Search

This article is a case study in how quantitative-statistical and formal-theoretical (generative) approaches to language variation can be combined. We provide a quantitative analysis of word-order variation in verb clusters in 185 dialects of Dutch and map the results of that analysis against linguistic parameters extracted from the theoretical literature on verb clusters. Based on this novel methodology, we argue that verb cluster ordering in Dutch dialects can be reduced to three grammatical parameters (largely similar to the ones described in Barbiers et al. 2018), and we identify the dialect groups that correspond to the various settings of those parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion note revolves around the early days of generative grammar, that is to say the late 1950s and the 1960s. A number of commentators have claimed that MIT linguists in this period formed an elitist in-group, talking only to each other by means of inaccessible 'underground' publications and thereby erecting a barrier between themselves and the outside world of linguistics. I attempt to refute such claims. We see that the early generativists used every means at their disposal at the time to diffuse their ideas: publishing single-authored books, journal articles, anthology chapters, and technical reports; aiding the writing of textbooks; giving conference talks; teaching at LSA (Linguistic Society of America) Institutes; and hosting numerous visitors to MIT. And in particular, there was no significant 'underground' literature to obstruct the acceptance of the new theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delineates and analyzes the syntactic and semantic parameters of variation exhibited by English FILLER-GAP CONSTRUCTIONS. It demonstrates that a detailed, fully explicit account of the observed variation is available within a framework embracing the notion 'grammatical construction'. This account, which explicates similarities and differences among topicalization, interrogatives, relatives, exclamatives, and comparative correlatives in terms of linguistic types and hierarchical constraint inheritance, is articulated in detail within the framework of SIGN-BASED CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR (SBCG), a version of HEAD-DRIVEN PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR (HPSG) integrating key insights from Berkeley CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR. The results presented here stand as a challenge to any analysis incorporating transformational operations, especially proposals couched within Chomsky's 'Minimalist program'.* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In parasitic gap constructions an illicit gap inside a syntactic island becomes acceptable in combination with an additional licit gap, a result that has interesting implications for theories of grammar. Such constructions hold even greater interest for the question of the relation between grammatical knowledge and real time language processing. This article presents results from two experiments on parasitic-gap constructions in English in which the parasitic gap appears inside a subject island, before the licensing gap. An off-line study confirms that parasitic gaps are acceptable when they occur inside the infinitival complement of a subject NP, but not when they occur inside a finite relative clause. An on-line self-paced reading study using a plausibility manipulation technique shows that incremental positing of gaps inside islands occurs in just those environments where parasitic gaps are acceptable. The fact that parasitic gaps are constructed incrementally in language processing presents a challenge for attempts to explain subject islands as epiphenomena of constraints on language processing and also helps to resolve apparent conflicts in previous studies of the role of island constraints in parsing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses general questions about the organization of grammar via a detailed discussion of a small, but well-explored, area of English: the contraction of want to to wanna. It distinguishes three general approaches to the analysis of wanna: a phonological rule, lexicalization, or a derivational rule. Each approach has a different set of strengths, but they all have weaknesses as well. The article then offers a new analysis in terms of REALIZATION, which combines the strengths of all the previous analyses. This analysis, which is based on the theory of word grammar, accounts not only for all the well-known syntactic and morphological constraints on this contraction, but also for a fact that has not been noted before: that, for some speakers, the last vowel alternates in just the same idiosyncratic way as that of to, which suggests strongly that in some sense wanna contains to as well as want. For these (but not all) speakers, the proposed analysis recognizes two words (sublexemes of WANT and TOinf) at the level of syntax and a single form ({wanna}, containing variants of {want} and {to}) at the level of form; the relations between these words and forms, and between the forms and their phonological realizations, are defined by a declarative network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author presents his comments to critiques about the article "Grammar is grammar and usage is usage." Critiques recognizes that one possible objection to stochastic grammar is by mixing data from different individuals together in a large data set, evidence relevant to the investigation of the mental grammar of particular individuals is potentially obscured. But he then dismisses the importance of the objection. Critiques goes on to argue, that stochastic grammar is supported by the fact that phenomena that are categorial in some languages are simply a matter of statistical preference in others. So, the person of the subject argument cannot be lower than the person of a no subject argument. A consequence is that one never finds first or second person subjects of passives in that language where the agent is in the third person. In English, as it turns out, similar passives are possible, but very rare compared to passives with, say, third person subjects. As they note, a traditional generative model would ascribe the Lummi facts to competence and the English facts to performance. They see this as a lost generalization. In their view, only a model of grammar allowing stochastic constraints can unite the facts in the two languages, assigning them two different points along the same continuum with respect to relations involving grammatical person.