
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