David Adger

Predication and Equation

In this article, we argue that a structural distinction between predicational and equative copular clauses is illusory. All semantic predicational relationships are constructed asymmetrically via a syntactic predicational head; differences reduce to whether this head bears an event variable or not. This allows us to maintain a restrictive view of the syntax-semantics interface in the face of apparently recalcitrant data from Scottish Gaelic.

Merge and Move: Wh -Dependencies Revisited

In this article, we argue that, under current conceptions of the architecture of the grammar, apparentwh-dependencies can, in principle, arise from either a movement or a base-generation strategy, where Agree establishes the syntactic connection in the latter case. The crucial diagnostics are not locality effects, but identity effects. We implement the base-generation analysis using a small set of semantically interpretable features, together with a simple universal syntax-semantics correspondence. We show that parametric variation arises because of the different ways the features are bundled on functional heads. We further argue that it is the bundling of two features on a single lexical item, together with the correspondence that requires them to be interpreted apart, that is responsible for the displacement property of human languages.

A Syntax of Substance

In A Syntax of Substance, David Adger proposes a new approach to phrase structure that eschews functional heads and labels structures exocentrically. His proposal simultaneously simplifies the syntactic system and restricts the range of possible structures, ruling out the ubiquitous (remnant) roll-up derivations and forcing a separation of arguments from their apparent heads. This new system has a number of empirical consequences, which Adger explores in the domain of relational nominals across different language families, including Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Polynesian, and Semitic. He shows that the relationality of such nouns as hand, edge, or mother -- which seem to have as part of their meaning a relation between substances -- is actually part of the syntactic representation in which they are used rather than an inherent part of their meaning. This empirical outcome follows directly from the new syntactic system, as does a novel analysis of PP complements to nouns and possessors. Given this, he argues that nouns can, in general, be thought of as simply specifications of substance, differentiating them from true predicates. A Syntax of Substance offers an innovative contribution to debates in theoretical syntax about the nature of syntactic representations and how they connect to semantic interpretation and linear order.

Language learners privilege structured meaning over surface frequency

Significance How humans represent aspects of the grammar of the languages they speak is a fundamental question in psychology and linguistics. Two kinds of proposals have been made: One posits abstract structural representations, while the other takes the relevant generalizations to be stated over surface statistical regularities from data learners are exposed to. Our results, based on artificial language learning experiments, show that language learners, when confronted with a new linguistic system, systematically privilege structural similarity to their native language over surface statistical similarity. We propose that the relevant structural bias is one that prefers word order and meaning to line up in a particular way. Although it is widely agreed that learning the syntax of natural languages involves acquiring structure-dependent rules, recent work on acquisition has nevertheless attempted to characterize the outcome of learning primarily in terms of statistical generalizations about surface distributional information. In this paper we investigate whether surface statistical knowledge or structural knowledge of English is used to infer properties of a novel language under conditions of impoverished input. We expose learners to artificial-language patterns that are equally consistent with two possible underlying grammars—one more similar to English in terms of the linear ordering of words, the other more similar on abstract structural grounds. We show that learners’ grammatical inferences overwhelmingly favor structural similarity over preservation of superficial order. Importantly, the relevant shared structure can be characterized in terms of a universal preference for isomorphism in the mapping from meanings to utterances. Whereas previous empirical support for this universal has been based entirely on data from cross-linguistic language samples, our results suggest it may reflect a deep property of the human cognitive system—a property that, together with other structure-sensitive principles, constrains the acquisition of linguistic knowledge.

Variation in English syntax: theoretical implications

This article provides an overview of the relationship between studies of syntactic variation in dialects of English and theoretical accounts of language structure. In the first section of the article, we provide a discussion of the place of syntactic variation within various subdisciplines of linguistic enquiry: we address issues such as I- and E-language, the place of Standard English in linguistic theory, and interfaces between traditional dialectology, variationist sociolinguistics, and theoretical linguistics. These interfaces suggest the need for a clarification of the nature and status of the (morpho)syntactic variable, which we provide in section 3; and in section 4, we examine the way in which (morpho)syntactic variation is treated within a number of theoretical models – for instance, Principles and Parameters theory, HPSG, OT, and cognitive linguistics (including Word Grammar and Construction Grammar) – all of which feature in the other articles in this special issue.

Feature Checking Under Adjacency And Vso Clause Structure

This chapter examines the way syntactic features are dealt with by interface systems. The core proposal is that the syntax morphology and syntax semantics interfaces both invoke feature interpretability but that the configurations in which they do so are different: the LF interface interprets syntactic features that are in spec-head or head-adjoined relations, whereas the interface with morphology, interprets syntactic features in adjacency relations. The chapter first outlines a way of conceptualizing syntactic feature checking that treats checking and the locality configurations involved in checking as ways of rendering LF uninterpretable features acceptable to the Conceptual-Intentional interface. It shows how that same conception of feature checking can be applied to morphologically (un)interpretable features, and proposes that a relevant configuration here is one of adjacency. Discussing the problem posed by subjects in VSO structures, the chapter outlines a number of analytical and theoretical problems with McCloskeys analysis. Keywords: adjacency; Conceptual-Intentional interface; LF uninterpretable features; McCloskeys analysis; morphology; VSO clause structure

Introduction; Integrating Genetic and Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Language

Abstract The papers in this special issue of Human Biology address recent research in the field of language evolution, both the genetic evolution of the language faculty and the cultural evolution of specific languages. While both of these areas have received increasing interest in recent years, there is also a need to integrate these somewhat separate efforts and explore the relevant gene-culture revolutionary interactions. Here we summarize the individual contributions, set them in the context of the wider literature, and identify outstanding future research questions. The first set of papers concerns the comparative study of nonhuman communication in primates and birds from both a behavioral and neurobiological perspective, revealing evidence for several common language-related traits in various nonhuman species and providing clues as to the evolutionary origin and function of the human language faculty. The second set of papers discusses the consequences of viewing language as a culturally evolving system in its own right, including claims that this removes the need for strong genetic biases for language acquisition, and that phylogenetic evolutionary methods can be used to reconstruct language histories. We conclude by highlighting outstanding areas for future research, including identifying the precise selection pressures that gave rise to the language faculty in ancestral hominin species, and determining the strength, domain specificity, and origin of the cultural transmission biases that shape languages as they pass along successive generations of language learners.

Special issue on English dialect syntax

This special volume is concerned with the syntax of nonstandard varieties of (mainly British) English, and how such syntactic variation is accounted for within a range of theoretical models. There has been a growing interest in the modelling of dialect syntax (a) in a number of languages and (b) in a number of syntactic theories (see, for instance, the research on syntactic microvariation in some Germanic languages in Barbiers, Cornips & van der Kelij, 2002, or the construction-based approach to variation in Leino & Ostman, 2005). We have brought together five articles written in different theoretical frameworks (Principles and Parameters, Stochastic Optimality Theory, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Word Grammar, and Construction Grammar), together with an introduction written by the editors, who themselves adopt very different theoretical frameworks.

Linguistic explanation and domain specialization: a case study in bound variable anaphora

The core question behind this Frontiers research topic is whether explaining linguistic phenomena requires appeal to properties of human cognition that are specialized to language. We argue here that investigating this issue requires taking linguistic research results seriously, and evaluating these for domain-specificity. We present a particular empirical phenomenon, bound variable interpretations of pronouns dependent on a quantifier phrase, and argue for a particular theory of this empirical domain that is couched at a level of theoretical depth which allows its principles to be evaluated for domain-specialization. We argue that the relevant principles are specialized when they apply in the domain of language, even if analogs of them are plausibly at work elsewhere in cognition or the natural world more generally. So certain principles may be specialized to language, though not, ultimately, unique to it. Such specialization is underpinned by ultimately biological factors, hence part of UG.

Information Structure, Discourse Structure, and Noun Phrase Position in Kiowa1

The Kiowa clause may be divided, on the basis of syntactic theory, into three distinct domains. Although Kiowa is a canonical “free word order” language, we demonstrate that use of these domains is strongly constrained by information-structural and, in some cases, discourse-structural and discourse-pragmatic properties. We analyze these factors, discuss different methodological options for such research, and examine the word order properties of a short glossed text.