Locality In Linguistic Theory

This book explores the implications of a generalized Locality Condition in linguistic theory. The notion that rules of grammar and fundamental relations on linguistic structures are local has been a persistent one in the Extended Standard Theory. We suggest here that locality is in fact a universal constraint that should be abstracted from particular rules and relations and incorporated into the linguistic theory itself.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Locality is a key concept not only in linguistic theorizing, but in explaining pattern of acquisition and patterns of recovery in garden path sentences, as well. If syntax relates sound and meaning over an infinite domain, syntactic dependencies and operations must be restricted in such a way to apply over limited, finite domains in order to be detectable at all (although of course they may be allowed to iterate indefinitely). The theory of what these finite domains are and how they relate to the fundamentally unbounded nature of syntax is the theory of locality. The papers in this collection all deal with the concept of locality in syntactic theory, and, more specifically, describe and analyze the various contributions Luigi Rizzi has made to this area over the past three and a half decades. The authors are all eminent linguists in generative syntax who have collaborated with Rizzi closely, and in eleven chapters, they explore locality in both pure syntax and psycholinguistics. This collection is essential reading for students and scholars of linguistic theory, generative syntax, and comparative syntax.

This book explores the implications of a generalized Locality Condition in linguistic theory. The notion that rules of grammar and fundamental relations on linguistic structures are local has been a persistent one in the Extended Standard Theory. We suggest here that locality is in fact a universal constraint that should be abstracted from particular rules and relations and incorporated into the linguistic theory itself.

Locality and Logophoricity investigates what the distribution of pronominal expressions in various languages can tell us about the structure of the human language faculty. The exploration of this question in the past fifty years has led to the development of a general theory of referential dependency, namely Binding Theory. This book focuses on Condition A of this theory, which concerns referentially dependent expressions such as English herself, French elle-même or Mandarin ziji. Specifically, it tackles an issue of apparent ambiguity presented by many of these reflexives across languages: in a large number of unrelated languages, we observe that the same reflexive form must obey either syntactic constraints or discourse constraints related to perspective. The specific aim of the book is to describe and explain this widespread dual behavior of reflexives. A detailed empirical investigation based mainly on systematically collected French, English, Icelandic, Mandarin, and Korean data leads the author to propose a unified solution to this issue. This proposal has consequences both for Binding Theory and for the theory of logophoricity, which addresses the impact of perspective on linguistic systems.

Standard conceptions of Locality aim to establish that a dependency between two positions may not span too long a distance. This book explores the opposite conception, Anti-Locality: Don't move too close. The model of clause structure, syntactic computation, and locality concerns Kleanthes Grohmann develops makes crucial use of derivational sub-domains, Prolific Domains, each encapsulating particular context information (thematic, agreement, discourse). The Anti-Locality Hypothesis is the attempt to exclude anti-local movement from the grammar by banning movement within a Prolific Domain, a Bare Output Condition. The flexible application of the operation Spell Out, coupled with an innovative view on grammatical formatives, leads to a natural caveat: Copy Spell Out. Grohmann explores a theory of Anti-Locality relevant to all three Prolific Domains in the clausal layer as well as the nominal layer, and offers a unified account of Standard and Anti-Locality regarding clause-internal movement and operations across clause boundaries, revisiting successive cyclicity.

In this ambitious monograph, Manzini organizes and clarifies the voluminous evidence that exists on local dependencies according to a single, unified theory of Locality. Locality is a simpler and more comprehensive alternative to the barriers approach, the antecedent-based approach, and the connectedness approach, subsuming all the major locality principles (Subjacency, ECP, and binding theory) invoked in the other approaches and explaining a set of islands that remain refractory to those approaches.The first chapter defines the empirical problem and provides an overview of the solution; it also introduces the three main alternatives to Locality theory. The second chapter presents Manzini's theory in detail and includes a unification of Subjacency and the antecedent-government clause of the ECP and a unification of the ECP internal disjunction between the antecedent-government and the head-government clause. In chapter 3, Manzini argues for the empirical superiority of Locality, offering data predicting that Complex NP islands, Tense islands, and Definiteness islands all belong to the same fundamental type while multiple WH-islands reflect the fact that at most two overlapping extraction paths are available at any given point in a derivation. The final chapter looks at binding, showing that it can be accounted for under the same Locality principle as movement but without the need for anaphors to move at any level of representation.Maria Rita Manzini is Lecturer in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College, London.

The papers in this volume discuss the current status of the cognitive/neuroscience synthesis in research on vision, whether and how linguistics and neuroscience can be integrated, and how integrative brain mechanisms can be studied through the use of noninvasive brain-imaging techniques. Recent attempts to unify linguistic theory and brain science have grown out of recognition that a proper understanding of language in the brain must reflect the steady advances in linguistic theory of the last forty years. The first Mind Articulation Project Symposium addressed two main questions: How can the understanding of language from linguistic research be transformed through the study of the biological basis of language? And how can our understanding of the brain be transformed through this same research? The best model so far of such mutual constraint is research on vision. Indeed, the two long-term goals of the Project are to make linguistics and brain science mutually constraining in the way that has been attempted in the study of the visual system and to formulate a cognitive theory that more strongly constrains visual neuroscience. The papers in this volume discuss the current status of the cognitive/neuroscience synthesis in research on vision, whether and how linguistics and neuroscience can be integrated, and how integrative brain mechanisms can be studied through the use of noninvasive brain-imaging techniques. Contributors Noam Chomsky, Ann Christophe, Robert Desimone, Richard Frackowiak, Angela Friederici, Edward Gibson, Peter Indefrey, Masao Ito, Willem Levelt, Alec Marantz, Jacques Mehler, Yasushi Miyashita, David Poeppel, Franck Ramus, John Reynolds, Kensuke Sekihara, Hiroshi Shibasaki

An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory offers beginning students a comprehensive overview of and introduction to our current understanding of the rules and principles that govern the syntax of natural languages. Includes numerous pedagogical features such as 'practice' boxes and sidebars, designed to facilitate understanding of both the 'hows' and the 'whys' of sentence structure Guides readers through syntactic and morphological structures in a progressive manner Takes the mystery out of one of the most crucial aspects of the workings of language – the principles and processes behind the structure of sentences Ideal for students with minimal knowledge of current syntactic research, it progresses in theoretical difficulty from basic ideas and theories to more complex and advanced, up to date concepts in syntactic theory

Locality in WH Quantification argues that Logical Form, the level that mediates between syntax and semantics, is derived from S-structure by strictly local movement. The primary data for the claim of locality at LF is drawn from Hindi but English data is used in discussing the semantics of questions and relative clauses. The book takes a cross-linguistic perspective showing how the Hindi and English facts can be brought to bear on the theory of universal grammar. There are several phenomena generally thought to involve long-distance dependencies at LF, such as scope marking, long-distance list answers and correlatives. In this book they are handled by explicating novel types of local relationships that interrogative and relative clauses can enter. Amore articulated semantics is shown leading to a simpler syntax. Among other issues addressed is the switch from uniqueness/maximality effects in single WH constructions to list readings in multiple WH constructions. These effects are captured by adapting the treatment of WH expressions as quantifying over functions to the cases of multiple WH questions and correlatives. List readings due to functional dependencies are systematically distinguished from those that are based on plurality.