Syntactic Categories: Their Identification and Description in Linguistic Theories (Oxford Surveys in Syntax and Morphology)

Syntactic Categories

OX F O R D S U RV EYS I N S Y N TA X A N D M O R PH O LO G Y general editor: Robert D. Van Valin, Jr, Heinrich-Heine University and the University at Buffalo, State University of New York advisory editors: Guglielmo Cinque, University of Venice; Daniel Everett, Illinois State University; Adele Goldberg, Princeton University; Kees Hengeveld, University of Amsterdam; Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh; David Pesetsky, MIT; Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge; Masayoshi Shibatani, Rice University; Andrew Spencer, University of Essex; Tom Wasow, Stanford University published 1. Grammatical Relations Patrick Farrell 2. Morphosyntactic Change Olga Fischer 3. Information Structure: The Syntax-Discourse Interface Nomi Erteschik-Shir 4. Computational Approaches to Syntax and Morphology Brian Roark and Richard Sproat 5. Constituent Structure (Second edition) Andrew Carnie 6. Processing Syntax and Morphology: A Neurocognitive Perspective Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Matthias Schlesewsky 7. Syntactic Categories Gisa Rauh in preparation The Acquisition of Syntax and Morphology Shanley Allen and Heike Behrens The Phonology–Morphology Interface Sharon Inkelas Complex Sentences Toshio Ohori Argument Structure: The Syntax–Lexicon Interface Stephen Wechsler

Syntactic Categories Their Identification and Description in Linguistic Theories

GISA RAUH

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Gisa Rauh 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922496 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 978–0–19–928142–8 (Hbk.) 978–0–19–928143–5 (Pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents General Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Categories and categorization in linguistics 1.2 Subject matter, aims, and outline 2 The traditional parts of speech Introduction The grammar of Dionysius Thrax The parts of speech in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ The traditional parts of speech in selected grammars of the nineteenth century 2.5 Parts of speech as semantic categories 2.6 Problems with the traditional parts of speech 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

3 The American Structuralists’ approach: Syntactic categories as distributional classes 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Introduction Language as an object of scientific study Towards a description of the structures of languages Identifying syntactic categories Inconsistencies and problems concerning the identification of syntactic categories

4 Syntactic categories in early Generative Grammar 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

Introduction Aspects of the Chomskyan theory of language On the organization of a Generative Grammar: two examples Syntactic categories and universal grammar Reducing the set of categories Universal vs. language-specific syntactic categories

5 Categories, features, and projections

x xi xiii 1 1 8 13 13 14 17 20 24 28

31 31 34 36 41 48 54 54 57 60 68 73 76 82

5.1 Introduction

82

5.2 A modular theory of grammar: the Theory of Principles and Parameters

84

vi

contents 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.2.4

General theoretical considerations On determining the D-structure of sentences On deriving S-structure, LF, and PF Some important questions

5.3 X-bar theory: on X 5.3.1 The origin of X-bar theory and the identification of major (lexical) categories 5.3.2 Towards a motivation of the categorial features 5.3.3 Including minor categories 5.3.4 Identifying functional categories 5.4 Lexical and functional categories and the licensing of constituents 5.4.1 Licensing complements and specifiers of lexical heads 5.4.2 Licensing specifiers of functional heads 5.4.3 Licensing complements of functional heads vs. licensing functional heads in extended projections of lexical heads 5.4.4 A modified u-theory and the licensing of functional heads and adjuncts in projections of lexical heads 5.5 Morphosyntax and syntactic categories 5.5.1 Morphosyntax, word order, and the splitting of IP 5.5.2 Splitting CP and yet more functional categories 5.5.3 Consequences for the identification and description of syntactic categories 5.6 Features, checking, and syntactic categories 5.6.1 Introductory remarks 5.6.2 An outline of the MP 5.6.3 Syntactic categories in the MP 5.7 Feature-based representations of syntactic categories in the PPT and the MP 6 Syntactic categories, functional features, and feature structures

84 87 89 92 93

93 96 98 102

107 108 110

113 115 120 120 124 127 129 129 131 136

141 150

6.1 Introduction

150

6.2 A lexical-functional approach to language

153

6.2.1 Considering language universal and language particular needs 6.2.2 On generating annotated c-structures

153 155

contents 6.3 Syntactic categories in LFG 6.3.1 Functional features and the description of lexical and functional categories 6.3.2 Conditions on c-structures and their impact on the description of syntactic categories 6.4 HPSG as a system of signs 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.4.3 6.4.4

Feature structures On deriving feature structures of type word in the lexicon Syntactic principles and rules Instead of transformations

6.5 Syntactic categories in HPSG 6.5.1 Feature structures and the description of syntactic categories 6.5.2 Some examples as illustration 6.6 Feature structures and syntactic categories in LFG and HPSG 7 Notional approaches to syntactic categories and Cognitive Grammar

vii 161

162 165 169 171 175 178 183 186

186 190 196

206

7.1 Introduction

206

7.2 Parts of speech, syntactic categories, and notionally-based categorization

209

7.3 Cognitive Grammar as a usage- and meaning-based alternative to formal grammars

214

7.3.1 General assumptions 7.3.2 Grammatical constructions: symbolization, categorization, and integration 7.3.3 Prototypical and non-prototypical component and clause structures 7.4 Towards an identification of syntactic categories in Cognitive Grammar 7.4.1 Basic and non-basic grammatical categories 7.4.2 Grammatical constructions and distribution 7.5 Some problems in the identification of syntactic categories 8 A notional-feature basis for syntactic categories in a Localist Case Grammar 8.1 Introduction

215 220 229

237 237 250 257

264 264

viii

contents

8.2 Notional features and the description of word classes

268

8.2.1 Basic word classes or ‘primary categories’ 8.2.2 Intermediate primary categories 8.2.3 Secondary categories

269 271 274

8.3 Subcategorizations and redundancies in the lexicon

279

8.3.1 Categorial selection of complements and by retro-complements 8.3.2 Functor features specifying valencies 8.4 Building syntactic structures 8.4.1 Syntactic projection 8.4.2 Building surface structures 8.5 Syntactic categories in a Localist Case Grammar

280 282 288 289 290 298

8.5.1 General assumptions, inconsistencies, and problems 8.5.2 Extensions and revisions

299 305

8.6 Notional approaches to syntactic categories and the question of category structure

313

9 Syntactic categories and language typology

322

9.1 Introduction

322

9.2 Investigating linguistic categories in language typology

325

9.2.1 Parts of speech or ‘word classes’ 9.2.2 Syntactic categories or parts of speech? 9.2.3 Lexical and syntactic categories 9.3 A grammatical model for language typology: Dik’s Functional Grammar 9.3.1 General assumptions, aims, and architecture of the grammar 9.3.2 Deriving underlying clause structures 9.3.3 Expression rules 9.3.4 Syntactic categories in FG 9.4 An alternative approach: Role and Reference Grammar 9.4.1 9.4.2 9.4.3 9.4.4

Syntactic structures Logical structures and semantic representations The linking system Syntactic vs. lexical categories in RRG

325 332 339

345

346 348 351 355 359 359 369 374 378

contents 9.5 The special situation of language typology 10 Syntactic categories and parts of speech: Two types of linguistic categorization 10.1 Syntactic categories in linguistic theories: results and conclusions 10.2 Parts of speech as cognitive lexical categories References Author Index Subject Index

ix 383

389 389 396 401 425 428

General Preface Oxford Surveys in Syntax and Morphology provides overviews of the major approaches to subjects and questions at the centre of linguistic research in morphology and syntax. The volumes are accessible, critical, and up to date. Individually and collectively they aim to reveal the field’s intellectual history and theoretical diversity. Each book published in the series will characteristically contain: (1) a brief historical overview of relevant research in the subject; (2) a critical presentation of approaches from relevant (but usually seen as competing) theoretical perspectives to the phenomena and issues at hand, including an objective evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to the central problems and issues; (3) a balanced account of the current issues, problems, and opportunities relating to the topic, showing the degree of consensus or otherwise in each case. The volumes will thus provide researchers and graduate students concerned with syntax, morphology, and related aspects of semantics with a vital source of information and reference. In Syntactic Categories: Their Identification and Description in Linguistic Theories, Professor Gisa Rauh surveys a wide range of linguistic theories, investigating and discussing their identification and description of syntactic categories – the building blocks of sentences and the units of grammatical analysis. Her critical examination offers a systematic account of syntactic categories, provides insights into the functioning of various grammatical models, and deals with formal as well as functional theories of language and with language typology. Robert D. Van Valin, Jr General Editor University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Heinrich Heine University, Du¨sseldorf

Acknowledgements This book owes its existence to a number of people who have directly or indirectly contributed to the making of it. The first person to be mentioned is Robert D. Van Valin, Jr, the general editor of the series, who decided on its topic and its author. I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to write this book. It was quite a challenge but a rewarding one. Next I would like to thank Hans Thilo Tappe, whose wide-ranging and at the same time detailed knowledge of linguistic theories made him the best discussion partner I could have had concerning all linguistic matters. He has accompanied every section of this book with valuable comments and suggestions which without doubt have contributed to its quality. My thanks also go to Leah Bauke, Stephanie Goethe, and the members of various advanced linguistics classes in the English department at the University of Wuppertal who studied selected chapters of this book and in particular ensured that my discussions were clear and convincing. The comments they made were very valuable. The book has also profited from the expertise of Helga Helmich and above all Colin Foskett. Thank you for your support. For the preparation of the final version of the manuscript, my thanks go to Matthias Naumann and in particular to Boris Ku¨hne. It was a relief to know these matters were in good hands. I would also like to thank John Davey, the consultant editor for linguistics at Oxford University Press, for his friendliness, empathy, patience, support, and helpful advice while I was preparing and writing this book. I am extremely grateful to the rheumatologist Helmut E. Stierle, who immediately realized what the problem was when my right hand painfully and mysteriously refused its services. Without his successful therapy I would not have been able to physically finish this book. Last but not least, there are two men to whom I am indebted and who deserve my warmest thanks. The first is my husband, Klaus Peters. He never complained that I had to spend what must have seemed an interminable length of time at my desk. In fact, he encouraged and supported me whenever necessary and wherever possible. His interest in my work has been a constant source of the energy needed to complete a book like this in addition to my duties as a professor.

xii

acknowledgements

The second man I must thank is my former academic teacher, the late Thomas Jefferson Gardner of the University of Go¨ttingen. He was much more to his students than just a professor of linguistics, and it is unfortunate that he did not live to see this book published. I dedicate it to the honour of his memory. Gisa Rauh University of Wuppertal

List of Abbreviations A abl abs Acc, ACC, acc Act Adj, adj Adv, adv AdvP a-fns Ag Agr AgrO AgrOP AgrS AgrSP agt anim AP A-P Arg, ARG argmkp ARG-ST ARP ASP ATN Aux BV C CH

Adjective Ablative Absolutive Accusative Active Adjective Adverb Adverb Phrase Argument Functions Agent Agreement Object Agreement Object-Agreement Phrase Subject Agreement Subject-Agreement Phrase Agent Animate Adjective Phrase Articulatory-Perceptual System Argument Argument-Marking Preposition Argument Structure Argument Realization Principle Aspect Augmented Transition Network Auxiliary Bound Variable Complementizer Chain

xiv

list of abbreviations

CHL C-I cn cntn Comp, comp COMPS conj const CP CS c-selection CSR c-structure D, Det Decl DEF, def Deg deic d-fns dim dir DP D-structure dtv E ECP EPP erg EVID F F0 F1 F2

Computational System of the Human Language Conceptual-Intentional System Common Noun Count Noun Complementizer Complements Conjunction Constant Complementizer Phrase Complex Symbol Categorial Selection Canonical Structural Realization Constituent Structure Determiner Declarative Definite Degree Deictic Discourse Functions Dimension Directive Determiner Phrase Deep Structure Ditransitive Verb Event(uality) Empty Category Principle Extended Projection Principle Ergative Evidential Functor Functional Head First Functional Projection Second Functional Projection

list of abbreviations f-description FG FI Fin Foc f-selection f-structure G Go GP GPSG HPSG I IF I-language Imp infl INT, Int IP LDD LDP LF LFG loc LP LS LSC lxm M masc massn max MLC

Functional Description Functional Grammar Full Interpretation Finite Focus Functional Selection Functional Structure Grade Goal General Principle Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Inflection Illocutionary Force Internal Language Imperative Inflecting Interrogative Inflection Phrase Long-Distance Dependencies Left-Detached Position Logical Form Lexical-Functional Grammar Locative Linear Precedence Constraint Logical Structure Layered Structure of the Clause Lexeme Modal Auxiliary Masculine Mass Noun Maximal Minimal Link Condition/Constraint

xv

xvi

list of abbreviations

Mod MOD MP MP MR N N Neg NOM non-a-fns non-d-fns NP NPIP ntr NUC Num, NUM Obj, OBJ OBLG ocv P P PART pass PER, PERS PF piv Plu pn PoCS PP PPT PrCS Pred, PRED

Modality Modifier Minimalist Program Modifier Phrase Macrorole Noun Referentiability Negation Nominal Non-Argument Functions Non-Discourse Functions Noun Phrase NP-Initial Position Neuter Nucleus Number Object Obligation Object-Control Verb Predicability Preposition Participle Passive Person Phonological Form Prepositional Intransitive Verb Plural Proper Noun Postcore Slot Preposition Phrase Principles and Parameters Theory Precore Slot Predicate

list of abbreviations PredP predp prep PRES proj Pron, pron prox prp Prt prt PSA psp ptv Q, QNT QUE, ques R RDP Rec REF, ref RESTR R-expression RLN RP RRG S scv SEM Sg, SG, sg siv SoA SOV SP Spec, SPR

Predicate Phrase Predicational Preposition Preposition Present Projection Pronoun Proximal Present Participle Particle Partitive Privileged Syntactic Argument Past Participle Prepositional Transitive Verb Quantifier Question Referent Right-Detached Position Recipient Reference Restriction Referential Expression Relation Reference Phrase Role and Reference Grammar Sentence Subject-Control Verb Semantics Singular Strict Intransitive Verb State of Affairs Subject Object Verb Specific Principle Specifier

xvii

xviii

list of abbreviations

srv s-selection S-structure stv sub Subj, SUBJ SVO SYN T TOP, Top TP Tr tu tv UG V VAL VP

Subject-Raising Verb Semantic Selection Surface Structure Strict-Transitive Verb Below Subject Subject Verb Object Syntax Tense Topic Tense Phrase Transitivity Second Person Transitive Verb Universal Grammar Verb Valence Verb Phrase

1 Introduction 1.1 Categories and categorization in linguistics This book is concerned with syntactic categories and thus with a speciWc type of categorization of linguistic items. It seems therefore appropriate to start the introductory chapter with some remarks on categories and categorization, both in general and speciWcally in linguistics. Categorizing is a fundamental aspect of how humans process reality. The formation of categories gives structure to the enormous amount of sensory input. Items that share properties are combined to form groups, and it is these groups that deWne categories. Because of the shared properties of their members, categories enable us to formulate generalizations. In the human perception of reality, the formation of categories thus serves cognitive economy. Insights and statements no longer refer to individual items, but can be generalized to whole groups which are subsumed under categories. Because of their generalizing nature, categories are indispensable in any area of scientiWc study. Any science will quite naturally systematize its object of study. This means, above all, forming categories and describing the relations between them, thereby providing a structure and thus yielding insights into the object of study. When forming categories, it is necessary to establish the basis for their formation and also what purpose they serve, thus showing what generalizations follow from the formation of categories and how these generalizations yield insights into the object of study. However, when considering what linguists say about categories, no clear picture emerges. What is immediately obvious is a variety of terminology, including the terms ‘parts of speech’, ‘word classes’, ‘form classes’, ‘lexical categories’, ‘grammatical categories’, and ‘syntactic categories’. What often remains unclear is whether these terms refer to diVerent kinds of categories or whether they are more or less synonymous.

2

syntactic categories

That the latter is the case with regard to some of these terms is claimed by Haspelmath, among others. He starts his 2001 article ‘Word Classes and Parts of Speech’ by listing ‘the ten traditional categories’ (ibid. 16538), which he calls ‘word classes’, namely Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Pronoun, Preposition/Adposition, Conjunction, Numeral, Article, and Interjection. Haspelmath continues: Besides the term word class, the older term part of speech (Latin pars orationis) is still often used, although it is now quite opaque (originally it referred to sentence constituents). The term word class was introduced in the Wrst half of the twentieth century by structuralist linguistics. Another roughly equivalent term, common especially in Chomskyan linguistics is ‘syntactic category’ (although technically this refers not only to lexical categories such as nouns and verbs, but also to phrasal categories such as noun phrases and verb phrases). (Haspelmath 2001: 16539)

According to this statement, Haspelmath considers the terms ‘word class’, ‘part of speech’, ‘syntactic category’, and ‘lexical category’ to be equivalent or at least ‘roughly equivalent’, and thus to be synonyms or near-synonyms. As far as the terms ‘part of speech’ and ‘word class’ are concerned, linguists are divided over whether these are in fact synonyms, as claimed by Haspelmath, or not. According to BloomWeld, to whom Haspelmath implicitly refers, since it was probably BloomWeld who introduced the term ‘word class’ (cf. 1914: 108), this is not the case. BloomWeld says of the relationship between parts of speech and word classes: ‘The maximum word-classes of a language are the parts of speech of that language’ (1926: 160); and: ‘The term parts of speech is traditionally applied to the most inclusive and fundamental wordclasses of a language’ (1933: 196). From this, it follows that the sets of parts of speech and word classes are not identical. Apart from the parts of speech, there are other ‘less inclusive’ and ‘less fundamental’ word classes. However, Sasse (1993) shares Haspelmath’s view, and refers to a remark on parts of speech by Lyons (1977), which runs as follows: ‘We will assume that every word-lexeme is assigned, in the analysis of any language-system to one, and only one, such class’ (ibid. 423). Sasse’s comment on this is to say ‘we will call such classes word classes’, adding ‘word classes are lexical categories’ (1993: 648). This shows that Sasse not only agrees with Haspelmath’s claim that ‘part of speech’ and ‘word class’ are synonyms, but that, in addition, he shares his view that ‘word class’ and ‘lexical category’ are synonyms.

introduction

3

Aaronson and Ferres (1984) also share this latter view and deWne ‘lexical category’ as ‘the traditional lexical category or form class of words as deWned in dictionaries (e.g. noun, verb)’ (ibid. 21). However, other linguists interpret ‘lexical category’ in a diVerent way, namely as a subset of Haspelmath’s list: e.g. noun, verb, and adjective (e.g. Chomsky 1981: 48; Baker 2003); noun, verb, adjective, and preposition (postposition) (e.g. Chomsky 1986a: 160; Chomsky 1986b: 2; Haegeman 1994: 146; Wunderlich 1996: 2); or noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition (e.g. Radford 1997: 37 f; Haegeman and Gue´ron 1999: 58). These linguists contrast lexical categories with functional categories, which include, among others, complementizers, determiners, pronouns, and auxiliaries (cf. e.g. Radford 1997b: 45). The term ‘word-level category’ is used for what Haspelmath calls ‘lexical category’ in order to distinguish this category type from phrasal categories (e.g. Radford 1988: 56). The synonymy or near-synonymy of ‘lexical category’ (¼ ‘part of speech’) and ‘form class’, as is assumed by Aaronson and Ferres (see above), or of ‘part of speech’ and ‘syntactic category’, as put forward by Haspelmath, is something that BloomWeld would not have accepted. For it was above all BloomWeld – later followed by others, including Lyons (1977: 423 f.) – who took great care to distinguish between parts of speech and form-classes, the latter comprising morphological categories on the one hand, and syntactic categories on the other. This broad classiWcation is a result of the structuralists’ view that morphology and syntax form a continuum and that there is in principle no diVerence between these two domains. In accordance with this view, BloomWeld identiWes ‘numberaYxes’ and ‘Wnite verb expressions’ as examples of morphological and syntactic form-classes (e.g. 1926: 159) and provides the following characterization of a syntactic form-class in a discussion of syntax and syntactic constructions: ‘All the forms which can Wll a given position [in a construction] thereby constitute a form-class’ (1933: 185). Lyons’s characterization is rather similar, arguing in favour of a deWnition of ‘form-class’ ‘in terms of syntactic equivalence’ (1977: 424), and stating: [T]wo forms, fi and fj, are members of the same form-class Fx if and only if they are intersubstitutable (i.e. have the same distribution) throughout the sentences of the language. (ibid.)

Anderson (e.g. 1997) and other linguists would agree with this deWnition of syntactic categories as a subset of form-classes, distinguishing

4

syntactic categories

them from the parts of speech. By contrast, Sasse, and also Haspelmath, not only considers syntactic categories and parts of speech as ‘roughly equivalent’, but apparently as ‘fully equivalent’, for he states: ‘The analysis of syntactic categories was familiar to the traditional grammarians under the title parts of speech’ (1993: 646). The same applies to Croft, who originally described noun, verb, and adjective as ‘syntactic categories’ (1984, 1990, 1991), but later gives the very same description of the very same categories for ‘parts of speech’ (2000, 2001, 2005). The examples selected here, to which others could be added, serve to illustrate that the terms employed for linguistic categories do not give a clear picture. On the one hand, diVerent category labels are used for the same set of items, and on the other, the same category label refers to diVerent sets of items. As is often the case, the confusion is not only a terminological matter. For if there were a clear deWnition for each use of a term, which allowed items and category labels to be assigned to each other, it would be a simple matter to exchange one category label for another and still know what it refers to. However, it is precisely here that one of the problems of linguistic categorization is to be found. For it is the exception rather than the rule to Wnd a clear explanation of the basis on which categories are established, the kind of generalization this categorization expresses, and the insights into language which are thereby gained. What is especially striking is the lack of a recognizable and clearly deWned basis for the categorization of parts of speech, the most traditional and most frequently discussed linguistic categories. Their names and typical representatives are familiar to anyone concerned with language, and the parts of speech roughly correspond to Haspelmath’s list. It is because of this lack of a recognizable and clearly deWned basis that it is not at all clear what generalizations these categorizations are intended to express and what insights into language can be expected. It was above all in the linguistic approach known as structuralism that the basis for categorizing the parts of speech inherited from ancient Greece was criticized as problematic. This was because the traditional criteria for category membership applied to, and by and large applicable to, European languages were not suitable for the identiWcation of analogous categories in non-European languages such as the languages of Native Americans in North America (cf. Boas 1911). Important criticism was Wnally voiced by Gleason (1965: 114 V.). On the

introduction

5

one hand, he demonstrates that diVerent criteria are employed for diVerent parts of speech – for adverbs and nouns, for example, namely the criterion of modiWcation for the former (‘An adverb is a word that modiWes a verb, adjective or another adverb’, ibid. 115) and the criterion of reference as well as the criterion of inXection for the latter (‘A noun is a name of a person, place or thing’ and ‘A noun is a word which forms a plural by adding -s or the equivalent’, ibid.). On the other hand, he shows that items that are traditionally assigned to a part of speech by no means fulWl all these criteria. Thus, although the noun table denotes a thing and is inXected for plural by adding -s, the noun handshake only fulWls the criterion of inXection and denotes an action rather than a thing; and cattle does not fulWl the inXection criterion and denotes a set of items rather than an individual thing. Based on this criticism, Gleason demands that parts of speech be identiWed and described on the basis of a uniform set of criteria. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to comply with this demand. Yet this has failed to lead to a greater degree of clarity, as there are now competing proposals, each oVering a uniform basis but incompatible with the others. Thus, on the one hand there are proposals that advocate a notional basis for the description of parts of speech (e.g. Lyons 1966), and on the other hand there are approaches that favour a syntactic basis (e.g. Emonds 1987). There is also a proposal claiming that parts of speech express discourse functions (Hopper and Thompson 1984) and another which instead identiWes them as expressions of propositional acts (e.g. Croft 2000). As a result, it has become even less clear what kinds of insights are to be gained into language by the identiWcation of parts of speech, ultimately raising doubts about the point of identifying parts of speech at all. Others as well as Gleason have noted that the traditional criteria for assigning linguistic items to a speciWc part of speech are not fulWlled by all the items that are usually included as members of this part of speech, and this has given rise to new questions instead of providing answers to old ones. One consequence is for the internal structure of parts of speech and thus for the structure of linguistic categories in general. Until the 1970s, it was taken for granted that categories should be deWned following the classical, Aristotelian approach, i.e. referring to a Wxed set of necessary and suYcient features that are exhibited by all the members of a category, with category membership determined on the basis of such a Wxed set of features.

6

syntactic categories

Fillmore (1975) compares such a procedure to checking features on a ‘checklist’. The results of various experiments led the cognitive psychologist Rosch (e.g. 1973a,b, 1977a,b, 1978; Rosch and Mervis 1975) to postulate a diVerent basis for the human categorization of the real world, and thus for the formation of cognitive categories. According to her, cognitive categories do not correspond to a set of entities featuring identical criterial properties. Instead they exhibit a prototype structure. This implies that such categories have a core, represented by the prototype, which displays the characteristic properties of this category, and is thus its best exemplar. Other members of the category are arranged around this prototype and associated with it by ‘family resemblance’. This term used by Rosch and Mervis (cf. 1975: 575 V.) is based on Wittgenstein’s statements on categorial structures and the relationship between members of a category (1953 [2001]: 27e f.), statements which had previously received little attention. ‘Family resemblance’ here expresses the idea that entities share several or only one property with each other and/or with the prototype, but that they do not share all the relevant properties. The prototype is commonly seen as occupying a central position, and entities that are located in its vicinity share properties with this prototype, while entities that are located at a greater distance from the prototype share properties with those category members that are closer to the prototype, and so forth (cf. e.g. Givo´n 1989: 39). The most extreme case within such a prototype approach is that two entities do not share any property and exhibit membership of the same category only by sharing properties with other entities of that category. It is also the case that categories of this kind do not have clearly deWned boundaries. Transitions between categories are smooth, the result being that it is perfectly justiWable to claim that entities at the adjacent peripheries of two categories can be members of either of these two categories. It is above all the prototypes that are responsible for perceiving prototype categories as distinct ones. The assumption of such a type of categorization for linguistic categories was Wrst suggested by LakoV (1987: 58 V.) and then by Taylor (1989 [1995]). It is above all Taylor who discusses the categorial structure of ‘grammatical categories’ in greater detail, which according to him include ‘word classes – the traditional parts of speech’ and ‘syntactic categories like noun phrase’ (1989 [1995]: 183). He takes up the problem mentioned by Gleason (see above), namely that not all the items that are assigned to grammatical categories such as noun or

introduction

7

adverb exhibit all the properties associated with these categories, and he proposes a solution to this problem by assuming that these categories have a prototype structure. Thus, grammatical categories have ‘a prototype structure, with central members sharing a range of both syntactic and semantic attributes’ (ibid. 196). Following prototype theory, other category members can then share properties either with the central members or with one another, but in no case do they have to exhibit all the properties of the central members. This view of the structure of linguistic categories has now become widespread, but it raises new questions, since Taylor subsumes both ‘word classes’ or ‘parts of speech’ and ‘syntactic categories such as noun phrase’ under the label ‘grammatical categories’. This alignment, together with Taylor’s comments, clearly indicates that he follows Haspelmath in not distinguishing between word classes and syntactic categories that are represented by words rather than by phrases. If, on the other hand, such a distinction is made, an important question arises regarding whether or not the assumption of a prototype structure for categories, which seems at Wrst glance convincing for the traditional parts of speech, is also appropriate for syntactic categories. Can it be concluded that the formation of linguistic categories is made on the basis of prototypes because this corresponds to human categorization, as shown by Rosch’s experiments? Although this book is expressly devoted to syntactic categories rather than to the parts of speech, the fuzziness and uncertainties found with regard to the latter are nevertheless of special relevance for a number of reasons. On the one hand, as indicated above, some linguists assume that the terms ‘part of speech’ and ‘syntactic category’ are almost synonymous, i.e. that the traditional parts of speech and syntactic categories are more or less the same. On the other hand, various attempts have been made to describe parts of speech on a syntactic basis and thus as syntactic categories. Finally, as will be shown in what follows, even when expressly dealing with syntactic categories rather than with parts of speech, the names of the latter (‘noun’, ‘verb’, ‘adjective’, etc.) are used repeatedly. This creates the impression that it is in fact the familiar parts of speech that are meant, and ultimately no distinction is drawn or even recognizable between syntactic categories and parts of speech. For this reason, a book which is concerned with syntactic categories will also have to deal with parts of speech in order to show that parts of speech are not identical to syntactic categories, and perhaps also to show why parts

8

syntactic categories

of speech play such a dominant role in the categorization of linguistic items. Last but not least, issues concerning the ways in which linguistic items are categorized are relevant to the subject matter of the present book, since one question to be answered is whether syntactic categories exhibit a classical, Aristotelian structure with the members of a category sharing all the necessary and suYcient properties of this category, or whether a more appropriate description is based on a prototype structure with a best exemplar displaying all the relevant properties of the category to which other, less ‘suited’ members of the category are associated via family resemblance. However, what is much more important in a book on syntactic categories is above all an answer to the question of what syntactic categories are and what insights into language as an object of scientiWc study are to be gained by their identiWcation and description. 1.2 Subject matter, aims, and outline The subject matter of this book is syntactic categories and their identiWcation and description in linguistic theories. Syntactic categories are part of the syntactic description of languages, and the syntactic description of languages is concerned with the structure of sentences. Sentences are complex syntactic objects that are composed of less complex syntactic objects. Syntactic tests, which are part and parcel of any introduction to syntax, show that in addition to a phonetically manifested linear order, sentences exhibit a hierarchical structure. Linear order and hierarchical structure together represent the essential aspects of the structure of sentences. This overall structure derives from the positioning of linguistic items in sentences, something that cannot be changed at will, as well as from the relationships between these items. What can in principle be changed, however, are the possibilities for linguistic items to occur in given positions. This means that it is generally not the case that a given position can be occupied by just one particular item. Instead, items in given positions are interchangeable, and where this is possible, the items form a syntactic category. This is the basis for the deWnition of a syntactic category, which Wrst of all refers to individual languages. A syntactic category is the set of linguistic items that can occupy the same positions in the structures of the sentences of a given language.

introduction

9

This is an extensional deWnition which exclusively refers to the extension of a category, i.e. to the set of its members, and for which it is suYcient simply to list these members. In contrast, an intensional deWnition is based on the set of those properties of linguistic items which enable them to be placed in the same positions in the sentence structures of a language. The latter deWnition is the more demanding and the more revealing of the two, since it requires both an identiWcation of the members of a syntactic category and a description of the properties that are relevant for category membership. Finally, such a description provides insights into which units can occur in given positions of sentence structures and which cannot, as well as into the properties that are responsible for this. Accordingly, it can be stated for which properties items must be speciWed in order to be able to occupy given positions in sentence structures. Linguistic items whose membership of syntactic categories is to be determined can be of various kinds. To begin with, they can be words. However, they can also be larger or smaller units, that is, phrases or morphemes. While these are normally units that are phonetically realized, phonetically empty units that are solely represented by semantic and syntactic features can likewise assume positions in (abstract) sentence structures, thus acquiring the status of syntactic categories. Just what units are identiWed and described as syntactic categories can depend on the particular theoretical framework. It will therefore be a major concern of this book to establish what syntactic categories are identiWed and described in the theories under consideration, above all analysing how this is done. Naturally, the identiWcation and description of words as members of syntactic categories will play a central role, since no theory can dispense with such a description of words, which are the basic units of sentences. It is the primary aim of this book to provide an overview of the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories in various linguistic theories. This above all entails establishing the means by which syntactic categories are described in particular theories, i.e. what the criteria are on which the categorial descriptions are based. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that such an overview could limit itself to just giving the category labels or categorial descriptions that are presented in the various theories under the heading ‘syntactic categories’. It is essential to any description of a genuinely syntactic category that items assigned to it on the basis of their description actually fulWl the requirements of being a syntactic category, i.e. such a categorial

10

syntactic categories

description should determine the possible positions of the category members in sentence structures. It is therefore necessary to investigate whether, and if so how, in a given model of grammar based on a particular theory, linguistic items are placed in those positions in sentence structures that are appropriate, and how this is reXected in their categorial description. This requires a discussion of the basic assumptions of the theories presented, as well as of the essential aspects of the models of grammar, in order to show how sentence structures are built within these theories and what role is played by the categorial descriptions. This approach leads to another aim of the present book, which is the evaluation of the theories under consideration with regard to their ability, or at least their potential, to describe syntactic categories, i.e. to describe category membership in such a way that by applying the means provided by the particular grammar the items categorized are placed in appropriate positions. This also includes the question of the appropriateness of descriptions to categorize not only central linguistic items, in particular items from the set of words, but ideally all of them. A critical discussion of the various theories as well as of the categorial descriptions based on these theories is intended to sharpen the reader’s understanding of what exactly syntactic categories are, what they are expected to do, what status they have in a grammar and how they should be designed in order to fulWl their task. In addition, based on the observation made in 1.1 that parts of speech and syntactic categories are often equated and thus even mistaken for one another, this book not only aims to point out that the traditional parts of speech and their descriptions have little to do with syntactic categories, but also to develop an explanation as to why they repeatedly play a role in the context of the description of syntactic categories. This necessitates determining the precise status of parts of speech. The traditional parts of speech are often treated as identical with syntactic categories, and they inXuence the description of syntactic categories even where this is not the case. For this reason, chapter 2 will be devoted to them. It will examine the context in which the traditional parts of speech were developed and the role the properties assigned to them played in their original theoretical and grammatical environment. This will be done by presenting the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ of Dionysius Thrax, dating from the Wrst century BC, and the parts of speech it describes, since this is generally assumed to be the origin of the traditional parts of speech. Chapter 2 will also introduce the

introduction

11

17th-century Port Royal grammar of Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot and the description of the parts of speech in this framework, which is likewise based on ideas dating back to ancient Greece, although a diVerent perspective is taken, thus leading to a diVerent approach. What is pointed out in both cases is that the descriptions of the parts of speech are entirely independent of any syntactic properties. Chapter 3 will give an overview of how American Structuralists criticized traditional grammar and its description of language, including its basis for a categorization of words as parts of speech. Following an outline of what Structuralists considered an appropriate description of language, the approaches put forward by Harris (1951) and Fries (1952) will be presented and examined as two examples of how syntactic categories are identiWed and described as distributional classes. The fourth chapter starts with an introduction to Chomsky’s early views on an adequate linguistic theory that includes language acquisition. It then presents his Wrst two generative models of grammar, i.e. Chomsky (1957) and Chomsky (1965), as well as the descriptions of syntactic categories they provide. The critical evaluation in this chapter will also consider alternative proposals put forward, in particular those of Generative Semanticists. Chapter 5 will continue the discussion of Chomsky’s views on linguistic theory and the models of grammar developed within his framework, including a description of syntactic categories. Special consideration will be given to the Theory of Principles and Parameters and the Minimalist Program. Besides Chomsky’s own approaches (e.g. 1981a, 1986a, 1993, 1995), a large number of complementary proposals will be considered which above all tackle the issue of categorization. The sixth chapter will look at two approaches to the description of grammar that are competitors to Chomskyan views although they are also considered to belong to the formally-oriented theories of language. These are Bresnan’s Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) (1982a,b, 2001) on the one hand and on the other hand Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), developed chieXy by Pollard and Sag (1987, 1994). Here too, the basic theoretical assumptions and the models of grammar are considered Wrst, before analysing and discussing how syntactic categories are identiWed and described within these frameworks. The results of this analysis are then compared with those obtained from the discussions in earlier chapters. Chapters 7 and 8 will focus on linguistic approaches which, unlike those previously considered, expressly advocate a notional basis for

12

syntactic categories

syntactic or grammatical categories. Some general introductory remarks will precede a discussion of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (e.g. 1987, 1991a, 2003), which has a functional rather than a formal orientation, including his description of grammatical categories. This will be followed by a consideration of how syntactic categories can be described in this context. Attention will then turn to Anderson’s Localist Case Grammar (e.g. 1991, 1997, 2006a, 2007) and the way syntactic categories are described here (chapter 8). Unlike Langacker’s approach, Anderson’s theoretical framework is classiWed as a formal one. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of whether a classical or a prototypical structure would be appropriate within notionally based categorial descriptions. The ninth chapter will be devoted to an analysis of the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories within the framework of language-typological research. After an evaluation of various approaches that show a trend in typological research, the discussion will Wrst of all centre on Functional Grammar as developed in particular by Dik (e.g. 1978, 1983, 1997), and on the description of syntactic categories it provides. This will be followed by a critical evaluation of Foley and Van Valin’s Role and Reference Grammar (Foley and Van Valin 1984; Van Valin 1993, 1995, 2005, 2008; Van Valin and LaPolla 1997), including a discussion of how this framework tries to distinguish between syntactic and lexical categories. Chapter 10 will begin by taking up and summarizing developments in the description of syntactic categories as found in the approaches considered in this book, with further discussion of the basis of these approaches. This chapter will also return to the question of the status of parts of speech, presenting an analysis that distinguishes them clearly from syntactic categories but explains their role in connection with the categorization of linguistic items.

2 The traditional parts of speech 2.1 Introduction It is an astonishing fact that, despite radical changes during the last two thousand years in the way languages are described, the traditional parts of speech such as noun, verb, adverb, preposition, and conjunction, still play a dominant role in the categorization of words. What is also astonishing is that this holds true for reference grammars as well as for models of grammar based on rival linguistic theories which otherwise have little in common. Thus, for example, the reference grammars by Quirk et al. (1972, 1985), Huddleston (1984), Alexander (1988), or Huddleston and Pullum (2002) all dedicate whole chapters or subchapters to the characterization of these categories in English. And linguistic theories as different as Generative Transformational Grammar (e.g. Chomsky 1957, 1965), the Minimalist Program (e.g. Chomsky 1995; Radford 1997b), Functional Grammar (e.g. Dik 1991, 1989 [1997a], 1997b), or Cognitive Grammar (e.g. Langacker 1987), to mention just a few, also make use of these categories. The fact that different approaches often use the same label to designate different categories is to begin with unimportant, but will prove to be very significant in the course of this book. It is also remarkable that, despite their often-attested shortcomings for the description of non-Indo-European languages, these traditional parts of speech are repeatedly used here too to serve this purpose (cf. e.g. Schachter 1985; Hengeveld 1992; Croft 2000; Wierzbicka 2000).1 What is especially interesting in this context is the frequent tacit assumption that word classes like noun, verb, adverb, etc. are given units whose existence in the European languages is beyond doubt and that only two questions are of any relevance: first, what are the properties that 1 At this point it is of no importance that the definitions vary. It should only be noted that the traditional parts of speech play an essential role for the identification of word classes.

14

syntactic categories

identify these categories and second, do these categories occur in the language under investigation or not. It is significant for the present discussion that the traditional parts of speech are also typically identified and described as ‘syntactic categories’ (cf. e.g. Emonds 1987; Zimmermann 1990) although they were not introduced into the description of grammar as such, as will be seen in the following. These observations are sufficient reason to start an investigation of syntactic categories in various grammatical theories with a consideration of how the traditional parts of speech were originally seen. In doing this, it is important to examine them not in isolation but in their grammatical context in order to determine their original role. Section 2.2 therefore starts by examining the background to the development of the grammar which introduced the parts of speech and founded the tradition that has lasted two thousand years. This is followed by a description of this grammar. Section 2.3 presents the parts of speech identified in this grammar and explains the basis of their description within it. In section 2.4, two late 19th-century grammars are used as examples to illustrate the fact that about two thousand years later, more or less the same parts of speech are identified and described in more or less the same way. One of the grammars chosen deals with Romance languages and the other with English, and it is demonstrated that successful identification and description of the parts of speech depends on the characteristics of the particular language or languages. This led to the introduction of other criteria for the description of word classes, as section 2.5 explains. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the problems related to the identification of the traditional parts of speech. 2.2 The grammar of Dionysius Thrax The identification and description of parts of speech such as noun, verb, adverb, conjunction, etc. goes back to grammatical descriptions which were developed by philosophers and philologists in Greece before the first century BC, and summed up in the grammar of Dionysius Thrax (170-90 BC), the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯. This grammar was written at the end of the second and the beginning of the first century BC2 and is considered the first comprehensive and systematic grammatical description published 2 Di Benedetto (1958-59, 2000) presents doubts about the authorship of the Te´khne¯ and about when it was written. According to Frede, however, these doubts have been removed: ‘nowadays the text is generally accepted as genuine’ (1977: 52). This view is taken by Wouters (1979: 36) and Erbse (1980) as well. See also the discussion in Robins (1993: 42 ff.).

the traditional parts of speech

15

in the western world. A student of Aristarchus (217-145 BC), Dionysius Thrax was born in Alexandria but because of political unrest later fled to Rhodes, where he taught. He was one of the Alexandrians, and was active in the Greek colony of Alexandria, where in the third century BC the famous library had been established. It was in connection with the establishment of this library that intensive philological activities had begun in Alexandria. One of the aims was to collect, restore, and systematize the great literary works of the past in order to make them accessible for contemporaries and to preserve them for future generations. This required careful work on the original papyruses and led to the development of techniques for editing, which included explanations and interpretations of the texts and thus promoted the development of literary criticism. In general, the great Alexandrians who developed these techniques were themselves writers and thus had a special relationship to the texts they edited. For an understanding of the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯, it is important to know that its grammatical descriptions grew out of language studies which aimed at producing critical editions of texts. The principal aim was to preserve the purity and perfection of the language of writers from the past. It was not until later, when the development of a grammar became an end in itself and grammars were used as pedagogical instruments, that the supposed perfect language of these writers was set as the norm for everyday language use. In order to make the pronunciation of the texts easier, these philologists introduced stress marks and punctuation3 in their editions, subsequently identifying and formulating rules.4 For the formulation of stress rules it was necessary to identify and describe syllables, which in turn required an identification of the sounds of the language. In order to understand and interpret the texts it was important to identify the words which constituted the texts and to determine their meaning. And in order to determine the meaning of words it was often necessary to take into account their origin and their history, which led to the development of etymology. The study of words was a major concern of Aristophanes (257-180 BC), the fourth librarian at the library of Alexandria,5 whose Lexeis 3 Pfeiffer (1968: 180) remarks that the early Ptolemaic papyruses did not have any stress marks and that Aristophanes was the first to place them in Homeric and other texts. 4 According to Pfeiffer (1968: 219), it was Aristarchus (217-145 BC) who in his commentaries gave reasons for his practice of stress placement and punctuation and thus provided the basis for the formulation of rules. 5 The librarians before Aristophanes were Zenodot, Apollonius Rhodius, and Eratosthenes (cf. Pfeiffer 1968: 153 ff.).

16

syntactic categories

established him as a lexicographer. It was also Aristophanes who, when collecting and describing words, discovered recurrent patterns in Greek declensions and set up general rules for their formation. According to him, the regularities discovered were based on the principle of ƺªÆ (‘analogy’). This principle was recognized by his student Aristarchus as a general principle of language, i.e. of stress placement and morphology as well as of interpretation, and it provided an important basis for the grammatical descriptions in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯, the grammar of Aristarchus’ own student Dionysius. The following brief characterization of this grammar demonstrates that the aims of these philologists in their work on editing texts and the insights into language they gained in this context strongly influenced the approach adopted by Dionysius. The Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ starts with a general characterization of a grammar and lists its constituent parts:6 Grammar is an experimental knowledge ( ØæÆ) of the usages of language as generally current among poets and prose writers. It is divided into six parts: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Trained reading with due regard to Prosody. Explanation according to poetical figures. Ready statement of dialectal peculiarities and allusions. Discovery of Etymology. An accurate account of analogies. Criticism of poetical productions, which is the noblest part of grammatic art. (T. Davidson 1874: 326 f.)

In accordance with the elements of a grammar presented above, the first part of the Te´khne¯, which comprises sections 2 to 11, is concerned with matters that relate to reading aloud and thus to aspects of the description of language relevant to its pronunciation: ‘ON READING’, ‘ON TONE’, ‘ON PUNCTUATION’, ‘WHEREIN DOES THE FULL STOP DIFFER FROM THE COMMA?’, ‘ON RHAPSODY’, ‘ON ELEMENTS’(LETTERS’), ‘ON SYLLABLES’, ‘ON LONG SYLLABLES’, ON SHORT SYLLABLES’, ‘ON COMMON SYLLABLES’ (T. Davidson 1874: 327 ff.). A second and final part, sections 12 to 20, deals with words and their categorization on the basis of ‘[a]n accurate account of analogies’ (ibid. 326). In this part, following a definition of the unit 6 The following quotations are taken from the translation by T. Davidson (1874), which is here preferred to Kemp’s translation (1987).

the traditional parts of speech

17

‘word’, definitions and characterizations of eight parts of speech are presented which will be looked at in detail in the next section of this chapter. It should be noted here that syntax is not part of the grammar of Dionysius Thrax since in the Greek grammar of the first century BC syntax did not play any role. In fact, it did not become a concern of grammatical description until three hundred years later in the grammar of Apollonius Dyscolus, which was a further development of Dionysius’ work.7 Without any doubt then, the parts of speech defined in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ cannot represent ‘syntactic’ categories. This, however, does not mean that they do not represent ‘grammatical’ categories, as will be seen in the following. 2.3 The parts of speech in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ In his grammar, Dionysius Thrax describes eight parts of speech: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, and conjunction.8 In order to give the reader of this book as accurate an impression as possible of the definitions and characterizations of these eight parts of speech, these are quoted here in his own words (as translated by T. Davidson 1874): 1. A Noun is a declinable part of speech, signifying something either concrete or abstract (concrete, as stone; abstract, as education); common or proper (common, as man, horse; proper, as Socrates, Plato). It has five accidents: genders, species, forms, numbers, and cases. (ibid. 331) 2. A Verb is an indeclinable word, indicating time, person and number, and showing activity or passivity. The verb has eight accidents: Moods, 7 This does not mean that syntax was altogether unknown at that time. Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC), a contemporary of Dionysius, devoted books 14 to 25 of his grammar De Lingua Latina to syntax. Of the preceding books, six are concerned with etymology (2-7) and six with morphology (8-13). Of the 25 books, only some – books 5 to 10 – have survived (cf. e.g. D. J. Taylor 2000). The completely different structure of this grammar as well as the fact that Varro – unlike Dionysius – distinguishes only four parts of speech (words with case: nouns, including pronouns and adjectives; words with tense: verbs; words with both case and tense: participles; and words without case or tense: particles) strongly suggests that there was no influence in either direction. 8 It is said that it was Aristarchus, Dionysius’ teacher, who was the first to identify eight parts of speech (e.g. Kemp 1987: 171). According to Frede (1977: 55), this claim was first made by Quintilian (book I, chapter 4, paragraph 20), who assigns the identification of eight parts of speech to Aristarchus. Frede points out, however, that it is by no means certain that the parts of speech identified by Aristarchus are identical to those listed by Dionysius since no work on parts of speech by Aristarchus exists.

18

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

syntactic categories Dispositions (voices!), Species, Forms, Numbers, Tenses, Persons, Conjugations. (ibid. 335) A Participle is a word partaking of the nature both of nouns and verbs. It has all the accidents which belong to nouns as well as those which belong to verbs, except mood and person. (ibid. 336) An Article is a declinable part of speech prefixed or subjoined to the various cases of nouns . . . . It has three accidents: Gender, Number, and Case. (ibid.) A Pronoun is a word assumed instead of a noun, and indicating definite persons. It has six accidents: Person, Gender, Number, Case, Form, and Species. (ibid.) A Preposition is a word placed before any of the parts of speech, both in Composition and in Syntax.9 (ibid. 337) An Adverb is an indeclinable part of speech, said of a verb or added to a verb. Of the Adverbs, some are Simple, and others Compound – . . . Some are indicative of time . . . . Some indicate manner . . . ; some, quality . . . ; some, quantity . . . ; some, number . . . ; some, place . . . . Some Adverbs signify a wish . . . ; some express horror . . . ; some, denial or negation. (ibid. 337 f.) A Conjunction is a word binding together a thought in order and filling up the hiatuses of speech. Of conjunctions, some are copulative, some disjunctive, some conjunctive, some præter-conjunctive, some causative, some dubitative, some conclusive, and some expletive. (ibid. 338)

In the text of Dionysius’ grammar, these definitions are followed by further information which, supported by examples, explains the terms introduced and describes the phenomena, making use of further categorial specifications. For example, the definition of ‘Noun’ is followed by an explanation of terms such as Genders, Species, Forms, Numbers, and Cases. With the help of examples, Dionysius then states which genders, species, forms, etc. have to be distinguished. Thus, three categories of Gender[s] are named: ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, and ‘neuter’ (cf. T. Davidson 1874: 331). ‘[P]rimitive’ and ‘derivative’ are distinguished as Species of nouns and verbs (cf. ibid. 331 and 335), and ‘simple, compound and super-compound’ as Forms (cf. ibid.). The category of Number[s] is divided into ‘singular, dual and plural’ (ibid. 332), and that of Case[s] into ‘the right’ (‘nominative’), ‘the generic’ (‘possessive’), ‘the dative’, ‘the accusative’, and ‘the vocative’ (cf. ibid. 333). The verbal category of Mood[s] is divided into ‘Indicative, 9 The term ‘syntax’ at this point is an interpretation by the translator. Kemp, in his 1987 translation, uses the term ‘combination’.

the traditional parts of speech

19

Imperative, Optative, Subjunctive and Infinitive’ (ibid. 335), and that of Disposition[s] into ‘Activity, Passivity and Mediality’ (ibid.). Three Tenses are distinguished – ‘Present, Past, Future’ (ibid. 335) – with a further distinction for ‘Past’ into ‘Imperfect, Perfect, Pluperfect and Aorist’ (ibid.). The definitions and characterizations given here demonstrate that a division into parts of speech is first and foremost based on morphological properties (‘declinable’ (cf. e.g. T. Davidson 1874: 331), ‘indeclinable’ (cf. e.g. ibid. 334)) and – where possible – complemented by semantic ones. This holds for nouns and verbs. In both cases inflectional properties (declinable, indeclinable) are mentioned first, followed by semantic properties. Additional specifications then include inflectional properties (e.g. gender, number, case, mood, tense) as well as properties of derivation and compounding (species, form).10 Apart from their relationship to other parts of speech, participles, articles, and pronouns are exclusively characterized on the basis of morphological properties, primarily on those of inflection. In those cases where no specification of inflectional properties is possible, as is the case with prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, the characterization is either based solely on semantic properties (conjunctions), or on very rudimentary syntactic properties (prepositions ¼ ‘pre-positioned’). The importance of morphological properties is seen again in the characterization of adverbs, where an extensive semantic specification of various types of adverbs is preceded by the statements that an adverb is an indeclinable part of speech and that some adverbs are simple and some are compound. To summarize, it can be noted that the parts of speech introduced in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ are primarily defined on the basis of inflectional properties.11 This explains why adjectives do not occur in the list provided by Dionysius: in Greek they exhibit the same inflectional properties as nouns do and therefore cannot be distinguished from nouns on this basis. They are therefore included in the category of nouns, which altogether comprises 24 classes. Wherever possible, in addition to inflectional properties, further – analogous – morphological and semantic properties are identified. Where necessary, these are 10 No fundamental distinction is made here between inflection and derivation, as is illustrated by the mixed lists of instances of both. 11 This also holds for Varro’s grammar. However, the four parts of speech he lists are exclusively identified on the basis of inflectional properties. Neither derivational nor semantic properties are also considered (cf. D. J. Taylor 2000: 457).

20

syntactic categories

replaced by other properties. Since Greek is a highly inflecting language, it comes as no surprise that analogy as a grammatical principle was first recognized in connection with the visible forms of inflection. In this sense, the parts of speech defined here do represent grammatical categories. Their definition is in accordance with what Dionysius and others considered the guiding principle of grammar: analogy. Analogy is here first seen in inflectional forms and subsequently – but to a much lesser degree – in derivational affixes and semantic properties, and only in the context of prepositions in rudimentary syntactic properties. 2.4 The traditional parts of speech in selected grammars of the nineteenth century The grammar of Dionysius Thrax initiated a tradition which determined the structure and the content of grammars, and not only of pedagogical grammars, up to the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century. The enormous influence of his grammar was greatly assisted by its translation into Latin and its careful application to classical Latin in Remnius Palaemon’s Ars Grammatica in the first century AD. Although this work has not survived, it strongly influenced the development of the theory of grammar in Roman times, especially the much better known and very influential grammar Institutiones Grammaticae by Priscianus (sixth century AD; cf. Arens 1955 [1969]: 32). Remnius Palaemon borrowed Dionysius’ terminology and grammatical descriptions and applied them to Latin. Like Dionysius, he identified eight parts of speech, replacing articles, which do not occur in Latin, by interjections. Except for this difference, the same parts of speech are identified on the same basis, with adjectives and nouns again not distinguished, as in Latin too they exhibit identical inflectional properties. The successful transfer of the grammatical descriptions in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ to Latin encouraged their application to other languages as well. As a result, all the European languages were eventually described on this basis and the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ determined their grammatical description for many centuries. The identification and characterization of the parts of speech in these languages followed Dionysius’ method, although due to language-specific differences, a different emphasis was often placed on the various properties. This ultimately influenced later approaches to grammar and the categorization of words, as can be seen in the following brief consideration of two examples of grammars

the traditional parts of speech

21

written in the nineteenth century. The first one deals with Romance languages and the second with English. It should be pointed out in advance that certain deviations from the traditional Greek approach are a result of the inclusion of syntax. Beginning with the grammars of Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscianus,12 syntax formed the third part of a grammar (after phonetics and accidence) and described the relationships between words in a sentence as well as their grammatical functions. The first example is the Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen by Diez (1836-38), which deals with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Provenc¸al, and Walachian, and thus with languages closely related to Latin. This grammar consists of four books, which are concerned with phonetics (‘Lautlehre’), inflection (‘Wortbiegungslehre’), word-formation (‘Wortbildungslehre’), and syntax (‘Syntax’). Except for the article, which is described in the fourth book as an element that accompanies a noun,13 thus pointing out a syntactic property, all the parts of speech are described with respect to their morphological properties. To begin with, the inflecting parts of speech are identified. These are nouns and adjectives – now distinguished on the basis of their different syntactic properties – numerals and pronouns, all of which are subject to declension, and the verb as a part of speech that is subject to conjugation. The third book lists the derivational properties of these parts of speech, and the fourth book gives their syntactic properties. Diez also identifies adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, classifying them as particles. The fact that these non-inflecting and nondeclining parts of speech are introduced in the third book on the basis of their derivational properties confirms the view that Diez – following Dionysius – defines the parts of speech primarily on morphological 12 In addition to shorter pieces on pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs, etc., Apollonius Dyscolus presented four books on syntax (cf. Apollonius Dyscolus). In his writings on syntax, his aim is to show that language is rule based and that it is the task of syntax to put together words in a pre-determined order to form sentences. He claims that syntax as well as the other areas of grammar is based on the principle of analogy. Blank (2000: 411) calls Apollonius’ works ‘masterpieces of ‘‘analogical’’ grammar’ (cf. also Blank 1994). Thus, Apollonius continued the tradition of the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯. This is also evident from the fact that he took over the eight parts of speech identified by Dionysius without providing a characterization of his own. Apollonius’ account of syntax, which relates to Greek, was applied to Latin by Priscianus in his grammar Institutiones Grammaticae (cf. ‘Priscianus’ in Wissowa 1954: 2328-48). 13 This exception is interesting considering the fact that the languages concerned are descended from Latin. Since Latin does not have an article, no such part of speech is described in grammars of this language.

22

syntactic categories

grounds. This is done first of all on properties of inflection and then on those of derivation.14 In addition – again like Dionysius – Diez mentions semantic aspects, but he does so in passing and in the context of syntactic functions, which were not considered by Dionysius. The resulting list of parts of speech differs slightly from that provided by Dionysius. A first difference concerns the distinction between adjectives and nouns already mentioned, which is based on different syntactic properties. Another difference is taken over from Latin grammars and concerns the identification of interjections as a part of speech. Finally, numerals are introduced as a new part of speech whereas participles no longer appear. Diez thus identifies ten parts of speech altogether. Despite the minor differences pointed out, the enormous influence of Dionysius’ grammar on the characterization of the parts of speech is obvious: morphological properties of form are identified first of all and semantic ones only later, here introduced in the context of syntactic functions. This strong influence, even after about two thousand years, can be explained by the fact that although grammars themselves had become more and more detailed, the approach had hardly changed. It also has to do with the rich morphological properties of the languages described by Diez, which, like Greek and Latin, provide a fairly sound basis for the categorization of words. For the topic of this book it should be noted that Diez follows Dionysius in not describing the parts of speech as syntactic categories but as morphological categories for which in addition syntactic properties are identified. A comparison of Diez’s characterization of the parts of speech in Romance languages with Ma¨tzner’s characterization of the parts of speech in his grammar of English (1880-85) yields interesting results. Ma¨tzner’s grammar, which describes Modern English in three volumes, takes into account earlier stages of the language. It has a similar structure to Diez’s grammar in that the first section is dedicated to phonetics (‘Lautlehre’) and followed by accidence (‘Formenlehre’). Together these form the first part of the grammar called ‘The word’ 14 The division into inflecting and non-inflecting parts of speech and the subdivision of the inflecting ones into those subject to declension and those subject to conjugation is similar to the classification of the parts of speech by Varro (cf. notes 7 and 10). This suggests that there was some influence from this source. The structure of the grammar, however, as well as the inclusion of derivational and semantic properties (and of course the identification of ten rather than four parts of speech) shows that the tradition of Dionysius’ grammar is the dominant one.

the traditional parts of speech

23

(‘Die Lehre vom Worte’). The second and the third parts are concerned with simple and complex sentences respectively (‘Die Lehre von der Wort- und Satzfu¨gung’). The parts of speech are introduced in the section on accidence and thus, at first sight, also seem to be described primarily on morphological grounds. In addition, Ma¨tzner identifies exactly the same parts of speech as Diez: noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun, article, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Unlike Diez, however, Ma¨tzner begins his description of each part of speech with a semantic characterization before turning to morphological properties. Referring to inflectional properties, Ma¨tzner, like Diez, divides the parts of speech into three classes: those that are subject to declension (nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, and articles), those that are subject to conjugation (verbs), and those that are subject to neither (particles: adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections). The semantic characterizations of the latter are supplemented by specifications of their derivational properties. Up to this point there are hardly any differences between English and the languages described by Diez. However, this changes where inflectional properties are taken into account. In particular, the description of the first class shows that in Modern English – as opposed to Greek and Latin and the Romance languages described by Diez – inflectional properties do not really provide a basis for the identification of the parts of speech. Thus, for example, properties of case, gender, and number are described or discussed in connection with nouns, adjectives, numerals, and articles. For English, this makes sense only in a historical context that regards Modern English as the successor of Old English and Anglo-Saxon. This is most obvious with respect to properties of gender. Ma¨tzner points out that in Anglo-Saxon nouns were distinguished morphologically as belonging to one of three genders and he claims that these are preserved in Modern English although not expressed by inflection but recognizable only through the anaphoric use of the pronouns he, she, and it (cf. Ma¨tzner 1880-85: 263 ff.). However, these specifications do not represent morphological properties of the nouns themselves in Modern English and therefore do not serve to identify or distinguish them. The description of case properties, which for Anglo-Saxon in its strong declension reveals four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative, with identical inflectional forms of the nominative and the accusative), has also lost significance in Modern English, where only a genitive

24

syntactic categories

inflectional marker can be identified. Even the discussion of the plural shows that there is not always a specific inflectional form that identifies words as plural nouns. Ma¨tzner explains this by pointing out that some nouns belong to specific semantic classes which have a plural meaning: collective nouns occur in the singular but also have a plural meaning and agree with plural forms in their context. For example, infantry in fifty thousand infantry or fish in when fowls have no feather and fish have no fin (cf. 1880-85: 254). These examples all provide evidence that Ma¨tzner’s identification of the parts of speech in Modern English is not primarily based on morphological properties which are supplemented by semantic ones, but that it is first based on semantic properties to which – where possible – morphological properties are added. Thus, his description of the parts of speech differs significantly from those provided by Dionysius and Diez even though Ma¨tzner – like Diez – introduces them under the heading ‘accidence’, which suggests a definition based primarily on inflection. Although the approach in his grammar clearly follows the tradition founded by Dionysius, it cannot be excluded that Ma¨tzner’s definition of the parts of speech in English was influenced by a different tradition of grammatical description. This tradition is based on philosophical considerations and describes the parts of speech primarily as semantic categories. 2.5 Parts of speech as semantic categories In section 2.2 it was shown that the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ can be considered the product of the scholarly endeavours of philologists to provide critical editions of literary texts. In addition to this tradition of the study of language, a second tradition was developed in classical Greece which had completely different aims. This tradition belongs to the domain of philosophy, more specifically logic, and considers language an expression of thought.15 Its major aim is therefore an analysis of sentences as expressions of thoughts and a description of words as expressions of parts of thoughts. Thus, it is the meaning of words 15 It should be noted here that the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯ itself is also based on this tradition. Given the interest of the philologists, however, it has received a different orientation and thus adopts a different view of the phenomenon language. Comprehensive overviews of the development of grammar in the classical period are provided by Lersch (1838-41), Steinthal (1890-91), as well as more recently by Robins (1951, 1993) and D. J. Taylor (ed.) (1987) or Auroux et al. (eds.) (2000).

the traditional parts of speech

25

which is of primary relevance and their morphological shape is relevant only in so far as it contributes to the meaning. This tradition was initiated by the Sophists in the fifth century BC. It was continued by Plato (429-347 BC)16 and further developed by Aristotle (384-322 BC)17 and the Stoics.18 It finally reached its peak in the seventeenth century with the famous Port Royal grammar, which provides a coherent and comprehensive analysis of language from the point of view of philosophy and logic, and characterizes parts of speech as semantic categories. The Port Royal grammar was written by the theologist and philosopher Antoine Arnauld (1612-94) together with the linguist Claude Lancelot (1615-95), who both worked at the abbey of Port Royal des Champs near Versailles.19 The first edition of this grammar was published in 1660. Its very title indicates its orientation and special 16 The first conscious classification of words into parts of speech is ascribed to Plato and was a division into nouns (Æ) and verbs (æ Æ). According to Plato, nouns and verbs form the two parts of a proposition (cf. Plato Cratylus 399 A-B, 426 E, 429 A, 431 B; Lersch 1838-41 part 2: 8 ff.). Robins states in this context: ‘it is of the utmost importance that the first ‘‘parts of speech’’ or word-classes were isolated on logical and not formal criteria’ (1951: 18). Concerning the characterization of parts of speech by Plato, the reader is also referred to Schmitter (1975, 2000) and Kraus (1987). 17 Aristotle took over the parts of speech ‘noun’ and ‘verb’ identified by Plato and distinguished in addition conjunctions (  Ø), which included all those words which are neither nouns nor verbs (Rhetoric, book 3, chapter 2). Since Aristotle considers parts of speech to bear meaning (cf. Rhetoric, book 3, chapter 12), only nouns and verbs are parts of speech for him in the true sense and ‘conjunctions’ are not. These only serve the function of connecting the parts of speech. On language and thought in Aristotle’s work the reader is referred to Arens (1984, 2000). 18 The most differentiated division into parts of speech before the Alexandrians is provided by the Stoics who, in addition to identifying nouns, verbs, and conjunctions, identified articles and subdivided nouns into proper nouns and common nouns. They also identified ‘secondary grammatical categories’, such as number, gender, case, voice, mood, and tense. Frede (1977) considers the works of the Stoics to be the proper origin of traditional grammar. Since the Alexandrians were able to build on the insights of the Stoics, this view is not implausible. It should be taken into consideration, however, that the analysis of language by the Stoics was designed to serve their interest in logic, whereas traditional grammar is strongly influenced by the philological interests of the Alexandrians. 19 The abbey of Port Royal is known as the home of the religious community of the Jansenists – named after Cornelius Jansen – who followed the doctrine of St. Augustine. Although the members of the community were not monks, they led a monastic existence and dedicated their lives to religion and science. The community was founded by Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, a friend of Jansen’s, who was later known as the Abbe´ de Saint-Cyran. Tsiapera and Wheeler (1993) provide detailed information on the sources and the background of the Port Royal grammar. This grammar was rediscovered by Chomsky, who acknowledges its influence on his own theory of language in Cartesian Linguistics.

26

syntactic categories

characteristic: Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e (General and Rational Grammar).20 It is a general grammar, not one related to a specific language, and it is based on rational considerations. The grammar consists of two parts: ‘Part One: The letters and characters of writing’; and ‘Part Two: The principles and reasons on which the various forms of the signification of words are founded’. These are preceded by a preface and the program of the grammar. This program briefly characterizes the orientation of the grammar and indicates a completely different approach to that of the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯: Grammar is the art of speaking. Speaking is explaining one’s thoughts by signs which men have invented for this purpose. It has been found that the most useful of these signs are sounds and vocals. But because these sounds are transitory, other signs were invented in order to make them lasting and visible; these are the characters of writing which the Greeks called ªæÆÆ (grammata), whence comes the word grammar. Thus one can consider two things in regard to these signs. First, what they are by their nature, that is to say, as sounds and characters. Second, their signification, that is to say, the manner in which men utilize them for signifying their thoughts. We will treat of the former in the first part of this grammar, and of the latter, in the second part. (Rieux and Rollin 1975: 41)

According to the view presented in this program, what is important for the signs of language, and thus also for words, is how they are used to express thoughts. Arnauld and Lancelot start their investigation with the statement that there are three types of operations performed by the human mind: conceiving, judging, and reasoning. Of these, reasoning can be considered an extension of judging and therefore be neglected in an analysis. ‘Conceiving’ signifies ‘the simple attention of the mind to things’, whereas ‘judging’ is a complex operation, namely ‘the affirmation that a thing of which we conceive is such and such, as when, having conceived of what the earth is and what roundness is, I affirm of the earth that it is 20 The following remarks and quotations are based on the translation by Rieux and Rollin (1975).

the traditional parts of speech

27

round’ (ibid. 66 f.). The authors then argue that in order to perform the operations of conceiving and judging, human beings consider it necessary to distinguish words into those which signify the objects of thoughts and those which signify the form and the manner or mode of our thoughts. They identify nouns, articles, pronouns, participles, prepositions, and adverbs as words of the first kind and verbs, conjunctions, and interjections as those of the second kind (cf. ibid. 67 f.). To begin with, Arnauld and Lancelot list exactly those parts of speech identified in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯, adding interjections, which were identified in the Latin version. However, these parts of speech are defined on a completely different basis. Nouns, for example, are divided into substantive and adjectival nouns. Substantive nouns are said to signify substances, such as the earth, the sun, water, or wood, whereas adjectival nouns signify accidents, i.e. ‘the manner or modification of things like being round, being hard or being learned’ (Rieux and Rollin 1975: 69 ff.). Articles are said to determine the signification of common nouns (cf. ibid. 88 ff.), whereas pronouns were ‘invented’ to take the place of nouns (cf. ibid. 92). Prepositions and cases are considered to serve the same function, namely that of indicating relationships that exist between things (cf. ibid. 115), whereas the task of adverbs is to modify and determine the action expressed by a verb (cf. ibid. 121). Signifying ‘affirmation or assertion’ is said to be the principal function of verbs. Their occurrence in a discourse indicates that this is ‘the discourse of a man who not only conceives things, but who judges and affirms them’ (ibid. 122). Participles are characterized as adjectival nouns which signify the same thing as a verb but exclude affirmation (cf. ibid. 151). Conjunctions are characterized as particles which signify ‘the very operation of our minds that joins or separates things, that denies them, that considers them absolutely or conditionally’ (ibid. 168). Interjections, finally, are characterized as words which indicate the ‘emotions of our soul’ (ibid. 169). The characterizations quoted here illustrate that in this grammar semantic criteria are of major importance for the definition of the parts of speech. The reason for this is the explicit claim that it is a general grammar, not one designed for a specific language, i.e. a grammar which establishes a direct relationship between language, perception, and thought and which therefore is universal. What seems problematic in the light of this claim is the fact that in order

28

syntactic categories

to support it, examples are taken from Greek, Latin, and French only, and that the same parts of speech are characterized as those originally identified on the basis of significant morphological properties of Greek and Latin. Therefore, it cannot at least be excluded that the identification of the parts of speech in the Port Royal grammar was greatly influenced by the tradition of the Te´khne¯, and that its two authors – because of the languages chosen for investigation – were not compelled to consider the possibility of there being other relevant semantic categories. As a result, the traditional parts of speech received an additional or alternative method of identification, one with a semantic basis and applicable also to languages which lack rich morphological systems. 2.6 Problems with the traditional parts of speech The preceding sections have shown that there are two trends in the definition of the traditional parts of speech. One initiated by philologists focuses on the form of words, and one based on philosophy and logic uses semantic criteria to form the basis of categorization. The two grammars from the nineteenth century discussed in section 2.4 and selected as representative of many others, quite clearly follow the tradition of the philologically-based Te´khne¯ grammatike¯. This is evidenced by the structure of the grammars and the emphasis placed on the morphological description of the parts of speech. However, an influence of the philosophical tradition cannot be ruled out. On the contrary, it seems highly probable in those cases where a language does not exhibit features corresponding to the morphological properties of Greek and Latin. This holds for Modern English and thus for Ma¨tzner’s grammar and other similar grammars. Such a description of the parts of speech primarily on semantic grounds and only secondarily on the basis of morphological properties can be explained as follows: grammarians have attempted to maintain the tradition that goes back to Dionysius and to describe the parts of speech primarily as morphological categories. This, however, turns out to be possible only for those languages which, like Greek, have a rich system of inflectional morphology, such as Latin and the Romance languages described by Diez. It is impossible for languages which – like Modern English – are poor in inflection. Thus the assumption handed down for centuries that traditional grammar, including the identification and description of parts of speech, is applicable to all languages

the traditional parts of speech

29

and in this sense universal, is not tenable. In this situation, grammarians have fallen back on semantic definitions of the parts of speech as provided by philosophical approaches, as these do not require morphological specifications. What seems problematic, however, is the fact that – as in the Port Royal grammar, which perfected this approach – the same parts of speech are then identified as in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯. This strongly suggests that these parts of speech are not identified on semantic grounds, but that semantic properties are ascribed to these parts of speech and that their identification goes back to the classical grammar of Greek. The result is that the traditional parts of speech are no longer described on a uniform basis. This is true for the same parts of speech in different languages. It also holds for different parts of speech in the same language. And it even holds for the description of the members of a single part of speech in one and the same language, as for example with respect to nouns in English, whose description for some members of the class is based on the inflectional plural marker -s and for others on the semantic property of plurality (e.g. collective nouns). This lack of a uniform basis for the description of the traditional parts of speech has been identified and criticized, in particular by Gleason (1965: 114 ff.). It should be pointed out, however, that this lack of uniformity can be identified as such only in an approach in which morphology, semantics, and syntax are considered as different, autonomous levels or components of a grammar. Originally, i.e. in the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯, this was not the case. There, uniformity was achieved by the general grammatical principle of analogy, which could be instantiated by different – morphological, semantic, or syntactic – properties. These properties together formed the basis for the categorization. Even in traditional grammars like those by Diez, Ma¨tzner, and others, these domains were considered integrated and complementary to each other rather than separate and autonomous. The two observations presented above, i.e. the problems related to the transfer of grammatical description, including parts of speech, from Greek to other languages, and to the lack of a uniform basis for the description of parts of speech, have had consequences for the further development of the theory of grammar and for later approaches to the categorization of words. The former led to radical changes to the concept of a grammar within the framework of structuralism, the latter to endeavours to identify categories of words on a uniform basis within this framework. As the following chapter will

30

syntactic categories

show, it was syntax which was considered as providing this uniform basis. The conclusion to be drawn from this chapter, therefore, is that the traditional parts of speech were not described as syntactic categories, neither when they were originally applied to Greek, nor later in their application to other languages. This naturally also holds for the parts of speech in philosophically-oriented grammars which described them as universal categories on a semantic basis. It was nevertheless important to start the overview of syntactic categories with a consideration of these traditional parts of speech because, as will be seen, they will reappear again and again and often with very different characterizations. It is therefore also important to know about their original status.

3 The American Structuralists’ approach Syntactic categories as distributional classes

3.1 Introduction Towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, a development in the analysis of language emerged in the United States which was to lead to a break with traditional views and to a completely new understanding of grammar. This development was initiated above all by Franz Boas (1858–1942), an anthropologist who investigated the languages of Native Americans and realized that traditional grammar was inappropriate to describe these languages. His examination of the properties of these languages convinced him that each language has its own internal structure and that it is the task of linguists to discover and describe this structure. His introductory chapter of the Wrst part of his Handbook of American Indian Languages, published in 1911, became a highly regarded manifesto of this approach and sparked oV a vigorous movement, Structuralism in American linguistics, which included a radical rejection of traditional grammar and its understanding of language.1 In the preface to the Wrst part of the Handbook, Boas emphasizes his major concern: 1 It should be noted that it was not only American Structuralism but also European Structuralism that broke radically with traditional grammar. European Structuralism was initiated by Ferdinand de Saussure, whose lectures given between 1906 and 1911 were written down by his pupils Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye and published in edited form under the title Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale in 1916. The claims made by Saussure are similar to those of Boas. However, they do not lead to linguistic analyses that are comparable to those of the American descriptivists and distributionalists, whose work is the subject of this chapter.

32

syntactic categories

to call attention . . . to the essential features of the morphology and phonetics of American languages, and to emphasize the necessity of an analytical study of grammar. The object next to be attained by linguistic studies of American languages is a knowledge of their phonetic processes and of the psychological foundations of their structure. (1911: v)

Continuing, he points out the problem of trying to derive and substantiate insights into the structure of these languages using traditional grammar: knowledge of the latter has been obscured by the innumerable attempts to represent the grammar of Indian languages in a form analogous to that of the European grammars. (ibid.)

Then, in the introductory chapter, he leaves no doubt that – in addition to the lack of a systematic way to describe the phonetic systems of languages – it was the identiWcation of parts of speech developed for European languages and transferred to Indian languages that constituted a large part of the problem. On this issue, he Wrst makes the following remark: Grammarians who have studied the languages of Europe and western Asia have developed a system of categories which we are inclined to look for in every language. (ibid. 35)

Following a discussion of the grammatical properties of nouns, pronouns, and verbs in European languages on the one hand and the attempt to identify similar categories in selected American Indian languages on the other, he then presents his conclusion: We conclude from the examples here given that in a discussion of the characteristics of various languages diVerent fundamental categories will be found, and that in a comparison of diVerent languages it will be necessary to compare as well the phonetic characteristics as the characteristics of the vocabulary and those of grammatical concepts in order to give each language its proper place. (ibid. 43)

Explaining the approach applied to the description of the Indian languages in the Handbook, he then makes the following point,

the american structuralists’ approach

33

intending it also to be understood as a recommendation for similar enterprises: No attempt has been made to compare the forms of the Indian grammars with the grammars of English, Latin, or even among themselves; but in each case the psychological groupings which are given depend entirely upon the inner form of each language. (ibid. 81)

This recommendation – as well as the other recommendations and desiderata expressed in the introductory chapter of the Handbook – was Wrst taken up by Boas’s student Edward Sapir (1884–1939)2 and by Leonard BloomWeld (1887–1949). The latter, though not his student, nevertheless considered Boas his mentor.3 As a result of his numerous publications and their programmatic nature, it is BloomWeld who can be seen as the father of American Structuralism, a movement which saw its heyday in the writings of the distributionalists, among them Bernard Bloch, Charles Carpenter Fries, Zellig Harris, Archibald Hill, Charles Hockett, Martin Joos, Henry Lee Smith, George Trager, and Rulon Wells. It was these linguists who, for the Wrst time, developed a concept of syntax as a linear and hierarchical arrangement of elements, something which still today determines our understanding of sentence structure. Accordingly, it is in this context that for the Wrst time genuinely syntactic categories were identiWed. In order to be able to understand and evaluate the identiWcation of syntactic categories within the framework of American Structuralism, section 3.2 introduces the American Structuralist approach to language as a subject of investigation and to the goals of linguistic analysis and contrasts this with the traditional view. Section 3.3 outlines the development of Structuralist grammar with due regard to the methods applied and to the diVerentiation in the various levels in the description of language. This provides the basis for a closer look in section 3.4 at the identiWcation of syntactic categories as distributional classes 2 Edward Sapir, who was born in Lauenburg, Germany and who emigrated to the USA with his parents in 1889, Wrst studied Germanic philology and then received his PhD in anthropology at the Columbia University, where he met Franz Boas. Unlike BloomWeld, who had a greater inXuence on the development of linguistics in America, Sapir always saw language as a cultural phenomenon which among other things encodes cultural diVerences (cf. Sapir 1921). This view of his became known as the ‘Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis’ (cf. e.g. Sampson 1980: 81 V.). Sapir is claimed to have introduced the concept of ‘pattern’ (cf. e.g. Hill 1955: 253), a concept that was very important for Structuralism. 3 This is claimed by Fought (1995: 295). Cf. also Emeneau (1943: 35).

34

syntactic categories

within this framework, considering the approaches of Harris (1946, 1951) and Fries (1952). In conclusion, section 3.5 discusses inconsistencies and problems related to Harris’s and Fries’s identiWcation of syntactic categories as distributional classes. 3.2 Language as an object of scientific study In the previous chapter it was shown that in the Ancient World the study of language, which led to the development of the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯, had the primary aim of preserving in critical editions the purity and perfection of the language used by great writers of the past for future generations. The ‘linguists’ of that time were themselves writers or philologists with a close relationship to literature, who went on to develop their study of famous writers into teaching norms for everyday language use. This set priorities which subsequently determined the subject matter and the character of traditional grammar: the priority of written language over spoken language and the priority of prescribing how language should be used over describing how it is used. Franz Boas found himself in a completely diVerent situation to that of these ‘linguists’ of the Ancient World. As an anthropologist in North America, he was faced with completely unfamiliar languages which had no written form. There were no written texts to investigate sentence for sentence and word for word, texts in which he could analyse and describe words, the relationships between them, and the relationships between their component parts. Instead he was confronted with spoken language used by ethnic groups in their everyday lives which was perceived as a continuum of sounds without obvious sentence or word boundaries. The task of an anthropologist is therefore not comparable to that of a philologist: the former’s task is to consider utterances carefully and to make an accurate phonetic transcription so that they can then be analysed and described. Faced with this task, it was certainly very helpful that Boas had been trained not as a philologist but that before emigrating to the USA in 1886 he had studied mathematics, physics, and geography at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel. He was therefore familiar with the methods of the natural sciences, including careful observation and explicit description. These were the skills which he could and did employ in revealing the grammatical properties of unfamiliar languages.4 In this situation, 4 A good insight into the career of Franz Boas is provided by Kluckhohn and Prufer (1959).

the american structuralists’ approach

35

it was obvious that for Boas – and in contrast to the traditional approach – spoken language had priority over written language and description had priority over prescription. The Structuralists’ approach to language thus had its roots in the tasks that were necessary in this situation and in the incidental scientiWc training of a leading anthropologist, and it was Leonard BloomWeld who raised this approach to the status of a general principle of linguistic description. BloomWeld declared that it was human speech spoken by ‘small and constantly altering groups of individuals, the speech-communities’ (BloomWeld 1925: 3) that was the object of linguistic investigation. He explicitly rejected the practice in traditional grammar of investigating the written language of great writers, insisting that: [w]riting is not language, but merely a way of recording language by means of visible marks . . . always we should prefer to have the audible word.5 (1933: 21)

and adding that: [t]he linguist, on the one hand, studies the language of all persons alike; the individual features in which the language of a great writer diVers from the ordinary speech of his time and place, interest the linguist no more than do the individual features of any other person’s speech, and much less than do the features that are common to all speakers. (ibid. 22)

In a number of programmatic writings – including the articles ‘Why a Linguistic Society?’ (1925), ‘A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language’ (1926) and ‘Linguistics as a Science’ (1930), as well as in his book Language (1933) – BloomWeld stressed the status of linguistics as an independent science and emphasized the similarity of its methods to those of mathematics and physics (cf. e.g. 1925: 2, 1926: 153). According to him, the description of a language starts with the careful observation and transcription of human speech on the basis of Weld work (cf. 1925: 1). It also requires that only what is observable is described. In this context, BloomWeld discusses the advantages of a ‘materialistic’ theory over a ‘mentalistic’ one, and he uses these advantages to justify why he has excluded the description of meaning, 5 This view was shared by Sapir (cf. 1921: 17 V.).

36

syntactic categories

i.e. because it is not observable and therefore can only be described in the framework of a mentalistic theory (cf. 1933: 22 V.). BloomWeld further claims that the scientiWc methods of linguistics require the formulation of postulates, giving the following reasons: it forces us to state explicitly whatever we assume, to deWne our terms, and to decide what things may exist independently and what things are interdependent. (1926: 153)

BloomWeld emphasizes the autonomy of linguistics, whose sole purpose for him lies in the scientiWc description of languages and their individual characteristics. In particular, he stresses the independence of linguistics from the study of literature, thus showing his disapproval of the position adopted by traditional grammar: linguistics cannot be properly viewed as a subsidiary discipline to the study of literature, or paired with it as the ‘linguistic side’ of philology, or even placed in any close connection with the study of Wne arts, of which literary history and criticism form a part. (1925: 3 f.)

These programmatic statements by BloomWeld, who as co-founder of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)6 and as the Wrst editor of its publication Language enjoyed a prominent and inXuential position amongst American7 linguists, had a considerable eVect. They especially inXuenced the so-called ‘distributionalists’, who, after 1945 and building mainly on BloomWeld’s statements in his book Language, were engaged in producing descriptions of the structures of individual languages. 3.3 Towards a description of the structures of languages The requirements related to dealing with completely unfamiliar languages and Franz Boas’s claim that each language has its own internal form and structure which should be discovered and described, together with BloomWeld’s requirement of scientiWc precision, determined the 6 Leonard BloomWeld founded the LSA together with George Melville Bolling when they were both professors at Ohio State University. Cf. in this connection the remarks by Murray (2001). 7 For further information see Fries (1961), Sampson (1980: 62 V.), and Fought (1995: 298 V., 2001).

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37

procedures for producing grammars and in general also the way these grammars were organized. Thus American Structuralists started by collecting examples of spoken language produced by native speakers. The utterances were transcribed and put together to form a corpus. Then the phonetic form of these transcribed utterances was investigated, whereby processes of segmentation and classiWcation revealed the phonological units of the language, and an analysis of the arrangements of these units revealed the phonological system. Accordingly, instructions for linguistic analyses as well as grammars resulting from these started with a treatment of phonetics and phonemics/phonology (cf. e.g. Bloch and Trager 1942; Trager and Smith 1951; Francis 1954), often supplemented by statements concerning the phonotactics or the phonological structures (cf. e.g. BloomWeld 1933; Harris 1951; Hill 1958). The analysis and description of the phonological system of a language was then followed by an analysis and description of recurring groups of phonetic units which clearly had a status of their own and were identiWed as morphemes. These morphemes were recognized as units of a second level of description which, like the level of phonology, had a system of its own with its own regularities.8 Finally, a third level was distinguished, the level of syntax, whose units were composed of simple morphemes and sequences of morphemes. The largest unit of analysis was the sentence.9 American Structuralists disagreed on how morphemes, the units of the morphological level, were to be identiWed. According to BloomWeld (1933: 161 f.), a morpheme was composed of phonemes and had a meaning, the sememe. The sememe was a constant and deWnite unit of meaning which diVered from all other meanings, including all other sememes. Thus, in BloomWeld’s view, the identiWcation of a morpheme was based on the identiWcation of a sequence of phonemes which could be assigned a meaning that was constant and diVerent from all other meanings. This was determined by tests based on questions put to 8 It should be noted here that this diVerentiation into levels was worked out in the course of time. To begin with, it was assumed that sequences of phonemes form morphemes and sequences of morphemes form sentences; as a result just one hierarchically ordered level was described. It is only through a diVerentiation of phones and phonemes as well as of morphs and morphemes that a distinction of levels can be made. 9 A sentence in this context is deWned as an utterance which represents an independent linguistic form ‘not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form’ (BloomWeld 1933: 170). The discussion in Fries (1952: 9 V.) shows that this concept of a sentence is not without problems.

38

syntactic categories

native speakers who decided on the sameness or diVerence in meaning of recurring phoneme sequences. According to BloomWeld, the identiWcation and description of the meanings themselves was not one of the tasks of a linguist.10 BloomWeld’s view that morphemes were recurrent sequences of phonemes with a constant meaning was shared, for example, by Francis (cf. 1954: 164) and Hockett (cf. 1958: 134). However, this view was not shared by Harris (1951) or – following him – by Trager and Smith (1951) or Hill (1958). According to Harris, ‘particular tentatively independent phonemic sequences’ could be identiWed as ‘morphemic segments’ only if they occurred in diVerent environments and if they could substitute for each other in a given environment, thus forming a distributional class (cf. Harris 1951: 160 f.). He explicitly claimed that ‘meaning was not used as a criterion in setting up the morphemic segments’ (ibid. 173). Hill took the same position (cf. 1958: 89 f.), whereas Trager and Smith concede that ‘it is often convenient to use the meanings of utterance fractions as a general guide and short-cut to the identiWcation of morphemes . . . especially . . . in the case of languages that are more or less well known to the analyst’ (1951: 54). American Structuralists also disagreed on whether the levels of morphology and syntax are separate, form parts of a larger whole or should even be seen as one homogeneous system. Whereas Trager and Smith declared themselves in favour of a ‘sharp delimitation of the Welds of morphology (word-structure) and syntax (phrase-structure)’ (1951: 59), BloomWeld (1933: 183 f.), Francis (1954: 31) and Hockett (1958: 177 f.) all viewed morphology and syntax as two parts of the grammar, i.e. as two subsystems of a system between which a clear boundary could not always be drawn. Harris, however, decided not to draw a distinction at all between the two Welds and justiWed this by pointing out that the same procedure was applied to both to yield results (cf. Harris 1951: 262). Irrespective of which of the positions was taken, there was no disagreement concerning the view that complex forms were ‘entirely made up . . . of morphemes’ (BloomWeld 1933: 161). Neither did the Structuralists disagree that their arrangement was not accidental but that linearly ordered sequences of morphemes formed hierarchically ordered constructions, whereby 10 The reason BloomWeld gives is that describing the meaning of linguistic units requires ‘a scientiWcally accurate knowledge of everything in the speakers’ world’ (1933: 139). Since such knowledge is not available to linguists, it cannot – according to BloomWeld – be their task to describe the meaning of linguistic units.

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constructions of smaller morpheme sequences were contained in constructions of larger morpheme sequences (cf. e.g. Harris 1951: 331). An identiWcation of construction types – or structural patterns – of morpheme sequences which was based on the identiWcation of form classes (cf. e.g. BloomWeld 1933; Bloch and Trager 1942; Hockett 1958), morpheme classes or morpheme-sequence classes (cf. e.g. Harris 1951) thus formed an essential part of the analysis and description of the grammatical system of a language. Form classes and morpheme classes or morpheme-sequence classes were deWned in a similar way. BloomWeld, whom Bloch and Trager (1942: 72) as well as Hockett (1958: 162) followed almost word for word, deWned a form class as: ‘All the forms which can Wll a given position thereby constitute a form-class’ (1933: 185). It should be noted that form classes could be morpheme classes or morpheme-sequence classes. Harris drew a distinction between the two, although his deWnition for both was very similar to BloomWeld’s deWnition of form classes. However, Harris’s deWnition employed the concepts of substitution, environment, and distribution, which were very important for his analytical procedure: The morphemes are grouped into morpheme classes, or classes of morphemesin-environments, such that the distribution of one member of a class is similar to the distribution of any other member of that class. These morpheme classes and any sequences of morpheme classes which are substitutable for them within the utterance, are now grouped into larger classes (called position or resultant classes) in such a way that all the morpheme sequences (including sequences of one morpheme) in a position class substitute freely for each other in those positions in the utterance within which that class occurs. (Harris 1951: 363)

The quotations show that in both cases, classes of linguistic units – form classes on the one hand and morpheme classes or morphemesequence classes on the other – were deWned in relation to the positions they can occupy. The positions were in turn deWned in relation to their environments. Form classes or morpheme classes and morphemesequence classes were thus deWned in relation to the set of their possible environments, i.e. their distribution: The distribution of an element is the total of all environments in which it occurs, i.e. the sum of all the (diVerent) positions (or occurrences) of an element relative to the occurrence of other elements. (Harris 1951: 15 f.)

40

syntactic categories

In all cases, therefore, these classes were distributional classes. Since distributional classes that were morpheme-sequence classes had morpheme classes as their constituents and could themselves form larger morpheme-sequence classes, they could be described as hierarchical constructions which represented structures of words as well as structures of phrases and sentences. If the classes identiWed contributed to the construction of words they could be assigned to morphology, and if they contributed to the construction of sentences they could be assigned to syntax. If morphology and syntax were claimed to be two separate levels or two subsystems of one grammatical level, then two types of form classes were distinguished (cf. e.g. BloomWeld 1933: 196; Bloch and Trager 1942: 77). If syntax was not distinguished as a separate level of description, then morpheme classes and morpheme-sequence classes could nevertheless implicitly or explicitly be identiWed as belonging to the domain of syntax and thus as representing syntactic categories. The following section will be devoted to the identiWcation and description of these categories. In summary, the description of the structures of languages and the conception of a Structuralist grammar was based on a corpus of utterances of spoken language, whereby any utterance that is a sentence represented the largest unit of analysis. The description started with an analysis of the phonological units and their arrangements. This was followed by an analysis of the morphological units and their arrangements in words and sentences, resulting explicitly or implicitly in a grammar divided into the levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax. The levels of morphology and syntax were not only linearly but also hierarchically ordered in such a way that each construction consisted of a regular combination of elements at the next lower level. This not only allowed an analysis that moved from morphemes to words and to sentences but in principle also vice versa, i.e. from sentences and words to morphemes via immediate constituents. The latter direction of analysis was suggested by Wells (1947), and Harris considered this a possibility (cf. 1951: 278 V.).11 The description of linguistic structures at the various levels on the basis of observed occurrences of linguistic units and the determination of their distribution without describing their meaning followed the requirement of scientiWc methodology in 11 A discussion of immediate constituents in syntax as well as morphology can be found in BloomWeld (1933: 161, 209 f., 221 f.). The role of an analysis into immediate constituents within the framework of distributionalism is extensively discussed by Fought (2001).

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linguistics as presented in section 3.2. The resulting grammar consisted of a catalogue of linguistic structures (cf. Harris 1951: 3) described in quasi-mathematical formulas.12 3.4 Identifying syntactic categories Whereas BloomWeld determined the direction of American Structuralism and, as far as content is concerned, prepared the ground especially in his book Language, it was above all Harris who developed the scientiWc methods required for the identiWcation and description of linguistic structures (cf. especially 1946, 1951, 1954). This section will outline these methods and will present Harris’s identiWcation of syntactic categories as morpheme classes and morpheme-sequence classes before turning to the (better known) identiWcation of syntactic categories by Fries (1952). In his book Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951: 245 V.), Harris introduces two methods that he Wrst uses for the identiWcation of morpheme classes. Both methods describe morpheme classes as distribution classes, substitution classes or position classes and are claimed to yield the same results. In both cases, the analysis starts by establishing a corpus. In the Wrst method, all the environments in the corpus are determined for each morpheme, taking as the environment the whole utterance in which a morpheme occurs. Then the set of environments of each morpheme is compared to that of all the others. If the environments of individual morphemes are identical, and the morphemes therefore have exactly the same distribution, they form a morpheme class. Since complete identity of environments is very rare and, according to Harris, only approximations to this ideal are found, he formulates conditions which must be met in order to assign a morpheme to a morpheme class. The Wrst of these is that ‘80 per cent of the environments of the one morpheme should be ones in which the other also occurs’ (ibid. 245). A second condition suggested by Harris requires that particular types of diVerence are established among the environments in which morphemes do not substitute for 12 It was often pointed out that the description of linguistic structures exhibits similarities to mathematical formulas; cf. e.g. BloomWeld (1925: 110), Haugen (1951: 213) or Harris (1954: 148). Francis states in this connection: ‘In a way, structural linguistics can be called the mathematics of language study’ (1954: 26). A statement by Joos is evidence that the similarity with mathematics was intended: ‘We must make our ‘‘linguistics’’ a kind of mathematics, within which inconsistency is by deWnition impossible’ (1950: 701).

42

syntactic categories

each other, namely ‘that the morphemes in which the two environments diVer be themselves members of one class by the present method’ (ibid. 246). If, for example, hear and tear do not substitute for each other in the environments I’ll __ the bell and I’ll __ the paper, then they can nevertheless be assigned to the same class if bell and paper have been identiWed as members of the same morpheme class. Thus the categorization of bell and paper as N and the representation of the environments of hear and tear as I’ll __ the N cancel out the diVerences in the environments and both hear and tear can be assigned to the same morpheme class, namely V. In the second method of identifying morpheme classes, the analysis begins by selecting a morpheme in one of the utterances of the corpus. Then a set of morphemes is selected which can all substitute for the Wrst one in this environment. Next, a number of environments are selected into which all these morphemes can be inserted. The list of morphemes and the list of environments are constantly added to. Harris illustrates this procedure with an example (cf. 1951: 250): if the procedure starts by selecting the morpheme see in the environment Did you __ the stuV, then tie, Wnd, etc. can be added to the morpheme list since they can substitute for see. The list of environments can be extended by adding He’ll __ it later, __them for me, please, etc., since all these form possible environments for the morphemes in the morpheme list. Many more items are added to the morpheme list, for example burn, lift, and others, and many more are added to the list of environments, for example I didn’t __ the book or __ing pictures is a bit out of my line. If a new morpheme does not Wt into any of the environments or only into some, or if a new environment is compatible with some but not all the morphemes of the list, then this new morpheme or new environment is excluded from the list and a new list is begun, which is then extended, following the procedure just described. After repeated and detailed applications of this procedure, using various corpora of utterances of the language under investigation, numerous classes of morphemes will result which diVer in size, some of which will overlap with respect to morphemes (e.g. tie, break, etc.), others with respect to environments. Whereas the former leads to an identiWcation of homonyms, the latter is the basis for identifying various sub-classes which can be assigned to some general class. On the basis of the second method characterized above, Harris (1946: 167 V.) identiWes 35 morpheme classes for English, of which 16

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43

aYx classes13 and one class of bound roots14 can be classiWed as categories of the syntax of words, i.e. as belonging to morphology. The remaining 18 are genuine syntactic categories, which comprise the following: N, V, Vb , Vc , Vd , Ve , Vf , Vg , Vh , R, have/be, A, D, T, I, P, &, and B. Of these, the categories Vb to Vh represent sub-classes, whereas the remaining eleven are general classes. The following examples illustrate Harris’s way of describing the categories: N: morphemes which occur before plural -s or its alternants, or after the or adjectives: hotel, butler, gain . . . V: before -ed past or its alternants; before -ing; after N plus should, will, might, etc: go, gain, take, think, will (‘desire’), have, do. We may distinguish several sub-classes such as those listed below, while V without any sub-class mark will be used to indicate all the sub-classes together. Vb: be, appear, become, get, keep, stay, etc. (but not have). These occur between N and adjectives other than V -ing: The stuV will stay fresh. Ve: intransitive verbs which do not occur before N: go, sleep. Vh: verbs which occur before N to V: cause, teach, dare, want (but not make, go): The other kids __ Junior to do it R: between N and V (the V lacking -ing, -ed): NRV occurs initially, or after a list of V including think, guess (I think the boy can win it): will, do, shall, can, may, must, ought (but not to). The -s of 3rd-person-singular concord does not occur with these, nor does -ing. Should can be considered as shall þ -ed, and so on.15 A: between the and N, never before plural -s: young, pretty, Wrst. D: between the and A, but not between the and N: rather, very, now, not. T: before N, or A, or DA, but not before V (unless -ing or -ed or -en follow it): a, my, some. These may all be considered as substituting for the and so forming an article-class. &: conjunctions between any two sequences: and, but (I wanted to go, but couldn’t make it.) . . . 16 B: in -NV /,/ NV or in NV /,/ NV: if, since, as, while (If you go, I won’t). (cf. ibid.) 13 Harris identiWes, for example, the following aYx classes: -Nn: -let, -eer, -er, -ess (playlet, engineer, Londoner, lioness); -Vv: past, 3rd person singular -s (rowed, rows); -Na: -ful, -ish, -th, -’s (beautiful, boyish, sixth, parent’s); and -Av: -en, -ize (darken, solemnize). 14 The category S includes the forms called ‘stems’ by Harris, such as nat- as in native, soci- as in society, or mass- as in massive. 15 In Harris (1957: 299 V.) the notation v (auxiliaries) is introduced, replacing R. 16 In Harris (1957: 298 V.) the notation C for ‘conjunction’ is used rather than &.

44

syntactic categories

A critical examination of the categories identiWed by Harris and of their descriptions will be given in section 3.5. However, it must be pointed out here that Harris concedes that not every member of a category can occur in all the positions in which other members of the category can occur (cf. 1946: 167, fn10) although his criterion for class membership was that ‘for each class there are particular sentence positions which can be Wlled by any member of that class and by these alone’ (ibid. 167). It should also be noted that Harris admits that as well as the morphemes that are classiWed in this way, there are some that cannot be assigned to any of the categories, for example, then, now, and thus, which – according to him – can occur almost anywhere in an utterance. In addition, other morphemes such as yes or no, hello, oh, and similar ones form utterances by themselves (cf. ibid. 169 f.). Harris’s identiWcation of morpheme-sequence classes and morpheme classes yields syntactic categories which can characterize the hierarchic structure of utterances. This method can subsume wordsyntax and syntax proper or it can keep these two areas of analysis separate. His basis for identifying morpheme-sequence classes is the fact that single morphemes which have already been identiWed as members of a morpheme class can substitute for morpheme sequences. This is expressed by means of equations. The morphemesequence classes identiWed by Harris which describe the syntax of English words include, for example, N1-Nn ¼ N1 (e.g. engineer),17 A1-An ¼ N1 (e.g. darkness), A1-Av ¼ V1 (e.g. sharpen), or A1-Aa ¼ A2 (e.g. oldish), with -Nn, -An, -Av and -Aa representing classes of nominal, verbal and adjectival suYxes which combine with N or A as bases. The morpheme-sequence classes identiWed by Harris which describe the syntactic structure of utterances include the following: D A2 ¼ A2: completely false for false in That’s a __ statement. A2 N1 ¼ N1: peculiar fellow for Senator in Isn’t he a __. 17 The introduction of raised numbers is explained by Harris in the following way: ‘we assign raised 1 to each class symbol, say X, when it Wrst appears. Next time the X appears in an equation, we assign it the same number 1 if the equivalents of this X can be substituted for X1 in every equation which has so far been written. If the new X cannot be substituted for all the preceding X1 we number it X2. If we later obtain an X which cannot be substituted for all the preceding X1 or X2, we will number it X3, and so on. If some symbols never go above 1 we can dispense with the raised number for them and merely write the symbol without numbers’ (1946: 170).

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45

A2 A2 N1 ¼ A2 N1: . . . ambitious young, pretty dark, substitutable for funny in She is a __ girl.18 T N2 ¼ N3: the orchestra or these pointless, completely transparent jokes for butter in I don’t like __. Vb1 A2 ¼ have Vb1 -en A2 ¼ Ve2: is gone or has been gone or seems neat or is greyish for comes in He __ now. Vd2 N4 V4 (all under one sentence intonation) ¼ Vd2 N4 ¼ Ve2: know he is for know it in I __ now. The N4 V4 is thus the object of the Vd2. The V4 indicates a full verb phrase, e.g. was as well as is in the example above. (cf. 1946: 171 V.)

The examples show that Harris identiWes syntactic categories at diVerent hierarchical levels and that syntactic categories that are represented by long morpheme-sequences consist of shorter ones or of morpheme classes. Applying the procedure presented above, sentence structures are described starting with morphemes and morpheme classes, i.e. bottom-up. Harris remarks that this procedure can be reversed such that starting with an utterance, immediate constituents can be identiWed and the description of the structure of an utterance derived topdown. Using My most recent plays closed down as an example, Harris illustrates this procedure (cf. 1951: 278 f.): the utterance is divided Wrst into the categories N4 and V4. N4 is then divided into T (my) and N3. N3 (most recent plays) is divided into N2 and -s. N2 (most recent play) is divided into A (most recent) and N2 (play) and A into D (most) and A (recent). V4 (closed down) is divided into V2 and Vv (-ed). V2 (close down) is divided into V1 (close) and Pb (down). This is represented by the following analysis: at the Wrst stage, N4 and V4 at the second stage, T and N3; V2 and Vv at the third stage, T, N2, and -s; Vv, V1 and Pb at the fourth stage, T, A and N2, -s; Vv, V1 and Pb at the Wfth stage, T, D, A and N2, -s; Vv, V1 and Pb . (Harris 1951: 279)

The next chapter will show that analyses like this one demonstrate very clearly the close relationship between Chomsky’s early Generative 18 The equation is presented in this way by Harris (cf. 1946: 172). Actually it should read A2 A2 ¼ A2, since N1 (girl) is given in the environment.

46

syntactic categories

Grammar and the description of syntactic structures by his teacher Harris. However, Chomsky in the early period (i.e. 1957, 1965) prefers a top-down analysis, whereas Harris argues in favour of a bottom-up analysis. His claim is that this approach encounters fewer theoretical problems and that it is more diYcult to Wnd formal criteria for the identiWcation of immediate constituents.19 It should have become clear that Harris’s procedure for an identiWcation of syntactic categories strictly followed requirements of scientiWc methodology. At the same time it is clear that to a large extent he used category names that are identical to those of the traditional parts of speech, e.g. N(oun), V(erb), A(djective), or P(reposition). This was something that tended to cause confusion in subsequent descriptions of syntactic categories, even in the framework of American Structuralism. This will be discussed in section 3.5. Fries (1952) applies the same procedure to identify syntactic categories as distribution classes in English, but he is careful to avoid terminological confusion and introduces new category names, as will now be illustrated. Like Harris, Fries begins his investigations by gathering a corpus of utterances. From this he selects three utterances which can be expanded if necessary and which serve as environments or frames for substitution tests: Frame A: The concert was good (always) Frame B: The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly) Frame C: The team went there (cf. Fries 1952: 75)

Words that can replace one of the words in these test frames are analysed as forming a category with that word. As a result, Fries identiWes 19 categories, of which four are called ‘parts of speech’ or ‘form classes’ and 15 ‘function words’. The categories of the ‘parts of speech’ or ‘form classes’ are called ‘Class 1’, ‘Class 2’, ‘Class 3’, and ‘Class 4’. Words that can replace concert, clerk, tax, or team in the test frames are analysed as Class 1, those that can replace was, remembered,

19 An example that illustrates the problems can be given, based on his analyses. Harris analyses the sequence ambitious young girl as A2 N1 and A2 as A2 A2. More recent approaches would analyse it as A1 and N2 and N2 as A1N1.

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or went are analysed as Class 2, those that can replace good as Class 3 and Wnally those that can replace always, suddenly, or there as Class 4. Fries justiWes the alternative term ‘form class’ by pointing out that members of these four classes may be formally marked: Class 1, for example, by -al or -ism, as in arrival or idealism; Class 2 by en- or -ify, as in enjoy or beautify; Class 3 by -y or -ive, as in cloudy or creative; and Class 4 by -ly or a-, as in noisily or away (cf. Fries 1952: 110 ff.).20 He observes that there is no similar formal way of marking function words, which are identiWed only by their position and thus on the basis of their distribution. Fries identiWes the following categories of function words: GROUP A: words that can replace the in The concert was good GROUP B: words that can replace may in The concert may have been good; three subcategories are distinguished, which may co-occur in examples like The students may (a) have (b) had to (c) be (d) moving GROUP C: not GROUP D: words that can replace very in The concert may not be very good or still in The concert may be still better GROUP E: words that can replace and in The concerts and the lectures are and were interesting and proWtable now and earlier GROUP F: words that can replace at in The concerts at the school are at the top or The dress at the end is dirty at the bottom GROUP G: do/does/did as in Do/did the boys correct their homework promptly and The boy/s does/do not correct his/their homework promptly GROUP H: there as in There is a man at the door and There are men at the door GROUP I: words that can replace when in When was the concert good and When did the student call GROUP J: words that can replace after in The orchestra was good after the new director came GROUP K: well, oh, now, and why as in Well that’s more helpful, Oh I have another suit, Now what group could aVord it, and Why it would be nice if you would GROUP L: yes and no as in Yes I know and No they don’t arrive until eight

20 It should be noted that Fries’s deWnition of ‘form-class’ diVers from that given by BloomWeld. Whereas for BloomWeld ‘form-class’ and ‘position-class’ refer to the same thing, Fries uses the term ‘form-class’ only for those position-classes that can be marked by aYxes that are category-speciWc, such as en-, -er, or -able.

48

syntactic categories

GROUP M: say, listen, and look as in Say I just got on Saturday another letter from P_R_, Listen did you get any shoes, and Look I want to ask you two questions GROUP N: please as in Please take these two letters GROUP O: let’s or let us as in Let’s do the inviting right now and Let us go through the list

(cf. ibid. 88 V.) Fries’s intention in consistently avoiding the traditional labels for parts of speech is to show that these are categories of a diVerent kind, namely quite clearly syntactic categories identiWed on the basis of their distribution. Fries emphasizes that the neutral notation, using numbers and letters, is intended to prevent confusion with the traditional parts of speech, although he concedes that there are similarities between Class 1, 2, 3, and 4 and nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs respectively. He nevertheless insists that they are diVerent (cf. 1952: 87 f.). Like Harris, Fries discusses a description of sentence structures via immediate constituents (ibid. 256 V.). Unlike Harris, however, he does not identify syntactic categories comparable to Harris’s morpheme-sequence classes. 3.5 Inconsistencies and problems concerning the identification of syntactic categories The identiWcation of syntactic categories by Harris and Fries and by other representatives of American Structuralism exhibit inconsistencies and problems which tend to undermine their approach. There are, in particular, two problematic issues. The Wrst one concerns the empirical adequacy of the identiWcation of categories and thus the core of the analysis. The second problem relates to the fact that the terminology used by Harris frequently leads to a confusion of syntactic categories and the traditional parts of speech. The problem of the empirical adequacy of the identiWcation of categories lies in the discrepancy between the theoretical claims and their practical implementation. Fries makes the theoretical claim that syntactic categories are made up of those words ‘that occupy the same ‘‘set of positions’’ in the patterns of English free utterances’ (1952: 74). Due to their Wniteness and accidental make-up, corpora cannot, on principle, yield general statements concerning all the possible positions in a language. However, apart from this general problem of a

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49

solely corpus-based approach, there is a further criticism to be levelled at Fries’s analysis. He limits his view even further by Wrst using only three test frames – allowing expansions and some additional utterances – to determine classes of function words, and moreover inserts only those words into the test frames that occur in his corpus. This yields two types of inadequacy. The Wrst is that almost all of the categories are lists of words that can replace each other in the positions tested, but not necessarily in other positions. Two examples, to which others might be added, will illustrate this. On the basis of substitution in the test frame (The) Class 1 __ good, Fries identiWes is, feels, and becomes, amongst others, as members of Class 2. However, of these only is can occur in the following frame: __ the Class 1 good, e.g. Is the concert good, but not Feels the paper good or Becomes the boy tired. Therefore, is, feels, and becomes do not form a homogeneous distribution class or position class. The second example concerns Class 4. On the basis of his test frames, Fries identiWes, amongst others, conWdently, suYciently, longer, through, and away as members of this class, although only conWdently but not the others can be inserted in other test frames, for example, He __ took the exam. This problem cannot be solved by allowing for subclassiWcation, a solution which Fries suggests for terms like down (¼Class 4a), rapidly (¼Class 4b), and often (¼Class 4c), which can all occur in the frame The men went __ __ __. Fries did not test for membership of subclasses outside the few test frames he used, and if he had, further problems would have arisen, as will be seen below. The fact that Fries tested only words from his corpus to identify categories leads to problems of a diVerent nature. For example, Fries lists words like good, which can be inserted in two positions of the test frame (The) __ Class 1 is/was __, as belonging to Class 3. Other words in his list are necessary, foreign, new, empty, or hard. It is not clear how Fries would have classiWed, for example, former, present, or southern, had they occurred in his corpus, since these can only be inserted in the Wrst, the prenominal position but not in the second predicative one. It is also surprising to Wnd that afraid occurs in the list of Class 3 words (cf. 1952: 83, fn15) as it can only be inserted in predicative position. As a result of the two inadequacies pointed out above, it must be noted that the number of categories identiWed by Fries would be much larger than 19 (¼ 4 parts of speech and 15 function words) if his analysis followed his theoretical claims.

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A similar conclusion can be drawn concerning the number of categories identiWed by Harris who does, however, seem to have been aware of the problem. On the one hand, he claims to identify syntactic categories – or, more generally, morpheme classes – as classes of morphemes which have the same distribution, i.e. which share all their environments. On the other hand, he relaxes this claim when he points out that due to the Wniteness of corpora, morpheme classes can only be approximations to classes of morphemes with identical distribution, and that ‘rough similarities of environments’, e.g. 80 per cent overlap, is suYcient (cf. 1951: 244 f.). Even given this qualiWcation, however, the discrepancy between his theoretical claim and his analysis is problematic. Compare in this context the formulation of Harris’s criterion for the identiWcation of classes to the description of the category I, here quoted in full: [W]e shall set up the following classes of morphemes, on the criterion that for each class there are particular sentence positions which can be Wlled by any member of that class and by these alone. (Harris 1946: 167) I: before or after V, after from, before, but not after A or T or before plural -s: it, all, some, now, here. Some morphemes in this class do not occur after from, before, etc., or after utterance-initial V: he, I. Others do not occur before V unless NV precedes them: me. (ibid. 168)

This description of the category shows that it is by no means the case that ‘particular sentence positions . . . can be Wlled by any member of that class’ (ibid. 167), since the addition of a number of exceptions is part of the description. In section 3.4, it was noted that Harris adds a footnote to his formulation of the criterion for the identiWcation of morpheme classes which considerably weakens it: ‘This does not mean that every member of the class occurs in all the positions in which any other member occurs’ (1946: 167, fn10). The subsequent reference to footnote 5 shows that Harris wanted this note to refer to forms like wire, whose distribution matches the combined distributions of poem and write. By themselves neither poem nor write share all the possible positions of wire. The result is that wire is assigned to two categories, the category N and the category V (cf. ibid. 164, fn5). This, however, raises

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new questions, especially in the light of the description of a category like D: D: between the and A, but not between the and N: rather, very, now, not. Many of these, e.g. now, occur in various positions in the utterance (after V: Don’t look now; before V: He now wishes it weren’t; at the beginning of an utterance, with a level /,/ intonation: Now, what’s up?). Some adverbs, e.g. very, do not occur in most of these positions. When we wish to indicate only the more widely-occurring ones, to the exclusion of very and the like, we write Da. In more detailed analysis, many more sub-classes of D would be necessary. (ibid. 168)

The relevant question here is this: when do diVerent distributions require new categories or classes to be set up, and when do they yield subclasses? What is it, then, that makes very and now members of a single class? Obviously it is not the criterion that they can be inserted in the same positions in sentences, because that is not the case. The reason seems to be the traditional categorization into parts of speech, for these forms traditionally belong to the part of speech ‘adverb’, one which is not at all distributionally homogeneous. In the light of this, it is interesting that Fries provides a completely diVerent categorization of the forms of Harris’s Class D and distributes them among Class 4, Group C, Group D, Group H, Group I, Group J, Group K, and Group L – as Gleason (1965: 129 f.) also noted. Applying his theoretical claims more consistently, Harris would also have identiWed more categories or classes than just one. A comparison of his approach to that of Fries shows that retaining the names of the traditional parts of speech can tend to obscure the fact that these were identiWed on a completely diVerent basis. Harris’s class D is not a distribution or position class but rather the part of speech ‘adverb’, which is obvious from his use of this term (‘some adverbs’) in his description. As will be seen in the following chapters, Harris is not the only one who – at least every now and then – confuses the two types of categorization. This confusion is facilitated by the fact that other Structuralists also call the syntactic categories that they are trying to identify ‘parts of speech’. BloomWeld does so when he states that ‘the syntactic form-classes are described in terms of the parts of speech that appear in them’ (1933: 196). And so do Bloch and Trager (1942: 66 V.) and Francis (1954: 234 V.), who all point out that they will continue to use the traditional name ‘part of speech’ but that it means something

52

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diVerent. Hockett, Wnally, redeWnes the term ‘part of speech’, saying: ‘A part of speech is a form-class of stems which show similar behaviour in inXection, in syntax or both’ (1958: 220). However, re-deWnitions such as this are easily forgotten, and the traditional names potentially trigger the traditional connotations. The identiWcation of syntactic categories by the American Structuralists can be summarized as follows: their aim was to identify and describe categories whose members had the same distribution, i.e. could occupy the same positions in sentences. The method for the identiWcation of these categories is explicit. It is based on transparent discovery procedures. Uncertainties such as the meanings of linguistic units are excluded. As a result, sentence patterns are described which – following Harris’s approach – describe categorially speciWed hierarchical structures. Since this approach is applied to each language separately, diVerent categories and diVerent structures can be identiWed for each language. Harris himself demonstrates this by identifying categories for Hidatsa (1946: 175 V.) and for Moroccan Arabic (1951: 285 V.) which in both cases only partially match those for English. Thus – at least theoretically – Boas’s requirement was fulWlled, namely to do justice to each individual language and to discover its internal structure. What is problematic, however, is that the analyses were carried out on the basis of corpora, which – by their very nature – must be Wnite and therefore cannot yield general statements about a language. Another issue is the fact that if the theoretical claims had been followed consistently, the result would have been quite diVerent from what Harris and Fries present. Above all, the number of categories would have been much larger, ‘a myriad of classes’, as Croft (2000: 82) critically remarks, with many categories consisting of just one member, like Fries’s Group N and Group O. An example of a much larger number of categories is, by the way, provided by Bergenholtz and Schaeder (1977), who identify 51 syntactic categories as distribution classes for German. However, it is not the number of categories that is problematic. It is rather the fact that the descriptions of categories often include exceptions or are not derived via distributional analyses at all, thus rendering it impossible to determine the distribution of a linguistic item on the basis of its category membership. Finally, a number of Structuralists use the names of the traditional parts of speech for their distributional classes, thus obscuring the fact

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that these are identiWed on completely diVerent grounds, and this has been recognized here as an additional problem. It should, however, be noted that the neutral terms chosen by Fries – Class 1, Class 2, etc. and Group A, Group B, etc. – did not initiate a new tradition and were almost totally neglected. The reason for this was probably their lack of mnemotechnical value.

4 Syntactic categories in early Generative Grammar 4.1 Introduction The preceding chapter has shown that the development of American Structuralism was strongly inXuenced by Franz Boas, who realized that the traditional way of describing the grammar of a language could not capture the special properties of American Indian languages. Beginning in the early 1950s, comparable insights – in this case concerning the structuralist method of linguistic description developed by Harris and its inadequacy for the description of the grammars of languages – again led to fundamental changes in the approach to language. Due to its revolutionary character and its close connection with the linguist Noam Chomsky, the new movement is often called the ‘Chomskyan Revolution’ (cf. e.g. Newmeyer 1980: 19 V.; Sampson 1980: 130). In the ‘Introduction’ (written in 1973) to The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, a book which he started in 1953 and a first version of which was finished in 1955 (although it was not published until 1975), Chomsky describes what convinced him of the inadequacy of the structuralist description of language and how he developed his own linguistic theory.1 From a very early age, Chomsky (born 1928) had close contact with foreign languages and grammars. At the age of ten, he read the proofs of a grammar of Medieval Hebrew written by his father, a Hebrew philologist.2 Eight years later, even before Noam Chomsky had started studying linguistics, Harris gave him the proofs of his

1 The information given here on Chomsky’s motivation for the development of his theory of language is based on his remarks in this Introduction (1973a: 25 V.). 2 According to Chomsky (1973a: 50, fn44), this is David Kimhi’s Hebrew Grammar by William Chomsky.

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book Methods in Structural Linguistics, which he studied intensively. Chomsky himself called this ‘[m]y formal introduction to the field of linguistics’ (1973a: 25), adding that while he was studying linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, Harris suggested that he should write a systematic grammar of some language on the basis of his Methods. Chomsky chose Modern Hebrew and started to construct a system of rules which modified Harris’s method of analysis and which was capable of generating the phonetic forms of sentences. Chomsky’s intention was not only to describe the phonetic forms but also to explain their distribution in sentences. He saw this as analogous to the methods used in historical linguistics to explain language change.3 Chomsky posited abstract morphophonemic representations, from which phonetic forms were derived, together with linearly-ordered rules that generated the derivation. In addition to this morphophonemic component, the grammar contained a rudimentary syntactic component consisting of phrase-structure rules that recast in a linearly-ordered system of rules the sentence formulas described by Harris in terms of morpheme classes and morpheme-sequence classes.4 It was this consideration of syntax which convinced Chomsky that the structuralists’ method and their view of language was inadequate and which then motivated him to develop his own ‘revolutionary’ theory of language. The need for a diVerent approach manifested itself in the realization that the syntax of a language, unlike its morphophonemics, relates to an infinite domain. It seemed problematic to Chomsky to equate the grammar of a language with lists of sentence patterns that were identified inductively on the basis of segmenting and classifying utterances in finite corpora. This could not adequately describe the infinite set of sentences of a language or their grammar: Obviously, syntax is an infinite system, but the inductive step that would lead to a description of syntactic structure was plainly lacking. (Chomsky 1973a: 30) 3 As Newmeyer (1980: 33) reports, Chomsky was familiar with the methods of historical linguistics from the writings of his father. 4 Chomsky submitted this first Generative Grammar, entitled Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew and focusing on the morphophonemic properties of Modern Hebrew, as his undergraduate thesis in 1949, and an expanded version formed his master’s thesis in 1951.

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Chomsky tried to find the missing ‘inductive step’, but came to the following conclusion: The failure of inductive, data-processing procedures at the syntactic level became more obvious the more I worked on the problem. . . . It became increasingly clear to me that the methodological limitation to procedures based on substitution, matching, and similar ‘taxonomic’ operations was arbitrary and unwarranted. (ibid. 30 f.)

Chomsky therefore felt it necessary to reconsider how a linguist might discover the grammar of a language. This directed his attention to language acquisition, which led him to the conclusion that a linguist is in a similar situation to a child in the process of acquiring a language, constructing his grammar from the data he is exposed to and thus achieving linguistic competence. In particular, the following observations seemed relevant: during the process of language acquisition a child is exposed to grammatical as well as ungrammatical data since adults in everyday situations often do not finish sentences, complete them in an ungrammatical way, or repeat sentence parts. Nevertheless, the grammar of the language is acquired.5 It is also the case that the children of a speech community are not exposed to the same set of data, which, from the perspective of the structuralists, means that their language acquisition is based on diVerent corpora. Despite this, they acquire more or less the same grammar as the community to which they belong. Chomsky concluded from these observations that language acquisition is not inductive, i.e. a discovery procedure on the basis of finite corpora, and that therefore the inductive method of discovering the grammar of a language as developed by the structuralists is also inadequate.6 From these insights, Chomsky developed his own deductive theory of language, which included suggestions concerning the organization of grammatical models and which also had consequences for the identification and the role of syntactic categories in such models. This will be shown in what follows. Section 4.2 is concerned with 5 This fact concerning the defective input for language acquisition is known as the ‘projection problem’ or as the ‘logical problem of language acquisition’ (cf. e.g. Hornstein and Lightfoot 1981). 6 Skinner’s (1957) attempt to explain language acquisition on an inductive basis was reduced to absurdity by Chomsky in his well-known review (1959).

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relevant aspects of Chomsky’s theory of language, concentrating on the early phase as presented in The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955 [1975]), Syntactic Structures (1957), and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). Section 4.3 considers Chomsky’s conception of the organization of a Generative Grammar and brieXy sketches the models introduced in Syntactic Structures and Aspects. Against this background, section 4.4 focuses on syntactic categories and their characterization in these two models. Section 4.5 presents alternative suggestions to the categories identified by Chomsky, and section 4.6 provides a critical discussion of the results. 4.2 Aspects of the Chomskyan theory of language The specific character of Chomsky’s theory of language and what made it ‘revolutionary’ from the structuralist perspective stems, above all, from his conviction that the task of a linguist is comparable to a child’s acquisition of language or linguistic competence, a process in which the child mentally, though unconsciously, constructs a grammar (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1973a: 11). According to this view, the linguist can solve his task if he can explain the process of language acquisition and its final state, the linguistic competence of a native speaker.7 Thus, unlike the American Structuralist theory of language, Chomsky’s theory is a mentalistic one.8 It is not the product language as represented by corpora that forms the object of investigation but the linguistic competence of the native speaker. For such a theory it is important to identify what characterizes the process of language acquisition and the linguistic competence of native speakers. In this connection, Chomsky makes a number of observations, some of which have already been mentioned in section 4.1. Every normal child acquires the language of

7 Chomsky considers an explanation of language acquisition ‘the fundamental problem of linguistic theory’ (e.g. 1973a: 12). 8 As was shown in chapter 3 (section 3.2), Bloomfield had rejected a mentalistic theory as unscientific, and this had a decisive inXuence on the attitude of the American Structuralists. In The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory and accordingly also in Syntactic Structures, Chomsky did not present his theory of language as a mentalistic one. He remarks in this connection: ‘To raise this issue seemed to me, at the time, too audacious’ (1973a: 35). Later, in Aspects (e.g. ibid. 4, 193), he discussed this issue at length. This important aspect of Chomsky’s theory of language had, however, been brought out in Lees’s review of Syntactic Structures (1957), which received considerable attention, not least because of its unsparing criticism of structuralism.

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the speech community in which he grows up. He acquires this language even though the linguistic input contains grammatically ill-formed sentences as well as grammatically well-formed ones. And despite the fact that the input for children of the same speech community is not identical, they nevertheless acquire more or less the same grammar. When a language has been acquired, a speaker’s linguistic competence enables him to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences, including sentences that he has never heard before. His linguistic competence also enables him to distinguish grammatically well-formed utterances from ill-formed ones, whereby ill-formedness can refer to phonological deviations, such as the accent of a non-native speaker, morphological deviations, such as case errors, or syntactic deviations, such as errors in word order. Linguistic competence also includes the ability to recognize sentences such as They are Xying planes or They don’t know how good meat tastes as ambiguous and sentence pairs such as John bought this book and This book was bought by John as referring to the same situation (cf. e.g. 1973a: 30, 1955 [1975]: 61 f.). Chomsky’s conclusion based on observations like these is that the linguist’s task is to develop a deductive linguistic theory which explains the specific properties of language acquisition, including its final state of linguistic competence, and which provides a grammar as a model of this linguistic competence. Thus, a linguistic theory must answer the following questions: how is it possible that in spite of defective input every normal child acquires his language perfectly, and how is it possible that in spite of diVerent inputs children of the same speech community develop more or less the same (internalized) grammar? The latter implies the following question: how do children select one particular grammar from among the various possible grammars for their language, the one that is clearly the best grammar? Finally, in order to explain the specific properties of the linguistic competence of a native speaker, the theory must provide answers to questions concerning the properties of a grammar and its organization. Chomsky’s answers to these questions are roughly as follows (cf. e.g. 1965: 25, 57 V., 1973a: 9, 35): given the conditions as observed, the process of language acquisition can only be explained by assuming that children are equipped with a genetic disposition for language acquisition. The development of language does not start with a blank slate but with an innate initial state. Chomsky calls this innate initial state an ‘innate linguistic theory’ (e.g. 1965: 25) or a ‘universal grammar’ (e.g. 1980: 28). This innate linguistic theory determines the course

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of language acquisition, which is activated by linguistic input, and constrains the number of possible grammars for a given language. The result is that children develop perfect linguistic competence in spite of defective input, i.e. they construct a mentally-represented, internalized grammar of their language. The fact that children of the same speech community develop more or less the same linguistic competence in spite of diVerent inputs is attributed by Chomsky to the fact that they select the best one from those grammars that are compatible with the innate linguistic theory and with the data, the best grammar being the one with the most linguistically significant generalizations and thus the simplest one (cf. e.g. 1965: 37 V., 1973a: 28 f.). In order to explain the final state of language acquisition, i.e. the competence of the native speaker, the internalized grammar must – according to Chomsky – be generative. This means that it must be able to generate an infinite number of sentences and only grammatically well-formed sentences. ‘Generate’ includes both the process of production and of analysis, which means that the grammar is neutral with respect to speaker and hearer (cf. e.g. 1965: 9, 1973a: 37). In addition, the grammar must have strong generative capacity, meaning that it must not only generate sentences but at the same time assign structural descriptions to them, thus accounting for the native speaker’s ability to recognize structures and also structural ambiguity (cf. e.g. 1965: 60 V.). Comparing the task of a linguist with a child’s acquisition of language means that a linguist should construct possible grammars for a given language and select the best one. According to the theory, this grammar must consist of universal grammar plus the specific properties of the particular language. It must be generative and it must have strong generative capacity, which means that it must satisfy the requirements of descriptive adequacy.9 In addition, when compared with others, this grammar must contain the largest number of linguistically significant generalizations, i.e. it must be the simplest one.

9 Chomsky distinguishes three levels of adequacy: observational adequacy, descriptive adequacy, and explanatory adequacy. A grammar is claimed to have observational adequacy if it accepts the sentences of a language as well formed. It has descriptive adequacy if, in addition, it generates structural descriptions for each of the sentences. Explanatory adequacy is achieved by a linguistic theory which, from a set of descriptively adequate grammars, selects the one with the largest number of linguistically significant generalizations and thus the simplest one (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1964: 28 V.).

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In order to make a choice, the grammars must be comparable on an objective basis, i.e. they must be formal and explicit (cf. e.g. 1965: 4, 8, 1973a: 37 V.). Chomsky demonstrates in various publications (e.g. 1955 [1975], 1964, 1965, 1966a) what such a grammar can look like and how it can be organized internally. The following section sketches the organization of a Generative Grammar on the basis of the models of 1957 and 1965, concentrating in particular on those areas which illustrate the role of syntactic categories in these models.

4.3 On the organization of a Generative Grammar: two examples Chomsky’s fragment of a Generative Grammar for English, published in Syntactic Structures (1957) but developed earlier in The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory,10 presents a model which in principle meets most of his requirements for a grammar. The model is formal and explicit, has strong generative capacity and can – if supplemented by additional rules – generate an infinite number of sentences together with their structural descriptions. The introduction of a new type of rule, the transformational rule, allows it to make a large number of linguistically significant generalizations, thus rendering the grammar simpler than those that do not contain such rules. The following outline shows the organization of this model: (1)

: Sentence: ) F: X1 ! Y1 : Phrase structure Xn ! Yn ) T1 : Transformational structure Tj ) Z1 ! W1 : Morphophonemics

10 It should be noted here that Syntactic Structures contains an abbreviated version of the 1955 model. Chomsky remarks in this connection: ‘This was a sketchy and informal outline of some of the material in LSLT’ (1973a: 3). The model is considered here because it shows more clearly than the Standard Theory of 1965 the close link to Harris’s Methods, which is relevant for the syntactic categories identified.

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(3)

61

Sentence qp NP g NPsing 9 T N Æ g g the man

VP wo Verb NP V g Aux V NPpl g g 9 C take T N S g g the ball

Zm ! Wm (Chomsky 1957: 46)

The model consists of the initial symbol : Sentence and three sets of rules: phrase-structure rules, transformational rules, and morphophonemic rules. Unlike the inductive method proposed by Harris, the sentences of a language are not described bottom-up, i.e. starting with their phonetic representation, then identifying morphemes, morpheme classes, and finally morpheme-sequence classes. Instead they are described top-down, starting with the category Sentence. Phrase-structure rules, which have the form of rewrite rules (see below), generate phrase-markers associated with strings of morphemes that underlie so-called ‘kernel sentences’ (i.e. simple, active, declarative, positive sentences). Obligatory and optional transformations then move constituents around, insert, or delete morphemes or morpheme sequences or combine phrase-markers. Step by step, this derives phrase-markers associated with strings of morphemes which represent kernel sentences as well as passive, interrogative, negative simple or complex sentences and their structures. Finally, the morphophonemic rules derive the phonetic representations from the strings of morphemes. The phrase-structure rules suggested by Chomsky are given as (2): (2)

: #Sentence# F: 1. Sentence ! NP þ VP 2. VP ! Verb n þoNP sing 3. NP ! NP NPpl 4. NPsing ! T þ N þ 

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syntactic categories 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

NPpl ! T þ N þ S T ! the N ! man, ball, etc. Verb ! Aux þ V V ! hit, take, walk, read, etc. Aux ! C(M) (have þ en) (be þ ing) M ! will, can, may, shall, must (1957: 111)

The phrase-structure rules of this model are context-free rewrite rules which analyse simple constituents to the left of the arrow into their immediate constituents, shown to the right of the arrow. These rules would, for example, generate the following phrasemarker: In (3) the category C represents the inXectional properties of V that are specified by the Number Transformation. If the subject NP of a clause is specified as ‘singular’, then C can be replaced by ‘S’. It is replaced by  in other contexts. Independently of the number specification of the subject, C can be replaced by ‘past’ (cf. Chomsky 1957: 112). Unlike phrase-structure rules, transformational rules do not operate on single categories but on strings. Transformational rules consist of two parts: a structural description of the strings to which these apply, and the structural change they produce. (4) and (5) below show the Passive Transformation, which needs to be applied to derive clauses like the ball was taken by the man, and the Auxiliary Transformation, which reverses the order of verbal inXectional aYxes and verbs. The former is an example of an optional transformation and the latter of an obligatory transformation: (4)

Passive – optional: Structural analysis: NP – Aux – V – NP Structural change: X1  X2  X3  X4 ! X4  X2 þ be þ en  X3  by þ X1 (Chomsky 1957: 112)

(5)

Auxiliary Transformation – obligatory: Structural analysis: X  Af  v  Y (where Af is any C or is en or ing; v is any M or V, or have or be) Structural change: X1  X2  X3  X4 ! X1  X3  X2#  X4 (ibid. 113)

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In order to derive a kernel sentence from a phrase-marker like (3), an obligatory Number Transformation – not presented here – must first be applied which substitutes either past or S (¼3rd person, singular) for C. Then the Auxiliary Transformation must apply which moves past or S to a position behind take and inserts the word-boundary symbol #. Additional word-boundary symbols must be inserted by the obligatory Word Boundary Transformation before the morphophonemic rules transform the morphemes or morpheme sequences which occur between word-boundary symbols into phonetic representations. A morphophonemic rule changes #takeþpast# into /t¨k/, for example. This brief presentation shows that at first sight – apart from the transformational rules11 – there is a great similarity between Harris’s description of sentences and Chomsky’s model as sketched here. In both cases, sentence structures are described on the basis of morphemesequence classes (e.g. NP, VP) and morpheme classes (e.g. N, V), and in both cases the relationship between morphemes and their phonetic representations is represented. The only diVerence seems to be that Harris’s bottom-up procedure is simply reversed and cast as a rulesystem that operates top-down. However, this diVerence has considerable consequences, including consequences for the identification and the status of syntactic categories in the two approaches. This will be dealt with in section 4.4. At this point, the following should be noted: Harris’s approach started with data and discovered sentence structures by identifying categories and relations between categories on the basis of distributional analysis. In contrast to this, Chomsky’s rule system formulates hypotheses about categories and relations between categories in well-formed sentences as well as about their morphemic and phonetic representation. Thus, according to Chomsky, a grammar is a theory of the language that it generates.12 It formulates (falsifiable) hypotheses

11 It deserves mention that Harris also discussed grammatical transformations (e.g. 1952, 1957), though their status is diVerent. Rather than mapping underlying sentence structures onto (underlying) sentence structures in a formal grammar, they express an equivalence relation between two sentences: ‘we will say that sentences of the form A are equivalent to sentences of the form B, if for each sentence A we can find a sentence B containing the same morphemes except for diVerences due to the diVerence in form between A and B’ (1952: 19). And he continues: ‘N1VN2 is equivalent to N2 is V-en by N1 because for any sentence like Casals plays the cello we can find a sentence The cello is played by Casals’ (ibid). 12 Compare in this connection Chomsky’s statement: ‘A grammar of the language L is essentially a theory of L’ (1957: 49).

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about well-formed sentences and their structure. This means that the syntactic categories which are used in the phrase-structure rules and the transformational rules are not discovered inductively but postulated a priori, and that they express hypotheses about the syntactic categorization of morphemes and morpheme sequences. However, it is not clear what the status of the categories postulated in this model is intended to be. Although the phrase-structure rules which introduce categories like N, V, or T and replace them by morphemes characterize these categories as distribution classes, these cannot be of the same type as Harris’s distribution classes because the rules do not generate sentences or ‘surface structures’ but rather abstract underlying structures. The intended status of the syntactic categories becomes clearer in the Standard Theory model, presented in Aspects (Chomsky 1965). Compared to the 1957 model, this one is more elaborated and more diVerentiated. It consists of three components: a syntactic component, a semantic component – previously neglected – and a phonological component. The syntactic component is generative. It is composed of two subcomponents, a base component and transformational rules. The base component contains phrase-structure rules, but in contrast to the 1957 model, these do not substitute morphemes for syntactic categories. Instead, there is a lexicon which, together with the phrase-structure rules, forms the base component. Phrase-structure rules in combination with items from the lexicon generate the deep structures of sentences, which are interpreted by the semantic component. Deep structures together with their interpretations form the input to the transformational rules. These derive the surface structures, which are interpreted by the phonological component. A schematic view of the model is given in (6):

(6)

S Base: PS-rules Lexicon Deep structure

Semantic interpretation

Transformational rules Surface structure

Phonological interpretation

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65

In addition to the integration of semantics, the division into three distinct components, the separation of phrase-structure rules and the lexicon, and the highlighting of two phrase-markers as deep structure and surface structure, the model exhibits further changes which are particularly relevant for the characterization of syntactic categories. These are the introduction of subcategorization, suggestions concerning the interaction of the phrase-structure rules and the lexicon, and modifications to the phrase-structure rules. To begin with, two types of subcategorization are introduced: context-free and context-sensitive. Context-free subcategorization of the category N is described by means of the following rules: (7)

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)

N ! [þN, Common] [þCommon] ! [Count] [þCount] ! [Animate] [Common] ! [Animate] [þAnimate] ! [Human] [Count] ! [Abstract] (Chomsky 1965: 82)

Context-sensitive subcategorization is described by means of two distinct types of rule: strict-subcategorization rules and selectional rules. The former take into account the possible categorial environments of a lexical category, e.g. V, restricting them to the domain of the next dominating node, which is VP in the case of V. Chomsky gives the following as examples of strict subcategorization rules for the category V: 8 9 NP (8) > > > > > > > > # > > > > > > > Adjective > > > > > > > > > < Predicate-Nominal = ˙ V ! CS=  like Predicate-Nominal > > > > > Prepositional-Phrase > > > > > ˙ 0 > > > > that S > > > > 0 ˙ ˙ > > > > NP ðof Det NÞS > > : ; etc: (ibid. 94) Selectional rules are sensitive to the context-free subcategorization of nouns in noun phrases that assume the functions of subject and object in the environment of verbs:

66 (9)

syntactic categories 9 8 9 ½þAbstract Aux > ðiÞ > > > > > = < = ðiiÞ ½Abstract Aux ½þV ! CS ðiiiÞ> Det ½þAnimate> > > > > ; : ; ðivÞ Det ½Animate (ibid. 95)

Chomsky makes two suggestions on how phrase-structure rules and the lexicon interact to generate deep structures. In each case, the lexicon contains lexical entries which specify for each lexical item a phonological matrix, categorial and subcategorial properties, information concerning transformations where necessary, and semantic properties, although the latter have not yet been considered: (10) (sincerity, [þN, þDet—, Count, þAbstract, . . . ]) (frighten, [þV, þ —NP, þ[þAbstract] Aux — Det [þAnimate], þObject-deletion, . . . ]) (cf. 1965: 107) The first (9) suggests that the phrase-structure rules which generate terminal syntactic or ‘lexical’ categories such as N and V are supplemented by rules which generate complex symbols consisting of contextfree and context-sensitive subcategorization features. A context-free lexical rule then inserts the phonological matrix of a lexical entry in the position of a lexical category in a phrase marker if the complex symbol of the phrase-marker is not distinct from the feature specification of the lexical entry (cf. Chomsky 1965: 84).13 The second suggestion is that only lexical entries are specified for subcategorization properties, and all the lexical categories in phrase-markers are rewritten as D, the dummy symbol. In this case, a revised and now context-sensitive lexical rule inserts the phonological matrices of lexical entries in the positions occupied by the dummy symbols, replacing these if the subcategorization properties of the lexical entries match the structures generated by the phrase-structure rules (cf. ibid. 120 V.). The second suggestion avoids redundancies, is simpler and is therefore preferred to the first one. The following phrase-structure rules, which are more diVerentiated than those of the 1957 model, are adapted to this proposal: 13 Chomsky does not mention here that semantic material must also be inserted in the deep structure. Since, however, this is necessary for semantic interpretation, which takes place at this level, corresponding additions are needed.

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1. S ! NP˙ Predicate Phrase 2. Predicate Phrase ! Aux˙ VP (Place) (Time) 8 ˙ 3. Predicate > 8 > Copula

9 > 9 > = < < ðNPÞ ðPrep-PhraseÞ ðPrep-PhraseÞ ðMannerÞ= VP ! V S0 > > > > ;; : : Predicate

  4. Predicate ! Adjective ðlikeÞ Predicate-Nominal

5. Prep-Phrase ! Direction, Duration, Place, Frequency, etc. 6. V ! D 7. NP ! (Det) N (S’) 8. N ! D 9. Adjective ! D 10. Aux ! Tense (M) (Aspect) 11. Det ! (pre-Article˙ of) Article (post-Article) 12. Article ! [Definite] (cf. Chomsky 1965: 106 f., 122) Since these rules in combination with items from the lexicon generate deep structures which are interpreted semantically, all the information relevant for semantic interpretation must be present at this level.14 Although the transformational rules, which derive surface structures from deep structures, diVer from those of the 1957 model, these diVerences have no eVect on the identification of syntactic categories and therefore need not be considered here. What is of particular importance, however, is the requirement that transformations must not be meaning-changing. The remarks that Chomsky made in Aspects and elsewhere on his theory of language are particularly enlightening for an understanding of the status of syntactic categories in the models of early Generative Grammar. This will be seen in the following section.

14 The semantic component introduced in Aspects was developed by Katz and Postal (1964) and presented in Katz and Fodor (1963). The requirement that the semantic component must be interpretive and that all information relevant to the semantic interpretation must be present at the level of deep structure is referred to as the ‘Katz-Postal Hypothesis’ (cf. e.g. Newmeyer 1980: 79).

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4.4 Syntactic categories and universal grammar Before focusing on the status of syntactic categories in early Generative Grammar, this section will first consider the categories that are postulated and the functions of these categories in the two models sketched above. In both models the syntactic categories that are identified are introduced by the phrase-structure rules. In the 1965 model (ibid. 74), a distinction is made between categories which represent lexical items, such as N and V, and non-lexical categories such as Det, Aux, or M. The latter is characterized as exhibiting lexical as well as non-lexical properties (cf. 1965: 212, fn9). Except for the non-lexical ones, all the categories introduced by the phrase-structure rules are identified as ‘major categories’. Applying this classification to the 1957 model yields the following lexical categories introduced by phrase-structure rules: N (1957: 26), V (ibid. 39), Adj (ibid. 72), Prt (ibid. 75), Pron (ibid. 76) and Adv (ibid. 83). M and the non-lexical categories C and T15 must be added to these as well as Aux and, finally, the categories NP, VP, and PP (cf. ibid. 29, fn3) as additional major categories. Each of these categories can also be part of a transformational rule. The phrase-structure rules characterize the categories identified as linearly and hierarchically ordered distribution classes. However, the distribution of the lexical and grammatical formatives (e.g. N, V, T, C) as well as of sequences of these (e.g. NP, VP, Aux) is initially described at the abstract level of underlying structure and not – as in Harris’s model – as part of a sentence. In Generative Grammar a sentence is derived from the underlying structure by means of transformational rules (and morphophonemic rules). This leads to the following diVerences: Harris’s method identifies categories empirically on the basis of observed data of a particular language and employing distributional analysis. As pointed out above, the result is a relatively large number of categories. Chomsky, on the other hand, postulates a priori a relatively small number of categories whose distribution is related to an abstract, underlying level described by means of phrase-structure rules and whose distribution in the surface structure is derived by means of transformational rules. The interaction of phrase-structure rules and transformational rules implies the following prediction: the kind and number of syntactic categories postulated for the underlying structure is suYcient for a given language, since their distribution at the level of surface structure is derived by means of transformational rules and not the result of categorization at 15 C is a variable for verb inXection. Transformations replace C by S, , or past.

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this level. Anything that is introduced in this model by transformational rules, such as the forms have and be for the description of aspect and passive or n’t, do, or and, is excluded from categorization. It is therefore quite natural that these forms are introduced transformationally without any categorial specifications (cf. Chomsky 1957: 39, 112 f.). Thus it is obvious that the status of the syntactic categories identified by Harris and by Chomsky in his 1957 model diVers considerably. This holds, mutatis mutandis, for the 1965 model as well. The inclusion of the new categories Predicate Phrase, Place, Time, Copula, Predicate, Direction, Duration, etc. in the phrase-structure rules serves to improve the descriptive adequacy of the grammar in that it allows for a structural distinction between adjuncts and complements, which was not the case in the 1957 model. The new subcategorization rules, i.e. the context-free subcategorization of the category N as well as the strict subcategorization rules and the selectional rules of the category V, describe – as the name implies – ‘subcategories’ of the categories N and V, which are introduced by the phrase-structure rules. According to the first variant of the Aspects model, the subcategories are generated by the subcategorization rules in connection with the phrase-structure rules; according to the second variant, they are described in the lexicon. In neither case do they aVect the status of the categories described by phrase-structure rules in deep structure, as will be considered next. In section 4.3 it was pointed out that, according to Chomsky, the grammar of a language is a theory of that language. This means that the rules which constitute the grammar formulate hypotheses about this language. Consequently, as they form part of the rules, the categories are also hypotheses about a language, and one important question concerns the basis for these hypotheses. The answer is given by Chomsky’s assumption that a linguistic theory must explain language acquisition and therefore must aim at explanatory adequacy. As shown in section 4.2, Chomsky holds the view that language acquisition can be explained by assuming that a child is equipped with an innate linguistic theory, also called ‘universal grammar’ (UG). According to this view, UG in combination with linguistic input determines the child’s construction of a grammar, i.e. the development of his linguistic competence. Since Chomsky also maintains that the task of a linguist who wants to construct the grammar of a language is very much like the task of a child constructing his mental grammar, UG plays an important role in what a linguist does. Questions like the following are therefore crucial: What are the

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properties of UG? and What are linguistic universals? After pointing out in Aspects the importance of innate capacities for the construction of grammars, Chomsky therefore turns to a discussion of linguistic universals (cf. 1965: 27 V.). He distinguishes formal from substantive universals and as examples of the former, he identifies types of rules (e.g. phrase-structure rules and transformational rules) and relationships between rules (e.g. rule ordering). In this connection he states: The existence of deep-seated formal universals . . . implies that all languages are cut to the same pattern, but does not imply that there is any point by point correspondence between particular languages. (1965: 30)

With respect to substantive universals, he first remarks: A theory of substantive universals claims that items of a particular kind in any language must be drawn from a fixed class of items. (ibid. 28)

He then mentions Jakobson’s distinctive phonological features as a first example and continues: Traditional universal grammar was also a theory of substantive universals . . . It . . . advanced the position that certain fixed syntactic categories (Noun, Verb, etc.) can be found in the syntactic representations of the sentences of any language, and that these provide the general underlying syntactic structure of each language. (ibid.)

Later it becomes clear that ‘[t]raditional universal grammar’ refers to those grammars ‘whose origins can . . . be traced back at least to the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e’ (ibid. 117), i.e. the grammar that was outlined in chapter 2 (section 2.5). It also becomes clear that he agrees with many claims made in this grammar. This can be derived from his discussion in Aspects (e.g. ibid. 117 f.), from his remarks on language and mind (Chomsky 1968), and, in particular, from his book Cartesian Linguistics (Chomsky 1966b). What can be inferred from this about the status of the so-called ‘lexical’ syntactic categories introduced by the phrase-structure rules is that Chomsky, following the linguists of the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e, considers them to be universal. This applies to other major categories as well, as is demonstrated by the following:

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71

Notice that the general significance of the definitions (11)16 depends on the assumption that the symbols S, NP, VP, N and V have been characterized as grammatical universals. (Chomsky 1965: 72 f.)17

Since the phrase-structure rule (i.e. this rule type) is considered to be universal as well, it follows that the base component of a Generative Grammar, which generates the deep structures of sentences, is itself also universal. This is claimed by Chomsky, albeit with a slight qualification, in the following: To say that formal properties of the base will provide the framework for the characterization of universal categories is to assume that much of the structure of the base is common to all languages. (1965: 117)

Chomsky describes the relationship between the base component of a Generative Grammar and a general linguistic theory, i.e. UG, which he claims to be innate, in the following way: Insofar as aspects of the base structure are not specific to a particular language, they need not be stated in the grammar of this language. Instead, they are to be stated only in general linguistic theory, as part of the definition of the notion ‘human language’ itself. In traditional terms, they pertain to the form of language in general rather than to the form of particular languages, and thus presumably reXect what the mind brings to the task of language acquisition rather than what it discovers (or invents) in the course of carrying out this task. (ibid. 117)

In the light of these remarks, the question concerning the basis of the syntactic categories in early models of Generative Grammar can now be answered: Chomsky’s hypothesis is that these categories belong to the inventory of substantive universals. Here he follows assumptions presented in the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e and it is therefore no

16 (11) contains the formal description of Subject-of: [NP, S], Predicate-of: [VP, S], Direct-Object-of: [NP, VP], and Main-Verb-of: [V, VP]. 17 It should be noted here that this assumption of Chomsky’s is not necessary. Subjects and objects could also be described structurally if a language did not have NP, VP, N, and V, but other categories instead which expressed the same grammatical functions and had the same structural relations.

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coincidence that more or less the same categories are identified, namely the lexical categories Noun, Verb, Adjective, Preposition, Adverb, Pronoun, and Particle, and the non-lexical category T or Article. Since Chomsky in addition assumes that the set of formal universals includes phrase-structure rules, i.e. rules that analyse constituents into their immediate constituents, further major categories such as S, NP, VP, PP, or PredP must be added to the list of lexical and non-lexical categories. It could be objected at this point that in the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e, as shown in chapter 2.5, the categories were identified as semantic categories and not, as by Chomsky, as syntactic ones and that therefore his reference to a shared view is inappropriate. Two points must be made in this connection. The first is expressed in the following remark about the categories identified and characterized by Chomsky as substantive universals: there is no reason to rule out, a priori, the traditional view that such substantive characterizations must ultimately refer to semantic concepts of one sort or another. (1965: 117)

Here he claims that there is more than just a possibility that the categories identified are, in the final analysis, related to semantic concepts. This may explain why the otherwise rather awkward categories Place, Time, Direction, Duration, etc. are introduced by the phrase-structure rules of the Aspects model (see above, section 4.3 (11)).18 Secondly, it should be remembered that the inclusion of a semantic component in the Aspects model required that all the information relevant for the semantic interpretation of sentences must be present at the level of deep structure. In this respect, Chomsky’s comparison of his approach with that of the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e is perfectly logical. He considers the base component of a grammar to be the universal part, the part which is relevant for the meaning of sentences and which represents the deep structures of the sentences of all languages. The diversity of languages is thus a matter of the derived surface structure of sentences

18 It was representations like these in the phrase-structure rules of the Aspects model that motivated Fillmore (1966, 1968a, 1969) to call for underlying structures which are explicitly semantic and which include deep-structure cases as categories.

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and due to the idiosyncratic properties of lexical items and to the transformational rules.19 Chomsky’s characterization of the base component as universal and as the domain of semantic interpretation prompted a number of linguists to develop alternative models to the Aspects model, which in turn had consequences for their identification of categories. This will be dealt with in the following section.

4.5 Reducing the set of categories Following the publication of Aspects, Chomsky’s belief that the linguist’s task was to explain language acquisition and the linguistic competence of a native speaker, and therefore to develop a linguistic theory that includes a theory of UG, was widely shared. A number of linguists, however – Charles J. Fillmore, George LakoV, James D. McCawley, and John R. Ross in particular – developed a diVerent view of UG and thus of the structure of the base component. In their view, the deep structures generated by the Aspects model were not ‘deep’ or abstract enough to be universal. They shared Chomsky’s assumption that the meaning of sentences should be determined at an abstract level but not his suggestions on how this should be done. Above all, they did not accept that deep structures should first be generated by purely syntactic phrase-structure rules and then interpreted by semantic interpretation rules. They rejected the purely interpretive property of the semantic component and also the syntactic categories introduced by the phrase-structure rules, which they considered not abstract enough for deep structures and thus relevant only for derived surface structure. According to their view, a universal underlying structure should be characterized by categories and structures that are semantic. Categories and structures of this kind are provided by predicate logic. These linguists therefore had a special interest in demonstrating that only those categories introduced by Chomsky’s phrase-structure rules are legitimate as universal categories of an abstract underlying structure which can be equated with categories of predicate logic, i.e. to the categories Proposition, Predicate, and Argument. 19 The postulate of a universal base may well have been a reason for preferring the second model since, compared with the first one, it is more general, simpler, and thus more likely to be universal.

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It is against this background that attempts to reduce the categories of the base component should be viewed, and such a reduction at the same time fulfilled Chomsky’s demand for a universal base that is as simple as possible. LakoV – obviously inXuenced by Postal’s comments that formed part of his lectures (cf. LakoV 1970: 115) – points out that adjectives share various properties with verbs and that therefore at an underlying level of representation both belong to the same category (cf. LakoV 1970: 115 V.). Ross (1969) argues that auxiliaries exhibit properties of (main) verbs and therefore should not be distinguished from these at an underlying level. Becker and Arms (1969) as well as Geis (1970) claim that there is evidence that prepositions are derived from underlying verbs since, like verbs, they express predicates. Bach (1968) draws attention to the fact that verbs, adjectives, and nouns all exhibit predicative properties and suggests just one underlying category, i.e. contentive. LakoV (1968) gives evidence that instrumental adverbs such as with (a knife) are derived from underlying verbs such as use (a knife). Fillmore (1966, 1968a, 1969) goes as far as to claim that no distinction should be drawn between PPs and NPs and that the categories Place, Time, Direction, Duration, etc. introduced by phrase-structure rules in Aspects do not represent syntactic categories at all. Therefore, he argues, they should be eliminated and the information they encode should be represented in a diVerent way.20 Considerations like these led to proposals for two alternative models of grammar: Generative Semantics on the one hand (LakoV, McCawley, and Ross) and Case Grammar (Fillmore) on the other. Both models posit underlying structures with categories and rules that directly correspond to predicate logic. LakoV, for example, points out the analogy between the predicate-logic representation of the verb hit in (12) and its representation at an underlying level in Generative Semantics, as in (13), and he claims that the two representations are equivalent (cf. 1971: 4)21: 20 Fillmore’s proposal is to eliminate these relational, non-categorial elements from the phrase-structure rules and to introduce deep cases like Location or Goal instead. The detailed discussion of Fillmore’s works in Rauh (1988) shows that this does not provide an adequate solution. 21 The quotation is from the ‘Introduction’ that LakoV intended to form part of his article ‘Linguistics and Natural Logic’, to be published in J. Mehler (ed.) Handbook of Cognitive Psychology. It was distributed by LakoV in his linguistics classes at Berkeley but not published, for reasons that will not be speculated on here.

syntactic categories in early generative grammar

(12)

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S (13) S 9 9 PRED ARG ARG V NP NP g g g g g g HIT x y HIT x y

In an underlying structure like (13), V represents not only (surfacestructure) verbs but also adjectives, nouns, prepositions, and auxiliaries. According to LakoV, the auxiliary may, for example, is represented by the modal operator à as an instantiation of the category V, may being just one of several alternatives including can and possibly:

(14)

S 3 V g à

NP g S 9 V NP NP g g g y HIT x

(cf. 1971: 4 V.) Fillmore’s model of Case Grammar incorporates deep cases, which account for semantic-syntactic relations between verbs and noun phrases, but it is similar to Generative Semantics in assuming an abstract underlying semantic structure. Fillmore suggests the following base-component rules: (15) a. S ! M þ P b. P ! V þ C1 þ . . . þ Cn (cf. 1968a: 28) ‘M’ in (15) is short for ‘Modality’, ‘P’ for ‘Proposition’, and ‘C’ for ‘Case’. Fillmore introduces Agentive, Instrument, Dative, Factitive, Locative, and Objective as possible cases. The cases are analysed into the categories K and NP, K being instantiated by a preposition, a postposition or a morphological case, depending on the properties of the particular language. C functions as an argument of the predicate V, and together they represent the logical structure of a proposition.

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Two things are significant concerning the identification and the character of syntactic categories in these alternatives to the Aspects model. The first is related to the distinction between ‘deep’ categories and ‘shallow’ categories. The assumption is that transformational rules derive surface structures from simple semantically-determined underlying structures and that the surface structures contain ‘a wider repertoire of categories’ which are not universal but specific to individual languages (cf. e.g. McCawley 1967 [1970]: 531). English, according to this view, makes use of the categories Adjective, Noun, Preposition, Adverb, and Auxiliary, which – as was shown – are all represented by the category V in the underlying structure. The second point is related to the status of the underlying categories. On the one hand, they are based on logico-semantic categories and are equated with these. On the other hand, it is emphasized that they are syntactic. In other words, at the abstract level no distinction is drawn between syntactic and semantic categories. McCawley states in this connection: I believe that . . . syntactic and semantic representations are objects of the same formal nature, namely ordered trees whose non-terminal nodes are labeled by syntactic category symbols. (1967 [1970]: 531)

And LakoV remarks: In generative semantics, the primary grammatical categories, in terms of which rules of grammar are stated, are exactly the logical categories. (1971: 10)

In summary this means that the transformational rules derive ‘a wider repertoire’ of syntactic categories from a restricted set of universal syntactic-semantic categories that are identical to categories of predicate logic, the derived categories being determined by the specific properties of an individual language and in this sense language specific. It is thus the task of transformations and the lexicon to describe the specific properties of individual languages.

4.6 Universal vs. language-specific syntactic categories The following comparisons can be made regarding the identification and description of syntactic categories by Harris and by Chomsky: on

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the basis of an analysis of the distribution of morphemes and morpheme sequences in sentence forms, Harris identifies language-specific syntactic categories as distribution classes in accordance with the conviction of American Structuralists that each language has its own internal structure (cf. chapter 3). The result is a significantly large number of mutually independent syntactic categories which may vary from language to language. Neither underlying structures nor semantics plays a role in the identification of these categories. Chomsky, however, starts from his theory of language acquisition and assumes that every language has a largely universal base, and this view is diametrically opposed to the convictions of the Structuralists. He describes this base as consisting of purely syntactic, generative phrase-structure rules and a lexicon. The phrase-structure rules operate on a relatively small number of syntactic categories which are postulated a priori and which – in accordance with the nature of the base – are allegedly universal, ‘drawn from a fixed class of items’ (Chomsky 1965: 28). In addition, they are likely to ‘ultimately refer to semantic concepts of one sort or another’ (Chomsky 1965: 117). For a specification of these categories, Chomsky resorts to the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e and essentially assumes the categories claimed as universal in that grammar. In the Chomskyan model, these categories are introduced as deep-structure categories and remain unchanged by the transformational rules, thus representing surface-structure categories as well. Unless the transformational rules introduce new categories, the set of deep-structure categories is, therefore, identical to the set of surface-structure categories. Since in the Syntactic Structures model there are no restrictions on transformations, the introduction of new categories is theoretically possible. In the Aspects model, however, every lexical item is inserted at the level of deep structure, which means that at this level every lexical item must be assigned a position whose categorial specification it must match. This excludes at least the introduction of new categories by means of transformations. There are at least two criticisms that can be levelled at this version of the Chomskyan model. Formulated as questions, the first is whether the categories introduced by the phrase-structure rules are indeed universal and the second is whether every lexical item of a language can be assigned to one of the categories identified. Since the category PrepP belongs to the set of base categories and since not every language has prepositions but may have postpositions instead or no adpositions at all, the answer to the first question must be in the negative. This is

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to be expected since Chomsky assumes the same categories as the Grammaire ge´ne´rale et raisonne´e, which – as was shown in chapter 2 – in turn uses the same categories as the Te´khne¯ grammatike¯, which were identified on the basis of (mainly morphological properties of) Greek, i.e. on the basis of one particular language. Considering only the items of English traditionally assigned to the part of speech Adverb, such as so, very, lately, personally, fast, or there, which neither exhibit the syntactic properties of any of the categories identified nor form a single syntactic category, the answer to the second question must also be negative. Providing categorial specifications for items like these would involve either enriching the inventory of the base-component categories – which conXicts with the claim of universality – or introducing surface-structure categories by means of transformational rules. This is impossible because all lexical insertion takes place at the level of deep structure, before the transformational rules apply. Thus, the claim that the base-component categories are universal leads to a problem for the Aspects model: since lexical insertion takes place at deep structure, there is no way to account for any categories that diVer from those in the base component. It is therefore a consequence of the architecture of this grammar that the kind and the number of universal syntactic categories must be identical to the kind and the number of syntactic categories specified in the lexicon of individual languages. This seems not to be Chomsky’s intention and it does not make much sense either. Fillmore and the Generative Semanticists attempted to find their own solution to this problem. In their view, Chomsky’s base-component categories are not abstract enough to be universal. Starting from the claim that there is a close relationship between the base-component and semantics – which in Chomsky’s theory is expressed by deriving the semantic interpretation from the syntactic base-component structures – they postulate abstract base categories from predicate logic that are primarily semantic. At the same time they claim that these categories are syntactic. Various transformations specific to individual languages are assumed to derive surface syntactic categories from these underlying universal semantic-syntactic categories. This is possible in the Generative Semantics model because lexical insertion is not restricted to the deepest underlying structure but occurs at successive stages. Suggestions like these are problematic because quite clearly the concepts of syntax at the levels of underlying structure and derived

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surface structure are diVerent. Consequently the concepts of syntactic categories diVer as well. This means that at the level of derived structure, syntax concerns the relationships between units in phrasestructures that are identified applying the methods of the structuralists. At the level of underlying structure, however, syntax concerns semantic relationships between abstract and basically semantic units. It therefore became more and more evident that the base component, previously called ‘abstract syntax’, was actually purely semantic, which is expressed in the title of articles such as Keenan’s ‘On Semantically Based Grammar’ (1972), for example, and which led to the name ‘Generative Semantics’. This, however, means that de facto semantic categories are converted into syntactic categories by means of transformational rules, making the latter very powerful devices. Leaving this problem aside, the greatest challenge that Case Grammar and Generative Semantics face is the power of transformations, which must derive complex and very diverse surface structures for individual languages from very simple underlying structures. The first challenge is to formulate transformational rules which will perform this task – and this has never been achieved. What is especially problematic is the eVect that transformations would have on the evaluation of grammars. If it is postulated that a grammar is a model of the linguistic competence of the native speaker, then this includes the ability to evaluate grammars and select the best for a given language. Using a mathematical calculus, Peters (1971, 1972) and Peters and Ritchie (1969, 1973) have demonstrated – initially with respect to grammars like the Aspects model – that grammars with unrestricted, recursive transformations cannot be evaluated relative to each other and that therefore selection of the best one by the theory – or the native speaker – is not possible. As a consequence, Peters and Ritchie formulate the need ‘to search for empirically supportable restrictions on transformational grammars’ (1973: 81). Emonds’s (1976) conclusion that all transformations must be structure-preserving (apart from root transformations and local transformations) imposed severe restrictions and put an end to Case Grammar and Generative Semantics. Thus, eVorts to reduce the number of underlying syntactic categories to those categories specified in predicate logic and to equate them with these in order to demonstrate their truly universal character must be said to have failed. However, clear discrepancies between the postulated universal semantic-syntactic deep-structure

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categories and language-specific surface-structure syntactic categories, revealed in particular in the work of the Generative Semanticists, have focused attention on relevant questions concerning the nature of syntactic categories. Are they language-specific and purely surfacestructure categories, like those identified by Harris? Are they universal syntactic categories which ‘ultimately refer to semantic concepts of one sort or another’, as Chomsky assumes (1965: 117)? Are there perhaps two types of syntactic category – universal deep-structure categories and language-specific surface-structure categories? What is meant by ‘universal’ categories? Are they a small set of categories that occur in every language, or is there a large repertoire, from which each language uses just a subset, as could be understood from the already-quoted statement by Chomsky: ‘A theory of substantive universals claims that items of a particular kind in any language must be drawn from a fixed class of items’ (1965: 28)? At this point it can only be noted that the approaches considered so far in which syntax forms an essential part of a grammar have developed diVerent and even incompatible views on syntactic categories. None of these is convincing. The reasons for this diVer however. Harris and Fries intended to identify purely languageparticular syntactic (surface) categories. Yet their methods, as shown, are not without Xaws. And they did not in fact provide descriptions of categories that predict the syntactic behaviour of their members. The Generative Semanticists and Fillmore identified universal syntactic-semantic ‘deep categories’, intending to derive language-particular syntactic ‘shallow categories’ via transformations. This, however, did not prove possible. Chomsky, finally, identified (apparently) universal syntactic categories, whose properties are described by phrase-structure rules, and gave the impression that language-particular syntactic categories were derived on the basis of lexical properties and transformational rules. Since, however, in this model lexical insertion takes place at the level of deep structure, only those items can be inserted which are specified for a category label that matches one of the universal categories generated by the phrase-structure rules. Therefore, theoretically, a language-particular distinction of categories is possible only on the basis of language-particular subcategorizations of members of the categories N and V and on the basis of an application of language-particular transformations. What is excluded from sentence structures in English – and probably in any other language as well – is a large number of items which cannot be inserted into deep

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structures under the heading of one of the universal categories, for example, forms like so, very, lately, personally, fast, or there mentioned above, which are traditionally categorized as adverbs. In addition, it is questionable how universal the alleged universal categories are, especially because they are astonishingly similar to the traditional parts of speech identified on the basis of morphological properties of Greek. The conclusion is, therefore, that the categories identified by Chomsky are too specific to be universal and not specific enough to syntactically categorize the lexical items of even one particular language.

5 Categories, features, and projections

5.1 Introduction Following the Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, and Case Grammar, the development of the theory of grammar in the 1970s was characterized by a search for restrictions. Realizing that transformations were very powerful devices, linguists Wrst focused on restrictions on transformational rules. This led to the insight that extractions are allowed under certain conditions only (cf. Ross 1967; Chomsky 1973b) and that – due to the shared properties of the transformations that had been postulated – generalizations were possible and thus fewer rules were necessary than had been previously assumed (cf. Chomsky 1977). In addition, investigations showed that most transformations were structure preserving, meaning that constituents aVected by transformational rules were moved to positions whose categorial speciWcations were identical to those of the source positions (cf. Emonds 1970, 1976). More by accident than by design, in the context of a debate on whether word-formation is a transformational or a lexical process, Chomsky (1970) identiWed restrictions on phrase-structure rules. These derived from the observation that members of the categories noun, verb, and adjective as heads of constructions share properties concerning the selection of complements and concerning whether or not a speciWer is possible. The result was the formulation of the condition on the endocentricity of phrase structures, later formalized as X-bar theory (cf. e.g. JackendoV 1977a). Finally, some transformations of the Standard Theory turned out to be meaning changing, which was incompatible with the assumption that all semantic interpretation took place at the level of deep structure. This led to various changes to the architecture of the model, and semantic interpretation was allowed to operate

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at the level of deep structure and at the level of surface structure as well. A later requirement ensured that moved constituents left behind traces, with the result that their deep-structure positions were recoverable and available for semantic interpretation, which now took place at the level of surface structure only (cf. e.g. JackendoV 1972; Fiengo 1974, 1977; Chomsky 1976). The insights mentioned above led to various changes to the Standard Theory (Chomsky 1965), resulting in later models such as the so-called ‘Extended Standard Theory’ (EST, cf. e.g. JackendoV 1972: 4)1 and the so-called ‘Revised EST’ (Revised Extended Standard Theory, cf. Chomsky 1976: 336). They Wnally led to the development of a completely new conception of the theory of Generative Grammar and to corresponding models of grammar, and here three major trends can be distinguished. The most inXuential of these is the modular Theory of Government and Binding (GB), developed by Chomsky (1981a,b, 1986a,b; Chomsky and Lasnik 1993). This was also – and more appropriately – called the ‘Theory of Principles and Parameters’ (PPT) and formed the basis for the development of the Minimalist Program (MP, cf. Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2000, 2001). The remaining two trends are Bresnan’s Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG, cf. Kaplan and Bresnan 1982; Bresnan 1982a, 2001), which builds on aspects of Relational Grammar (e.g. Perlmutter 1980, 1983), and Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG, cf. Gazdar et al. 1985) and its immediate successor, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG, cf. Pollard and Sag 1987, 1994; Sag et al. 2003). Compared to the Standard Theory, all three trends show a drastic reduction in the number of rules in the transformational component. In the cases of LFG and GPSG/HPSG, this resulted in their being totally abandoned and in the case of GB/ PPT/MP in the formulation of a single rule Move Æ. In each of the three trends the principle of the endocentricity of phrase structures, and thus X-bar theory or an equivalent, plays a central role as a condition on well-formedness. In addition, each of the three trends developed feature systems for the representation of syntactic categories, and dependencies between the features and the syntactic structures were described. This, however, was done diVerently in each case. This chapter is dedicated to an investigation of the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories based on feature representations in 1 The label ‘EST’ is here restricted to the model current in 1972. Chomsky himself uses this term for later models as well (cf. e.g. Chomsky 2001: 5).

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the context of the PPT and the MP. Chapter 6 will be concerned with the same kind of investigation in the context of HPSG and LFG. The present chapter starts with an outline of the PPT (section 5.2). On the one hand, this will provide information about the theoretical background of feature-based descriptions of syntactic categories in this context. On the other, it will pave the way for a comparison of the PPT and the other approaches considered subsequently. Section 5.3 is concerned with X-bar theory, which is especially relevant for the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories in the PPT as well as in the MP, in LFG, and in HPSG, focusing on the identity of X. Various feature-based descriptions of the four ‘lexical’ categories N, V, A, and P, of some ‘minor’ categories, and Wnally of functional categories as representations of X are also examined. Section 5.4 demonstrates how syntactic categories are deWned in the PPT by the licensing of constituents in sentence structures on the basis of an interaction between lexically speciWed properties of lexical items and principles of grammar. Section 5.5 discusses insights into the relationship between morphosyntactic properties and functional categories, an aspect which inXuenced the development from the PPT to the MP. Section 5.6 Wrst presents basic aspects of the MP and then turns to the syntactic function of features and to corresponding feature-based descriptions of syntactic categories in this framework. Section 5.7 sums up and demonstrates that the feature-based descriptions of syntactic categories developed in the PPT and the MP meet empirical requirements in that they allow for a diVerentiated identiWcation and description of numerous syntactic categories. This includes such phenomena as reanalysis or ‘grammaticalization’ and ‘mixed categories’, often discussed as problematic in literature on the subject.

5.2 A modular theory of grammar: the Theory of Principles and Parameters

5.2.1 General theoretical considerations Compared to the Standard Theory, the Extended Standard Theory, and the Revised Extended Standard Theory, the Theory of Principles and Parameters exhibits radical changes. However, this does not apply to the goals of the theory nor to its fundamental aspects. As before, the major goal is an explanation of the development of a native speaker’s linguistic competence, more recently called ‘I-language’ (‘internal, individual,

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and intensional’) and characterized as a ‘state of [the] mind/brain’ (cf. e.g. Chomsky and Lasnik 1993: 507), and as before, it is claimed that because of the underdetermined nature of the linguistic input during language acquisition, this development can only be explained by assuming that the human species is genetically endowed with an initial state of language acquisition – universal grammar (UG). However, the results of research based on the successors to the Standard Theory led to a reconsideration of the properties and the structure of UG. Here, the established facts were important, namely that any child can acquire any of the world’s languages if he/she grows up in the linguistic community of that language and that language is acquired within a relatively short period of time and even on the basis of defective input. Therefore, on the one hand, UG must be complex to capture the diversity of languages, yet it must be simple on the other in order to explain the circumstances of language acquisition. Chomsky made the following claims about the requirements UG must fulWl: The theory of UG must meet two obvious conditions. On the one hand, it must be compatible with the diversity of existing (indeed, possible) grammars. At the same time, UG must be suYciently constrained and restrictive in the options it permits so as to account for the fact that each of these grammars develops in the mind on the basis of quite limited evidence. (1981a: 3)

From these considerations he inferred the following properties of the structure of UG, which could solve the paradox of UG having to be complex and simple at the same time: What we expect to Wnd, then, is a highly structured theory of UG based on a number of fundamental principles that sharply restrict the class of attainable grammars and narrowly constrain their form, but with parameters that have to be Wxed by experience. If these parameters are embedded in a theory of UG that is suYciently rich in structure, then the languages that are determined by Wxing their values one way or another will appear to be quite diverse, since the consequences of one set of choices may be very diVerent from the consequences of another set. (Chomsky 1981a: 3 f.)

The result was therefore the development of a modular theory composed of interacting subsystems or ‘modules’, each consisting of a few universal principles with a few parameters to be Wxed for individual languages, and supplemented by a few extra-modular general or

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speciWc principles and their parameters. According to this view, the grammar of an individual language consists of the principles of UG together with the parameters Wxed for this language, the ‘core grammar’, and a marked periphery speciWc to this particular language, which comprises lexical knowledge, including morphological and phonological knowledge (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1981a: 8 V.; 1986a: 147 f.). Initially the principles were identiWed as conditions on phrasestructure rules and on transformational rules. However, it emerged during the course of the development of the PPT that the interaction of the principles of the various modules replaced the phrase-structure rules completely and rendered transformational rules unnecessary except for the rule Move Æ, and determined the structure of sentences at the various levels of representation. The theory distinguished four levels of representation, D-structure (a modiWed successor of ‘deep structure’ in the Standard Theory), S-structure (a modiWed successor of ‘surface structure’ in the Standard Theory), as well as phonetic form (PF) and logical form (LF). PF, now claimed to be the genuine ‘surface structure’ (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1981a: 5, 18, 34; 1986a: 68), and LF are assumed to stand at the interface of the grammar and other components of the mind/brain which interact with the language faculty.2 For PF, these are perceptual and production systems, which determine the physical form and perceptual interpretation of sentences (cf. Chomsky 1981a: 4, 18; 1986a: 68). For LF, these are conceptual and pragmatic systems, which interact with the language faculty when thoughts are conceived and interpreted using language (cf. Chomsky 1981a: 4; 1986a: 68, 175). Schematically, the relationship between the levels of representation is represented in the so-called ‘Y-model’:

(1)

(I)

D-structure (II)

S-structure (III)

PF

(IV)

LF (cf. Chomsky 1986a: 68)

2 This assumption corresponds to the view that the mind/brain is modularized as well so that PF and LF interact with diVerent modules. See in this context e.g. Fodor (1983).

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The modules or subsystems of principles that Chomsky identiWes (1981a: 5) include the following: bounding theory, Ł-theory, binding theory, Case theory, and Control Theory. These are supplemented by the general projection principle and its extension, the extended projection principle (EPP), as well as by the empty category principle (ECP). The principles of UG, which form the computational system, and the lexicon constitute the two components of a grammar. The well-formedness of the sentences of a language is determined by the interaction of the (parametrized) principles and the lexicon at the four levels of representation. This will be shown here in order to provide necessary background information for the description of syntactic categories in this framework, focused on in sections 5.3 and 5.4.3

5.2.2 On determining the D-structure of sentences The D-structure of the sentences of a language is determined by the properties of lexical items, which are speciWed in the lexicon, by the projection principle, Ł-theory, Case theory, and X-bar theory. The lexicon consists of a list of lexical entries which specify for each lexical item a phonological matrix, semantic information, categorial features, and contextual features related to its complement structure. The semantic information, which is relevant for LF, includes the thematic or ‘argument’ structure, which determines how many arguments an item licenses, which Ł-role – for example, Agent, Patient, Goal, or Proposition – these arguments are assigned, and whether an argument is external or internal. Categorial features, which will be looked at more closely in section 5.3.3, are speciWed as combinations of the features [N] and [V] to represent the categories N, V, A, and P. Contextual (complement) features determine via c-selection the categorial realization of the internal arguments, for example as NP or PP, whereas they determine their speciWcation for Ł-roles, for example as Patient or Goal, via s-selection. If c-selection follows the canonical structural realization (CSR), which, for example, identiWes NP as the canonical structural representation of Patient, then it need not be speciWed in the lexical entry. It is also unnecessary to specify the order of the internal arguments of a lexical item since this follows from the 3 The following characterizations refer to the models in Chomsky (1981a) and Chomsky (1986a,b). Chomsky and Lasnik (1993) will not be included at this point because it contains changes which foreshadow the Minimalist Program. These will be brought into focus in subsequent sections.

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conditions of Case theory. Case theory requires that each NP must be Case marked, and this is achieved by the Case Wlter, which Wlters out at PF structures with NPs that are not Case marked. Case theory distinguishes between two types of Case assignment: inherent Case assignment, which is speciWed in the lexicon, and structural Case assignment. The latter takes place at S-structure at the latest and requires, in languages like English, adjacency of the Case-assigning and the Case-receiving units. Thus, in the context of verbs, which belong to the set of structural Case assigners, the order of complements (which can be NP, PP, and/or S) need not be speciWed because NP necessarily assumes verb-adjacent position, and other complements, if speciWed for, will follow. The projection principle is the principle that establishes the relationship between the lexicon and syntax. It requires that the representations at each syntactic level, i.e. at D-structure, S-structure, and LF, are projections as speciWed in the lexicon, meaning that the subcategorization requirements of lexical items are followed. However, the domain of the projection principle is restricted to complements and does not include subjects. The subject position is determined by Ł-theory on the one hand, and the EPP on the other. The Ł-Criterion requires that each Ł-role for which a lexical item is speciWed be assigned to one and only one argument and that each argument bear one and only one Ł-role. Assigning Ł-roles to arguments is dependent on their positions and only complement positions and subject positions are argument positions. Whereas complement positions (of lexical heads) are always assigned a Ł-role, this is not the case with subject positions. In sentences with expletive subjects like it or there, for example, the subject position is not assigned a Ł-role, and here it is the EPP, which requires that all sentences must have a subject, that determines the presence of a subject position. The structural representation of D-structure is determined by X-bar theory. X-bar theory, which will be discussed in more detail in section 5.3.1, requires that phrase structures be endocentric, i.e. projections of a head X. X is Wrst identiWed as representing members of the so-called ‘lexical’ categories N, V, and A (cf. Chomsky 1981a: 48), and later also P and the so-called ‘functional’ categories: I(nXection) as the head of IP (¼S), and C(omplementizer) as the head of CP (¼S’) (cf. Chomsky 1986a: 160; 1986b: 3). In the 1981 model, projections are restricted to the head and its complements. Later, the X-bar schema speciWes (at least) two levels of projection, represented as X’, consisting of head and complement(s), and X’’ (¼Xmax¼XP), consisting of speciWer(s) and

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X’. Accordingly, X, X’, and X’’ represent categories at diVerent levels of projection. The relative order of head and complement(s) as well as head and speciWer(s) is parametrized for individual languages. In English, complement(s) follow(s) their head and speciWer(s), precede (s) it. This is expressed in the following schema: (2)

a. X’ ¼ X X’’* b. X’’ ¼ X’’* X’ (cf. Chomsky 1986b: 3)

The schema allows for multiple complements and speciWers, which is expressed by ‘*’. In particular instances, the number of complements is determined and thus constrained by the lexically speciWed subcategorization properties of the head and by the projection principle. The number of speciWers is determined by the options provided by the licensing principle, introduced in the 1986 model, which requires that every element in a well-formed structure must be licensed (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1986a: 93). The schema shows that speciWers and complements are realized by maximal projections, i.e. by X’’(¼Xmax¼XP)categories.

5.2.3 On deriving S-structure, LF, and PF S-structure is derived from D-structure by applying the rule Move Æ. Move Æ means that, in principle, any category in a syntactic representation, i.e. X, X’, or X’’, can be moved anywhere. However, empirical evidence has shown that only categories of maximal projections and heads are visible to Move Æ and that X’-categories do not move (cf. Chomsky 1986b: 4). Move Æ is constrained by bounding theory, which determines the maximal distance between the source and the target positions in that it prohibits the crossing of more than two bounding nodes. Bounding nodes are determined for a particular language by the Wxing of parameters. For English, for example, NP and IP (¼S) were identiWed as bounding nodes, and for Italian NP and CP (¼S’) (cf. Rizzi 1982: ch. 2). Move Æ is in addition constrained by the requirement that whenever a category moves, it leaves behind a trace as a phonetically empty category which is subject to the ECP. The ECP requires that empty categories be properly governed, thus allowing only upward movement. Finally, Move Æ is constrained by the requirement that it be motivated and by conditions that the resulting structures must meet. Thus, movement of NPs located in non-Case

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positions in D-structure, for example in complement positions of participles or unaccusative verbs, is motivated by the requirements of Case theory. Observing the Ł-Criterion, they move to NP-positions to which Case is assigned so that they can pass the Case Wlter at PF. The only possible target position for NP-movement is thus the subject position [Spec, I] if this position is not assigned a Ł-role and if I is speciWed as [þWnite] and therefore assigns nominative Case to [Spec, I]. Wh-phrases are moved in order to form interrogative or relative clauses. Wh-movement is triggered by the feature [þWh] and the derived structure is well-formed only if the Wh-phrase is moved to the speciWer position of a head which is also speciWed as [þWh]. SpeciWer and head then instantiate the relation of Spec-Head Agreement (cf. Chomsky 1986b: 27). Finally, if I is not realized as a modal verb or the inWnitive marker to but rather as an inXectional aYx, verbal heads, which enter the syntax uninXected, move to the I-position to pick up the aYx and thus become marked for inXection (cf. Chomsky 1986b: 86). The later version of the PPT assumes that lexical items enter the syntax fully inXected, thus changing the conditions for movement. This version requires that the inXectional features of V and I agree and thus meet the condition of Head-Head Agreement, which is checked after V-to-I movement (cf. Chomsky and Lasnik 1993: 519). S-structure is the level of representation at which the principles of the binding theory determine the well-formed distribution of types of NPs. Binding is a structural relation between referentially dependent NPs and their antecedents which is determined by government and represented by coindexing. Four types of NPs are distinguished, of which three are either phonetically realized or phonetically empty. These are anaphors (reXexive or reciprocal pronouns such as himself and each other as well as NP-traces), pronominals (pronouns such as he or they and pro, a phonetically empty NP occupying the subject position in languages that allow so-called ‘empty’ subjects), and R-expressions (lexical NPs like the man or John and Wh-traces). The fourth type is PRO, a phonetically empty category, which may occupy non-governed positions that are required by Ł-theory, and which is subject to control theory (see below). With respect to a locallyspeciWed domain, the governing category,4 the binding theory, 4 The deWnition of ‘governing category’ reads as follows: ‘Æ is a governing category for  if and only if Æ is the minimal category containing  and a governor of , where ƼNP or S’. (Chomsky 1981a: 188).

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determines that anaphors must be bound (principle A) and that pronominals must be free (principle B), whereas R-expressions must be free everywhere (principle C). PRO is special in that it behaves either like anaphors or like pronominals and thus should be bound and free at the same time. It is concluded, therefore, that PRO is not subject to the binding theory. The reference of PRO is Wxed at LF and determined by control theory. It can either be dependent on the semantics of so-called ‘control’ verbs, as the subject of an embedded clause expressing coreference with either the subject or the object of the matrix verb (e.g. eH i wanted PROi to leave; eHasked her i PROi to leave), or its reference is arbitrary and determined pragmatically (PROarb to be or not PROarb to be . . . ). In the Wrst case PRO behaves like an anaphor, in the second like a pronominal. LF as a level of representation is derived from S-structure via Move Æ. As the interface between grammar and the conceptual and pragmatic systems, LF provides the syntactic prerequisites for semantic interpretation. Thus, Move Æ includes Wh-movement and quantiWer raising, which determine scope and whose output is relevant for semantic interpretation, as is the Wxing of reference via control or binding. The licensing principle introduced in Chomsky (1986a), which requires full interpretation at this level for every item in a sentence, comprises various conditions which determine the well-formedness of LF. Amongst these are the following: An operator5 is licensed by binding a variable, from which it is not ‘too distant,’ in a certain well-deWned abstract sense. Referential dependency must meet the conditions of binding theory. An element that assigns semantic roles must have recipients in appropriate syntactic positions . . . A predicate (in particular, a VP) must have a subject, where the notions are syntactically deWned. (cf. Chomsky 1986a: 93)

These examples illustrate that the conditions aVect semantic relations but are nevertheless formulated syntactically. This conWrms LF’s status as a syntactic level of representation, something which PF is not. PF, the level of phonetic form, is a phonetic representation with labelled bracketing that reXects the properties of the S-structure from which it is derived. At PF, so-called ‘stylistic’ movements may apply, 5 ‘We will understand operators to include quantiWers, wh-phrases, or a binding NP in COMP; or deWnite or indeWnite operators as in relative clauses’ (Chomsky 1981a: 102).

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which are not subject to the conditions of Move Æ. The principle of full interpretation requires that at PF each phonetic element must be licensed by a physical interpretation, e.g. book by [bUk] (cf. Chomsky 1986a: 98). If PF contains non-interpretable elements, it is not wellformed. Since the Case Wlter applies at this level, PF is also ill-formed if it contains one or more NPs unmarked for Case.

5.2.4 Some important questions It is important to be aware of the consequences which the modular conception of the theory presented here has for the identiWcation of syntactic categories. In this connection it is helpful to remember that in the Standard Theory, demonstrated in chapter 4, phrase-structure rules generate deep structures with syntactic positions speciWed for syntactic categories which must be shared by lexical items in order for lexical insertion to take place. Phrase-structure rules are not part of the PPT. Instead it is claimed that D-structures are determined by an interaction of the properties of lexical items with the principles of X-bar theory, Ł-theory, Case theory, and the projection principle. Therefore, the identiWcation of syntactic categories in this framework involves answering the following questions: What are the properties of lexical items that interact with these principles and how does this interaction determine possible positions of lexical items and consequently their syntactic category membership? More precisely, this means: What is the inXuence of X-bar theory, Ł-theory, Case theory and the projection principle on the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories? Since the only transformational rule that has survived is Move Æ, which is subject to the restriction of structure preservation, it can be assumed that there is no diVerence between D-structure categories and S-structure categories. Nevertheless, it should be considered whether there are further principles of the theory that aVect the determination of syntactic categories. A Wnal consideration, concerning the theory as a whole, is whether the principles and parameters and their interaction with the properties of lexical items accomplish what the phrase-structure rules and the transformational rules were expected to do, i.e. to construct and license complete sentence structures (and not just phrases, for example), and whether the theory speciWes for every lexical item properties that determine its category membership and assign it a position in a sentence structure. In order to answer these questions, the next section will Wrst be concerned with X-bar theory, focusing on the question: What is X? It will provide a critical survey of approaches that suggest an answer to this

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question. The idea is to derive the properties that specify lexical items which can serve as heads in the X-bar schema. If lexical items are licensed as X0-categories in the X-bar schema, information on the speciWers and complements they license in their projections is signiWcant for their status as syntactic categories. Section 5.4 will therefore consider which properties of lexical items interact with which additional principles in the licensing of speciWers and complements in projections of X. What is also of relevance here is how combinations of projections are licensed.

5.3 X-bar theory: on X

5.3.1 The origin of X-bar theory and the identification of major (lexical) categories It was mentioned in the preceding section that X-bar theory, Wrst formulated as a condition on phrase-structure rules and later as a principle of the well-formedness of phrase structures, was discovered more or less by chance and developed in the context of a debate on word-formation.6 Chomsky (1970) was reacting to claims put forward by Generative Semanticists, especially by LakoV,7 according to whom word-formation was a transformational process, and as a result developed his own lexicalist position. He argued that a distinction had to be drawn between productive and therefore transformationally derived ‘gerundive nominals’ on the one hand and lexically determined ‘derived nominals’ on the other. In this context, he pointed out that derived nominals and their nonnominal bases share properties concerning the selection of complements which have to be speciWed lexically. In addition, he claimed that there should be phrase-structure rules which generate these structures, namely: (3) a. NP ! N Comp b. VP ! V Comp c. AP ! A Comp (4) Comp ! NP, S, NP S, NP Prep-P, Prep-P Prep-P, etc. (cf. Chomsky 1970: 195)

6 Nevertheless it deserves mention that the resulting structures, as Chomsky admits, are ‘reminiscent of the system of phrase structure analysis developed by Harris in the 1940’s’ (1970: 211). 7 See, for example, LakoVs remarks on nominalizations and complements (1965: 125 V.).

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Given these rules, Chomsky derived a general schema for the expansion of NP, VP, and AP, which Wrst aVects the combination of the lexical category, i.e. the head, and its complement (5), and is later extended to include the speciWer as well (6) (cf. Chomsky 1970: 210):8 (5) X’ ! X . . . (6) X’’ ! [Spec X’] X’ Chomsky identiWed determiners as speciWers of N’, auxiliaries as speciWers of V’ and comparative structures and adverbs of degree, such as very, as speciWers of A’. To begin with, Chomsky identiWed only N, V, and A as ‘lexical’ representatives of X. ‘Lexical’ in this case referred to a subclass of syntactic categories which were later distinguished from ‘functional’ categories (see below).9 In his m A herst Lectures (1974, cf. Chomsky 1975: 108), Chomsky proposed a feature-based representation of these categories, introducing [N] (nominal/nonnominal) and [V] (verbal/ nonverbal)10 as distinctive features: (7) a. N ¼ [þN, V] b. V ¼ [N, þV] c. A ¼ [þN, þV] JackendoV (1977b: 31) took up these feature combinations and proposed P(reposition) as the fourth ‘major lexical category’, specifying it as [N, V] and thus Wlling the gap in the system. It was therefore claimed that P as well as N, V, and A can be the head of phrase structures that are subject to the X-bar schema. Furthermore, following the practice in phonology, the feature combinations were intended to allow for transcategorial  which motivates the expression ‘X-bar’. For 8 Chomsky himself uses the notation ‘X’, reasons of simplicity and uniformity the alternative notation ‘X ’ will be used here throughout. 9 The term ‘lexical’ to characterize categories is used in the literature in diVerent ways, which may lead to misunderstandings. First, ‘lexical’ is used to distinguish an X0 category from an X - or XP-category to indicate that X0 forms the interface with the lexicon. Second, it is used to distinguish lexical from functional categories, which is the use intended here. And there is at least a third use, introduced in Rauh (2000a, 2002c), which distinguishes lexical categories, which are relevant for the lexicon and which have a prototypical structure, from grammatical categories, which are relevant for the grammar and have an Aristotelian category structure. 10 Interestingly, in the literature, this suggestion is almost always attributed to Chomsky (1970), which does not actually conform to the facts. See in this context e.g. JackendoV (1977b: 30), Zwarts (1992: 13), or Baker (2003: 1).

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descriptions of natural classes. Chomsky himself interpreted the feature [þN] as ‘nominal’ or ‘substantival’ and [þV] as ‘verbal’ or ‘predicative’. Accordingly, A and N as [þN] categories are characterized as substantival and A and V as [þV] categories as predicative (cf. Chomsky 1981a: 48; Chomsky and Lasnik 1993: 517). Thus, members of the category A are characterized as substantival as well as predicative. In Chomsky (1970; 1981a), P is excluded from the set of ‘lexical’ categories (cf. e.g. 1981a: 48).11 In 1986, however, Chomsky adopted JackendoV’s proposal, claiming that X generalizes over the ‘lexical’ categories N, V, A, and P and providing a feature representation for each (cf. 1986a: 160). It is especially the lack of agreement about the category P and the fact that P rather than the traditional category adverb is included in the set of ‘major lexical categories’ that motivates the question whether the categories N, V, A, and P here identiWed are the same as the traditional parts of speech with the same labels. That this is not the case, was Wrst exempliWed by P. Identifying P as a lexical category is mainly supported by JackendoV’s (1973) considerations which demonstrated that PPs, some adverbs such as afterward, before, or inside, and some adverbial clauses introduced by after or before exhibit the same distribution and can be speciWed by the same speciWers, including right.12 JackendoV concluded that P as a syntactic category is not restricted to the set of traditional prepositions characterized as selecting NP-complements only but that – like V – P allows for lexically determined variation in its complement selection. In addition to NPs, Ps may select PP-complements (e.g. from behind the curtain), sentential complements (e.g. before eZppo walked in ) or they may be intransitive (e.g. before, inside). Thus, some of the traditional subordinating conjunctions and some traditional adverbs are categorized as syntactic Ps. Finally, the fact that P can be speciWed by right, for example (e.g. right before he walked in), is taken as evidence of the fact that the ‘new’ category P, like N, V, and A, is a lexical category with maximal projections. What is overlooked, however – as pointed out by Rauh (1999) – is that not every member of the traditional category preposition projects a PP that exhibits the distributional properties identiWed by JackendoV (1973). This holds, for example, for those prepositions that are governed by verbs, such as on in rely on one’s 11 Note in this context Chomsky’s remark: ‘Let us refer to substantives and predicates as ‘‘lexical categories’’. So we have a system based on the features [N], [V], where [þN, V] is noun, [N, þV] is verb, [þN, þV] is adjective, and [N, V] is preposition, the Wrst three being lexical categories’ (1981a: 48). 12 See also Emonds (1976: 172 V.).

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strength. In addition, these prepositions do not have projections of their own. Therefore, in contrast to what was intended, the ‘new’ category P is not syntactically homogeneous. Section 5.4 will return to this problem. The syntactic category A [þN, þV] is not identical to the traditional part of speech adjective either. Because of their shared projection properties, it has been suggested that traditional adverbs derived from adjectives by attaching the suYx -ly, such as cleverly or independently, should be classiWed as members of the category A and that the diVerent distribution of their maximal projections should be attributed to positional variation (cf. Emonds 1976: 12). Radford also argues along these lines and provides the following examples as evidence (cf. 1988: 138 f.): (8) a. He thinks [ADVP more quickly/quicker/*quicklier than me] b. His brain is [AP more quick/quicker than mine] (9) a. Her decision was independent of mine [Adjective] b. She decided independently of me [Adverb] These examples demonstrate that of the ‘major lexical categories’ N, V, A, and P, at least P and A are not identical to the traditional parts of speech with the same label.

5.3.2 Towards a motivation of the categorial features The identiWcation of the ‘major lexical categories’ suggested by JackendoV and taken over by Chomsky, together with their feature-based descriptions, has been generally accepted in the literature on Generative Grammar without criticism. This holds at least for those works that do not focus on the description of categories. Since the feature combinations are claimed to allow for a transcategorial description of natural classes, attempts have been made to provide answers to the question of which classes are described by particular features, answers which diVer from Chomsky’s characterization of [þN] as ‘substantival’ and [þV] as ‘predicative’ in that they are syntactic or rather morphosyntactic in nature. Various suggestions have been made, some of which supplement each other but some of which contradict each other, thus casting doubt on the usefulness of these features. A selection of examples illustrates the situation. According to Stowell (1981: 22), the feature [þN] describes the class of items which in English cannot select an NP-complement and thus require an inserted of preceding the NP, as in the refusal of the oVer. Fanselow and Felix (1987: 68) claim that items speciWed for [þN] in

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languages like German inXect for case, gender, and number. Aoun (1981: 8) relates the feature [þN] to the properties ‘Case marked’, ‘not bear[ing] person markers’, and ‘its nominal argument will be [þgenitive]’ and states that some of these properties are universal and others speciWc to particular languages. Following Rouveret and Vergnaud (1980), Stowell (1981: 23) relates the property of Case assignment to the feature [N] in English. Fanselow and Felix (1987: 68) generalize this property and claim that [N]-items universally assign Case. Aoun (1981: 9) states that items speciWed as [N] exhibit none of the properties he identiWes for [þN]-items (see above). The feature [þV] was claimed initially by van Riemsdijk13 to describe items whose projections in German can be used as prenominal modiWers. This interpretation was taken over by Stowell (1981: 23) as well as by Radford (1988: 148). Aoun (1981: 8) however claimed that the case properties ‘will not be Case marked’, ‘will bear person markers’, and ‘its nominal arguments will be [þaccusative]’ are related to [þV] and stated – again – that some of these properties are universal and others speciWc to particular languages. To interpret the feature [V], Stowell (1981: 24) refers to considerations by JackendoV (1977b: 17), who points out that projections of N and P but not of A and V in English may be subject to a syntactic rule of cleft-sentence formation. This is taken up by Radford (1988: 148), whereas Aoun states that items speciWed as [V] share none of the properties he identiWed for [þV]-items (see above). The assignment of properties to the features [N] and [V] is problematic because of their heterogeneity. It leads to inconsistencies and even to contradictions, especially concerning the features [N] and [þV]. Take the property ‘Case assigner’ as a characteristic of [N] categories. If [N] denotes the property Case assignment, then those items of the categories V and P that do not assign Case should not be speciWed for this feature, i.e. intransitive forms and forms that take PPcomplements or sentential complements, and unaccusative verbs. Case-assigning members of the categories V and P should be described as [N, þV] and non-Case-assigning ones as [þV], however this analysis is never adopted. This is not to say that members of the categories V and P are never Case assigners. It only means that this does not hold for all of them and that it is problematic to link this

13 See van Riemsdijk (1983), an unpublished version of which was available in 1980.

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property to the feature [N]. Aoun’s and van Riemsdijk’s characterizations of the feature [þV] contradict each other. Projections of members of the category V can be used as prenominal modiWers in German only if they have the form of participles, and this is the claim made by van Riemsdijk (1983: 233). These forms, however, do not exhibit the properties that Aoun assigns to the feature [þV]: they are Case marked and they are not marked for person. In spite of such problems related to feature speciWcations, these are in general used to describe the categories N, V, A, and P as lexical heads of projections that are subject to the X-bar schema. This will be seen below.

5.3.3 Including minor categories In addition to the problems related to the features, there is another problem concerning the description of syntactic categories on the basis of the X-bar schema. The identiWcation and description of N, V, A, and P is by no means suYcient to assign every lexical item of a language to a syntactic category. It is explicitly restricted to the ‘major lexical categories’. There are two approaches concerned with descriptions of categories that include ‘minor categories’ as well: JackendoV (1977b) and Zimmermann (1990).14 Whereas JackendoV develops a diVerent feature system, Zimmermann suggests that the features [N] and [V] should be supplemented by similar ones. JackendoV (1977b) proposes a syntactic categorization of lexical items on the basis of the features [Subject] (¼to have or not to have a subject), [Object] (¼complements may or may not include a surface NP), [Complement] (¼ability or inability to take a complement), and [Determiner] (to be or not to be an article or a degree word) (cf. ibid. 32 f.). Applying these features, he describes for English the categories V, M(odal), P, Prt (Particle), N, Art(icle), Q(uantiWer), A, Deg(ree), and Adverb in the following way:

14 An additional suggestion was made by Reuland (1986), which will not be considered here in detail. On the basis of the features [A, 0A] and [F, 0F], Reuland developed representations of the categories C(ommon) N (oun) , I(ndividual) N (oun) , Det(erminer), dj(ective) , V(erb), P(reposition), C(omplementizer), and I(nXection). The feature A speA ciWes the property of being an argument and F that of being a functor. A positive speciWcation of a feature expresses that the property is always present, a negative speciWcation that it is never present, and a speciWcation as ‘0’ expresses that the property may be present. Reuland describes the following representations: CN: [þA, 0F], IN: [þA, F], Det: [A, F], Adj: [0A, þF], V: [A, þF], P: [A, 0F], C: [0A, F], I: [0A, 0F].

categories, features, and projections

(10) V M P Prt N Art Q A Deg Adv

Subj + + – – + + + – – –

Obj + + + + – – – – – –

Comp + – + – + – – + – –

99

Det

+ – + –

(ibid. 33) It should be noted that the categories P, A, and Adv are not identical to the traditional categories preposition, adjective, and adverb. As was pointed out before in connection with the major lexical categories, P comprises traditional prepositions and in addition some traditional subordinating conjunctions as well as some traditional adverbs. The category Adv is correspondingly reduced in size and in addition loses a subset to the category Deg (e.g. so, too, as). In contrast to Radford (1988), JackendoV does not include -ly adverbs derived from adjectives in the category A, as can be inferred from the projections of Adv he presents (cf. e.g. ibid. 156). Instead, these adverbs form a proper subset of Adv. This, however, renders the feature representation of Adv inadequate since some of these adverbs – like their adjectival bases – select complements, for example, independently (of me). Therefore, they should be assigned the feature [þComp]. The negative speciWcation of P and A for [Subj] is empirically inadequate as well, since members of both categories may have subjects in small-clause constructions, as illustrated by the examples in (11): (11) a. They considered [him intelligent]. b. He wanted [them oV the ship]. What is also problematic is the fact that on the one hand it is relations that form the basis for feature representations [Subj, Obj, Compl], and on the other hand it is categorial speciWcation, namely [Det]. Thus, JackendoV deserves credit mainly for his attempt to provide feature-based syntactic descriptions related to the X-bar schema not only for the major lexical categories V, P, N, and A but also for minor categories. The arrangement of categories in (10) suggests that JackendoV related certain minor categories to certain major

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categories, namely M to V, Prt to P, Art and Q to N, and Deg and Adv to A. However, this arrangement is neither substantiated nor explained. Therefore, it remains unclear what kind of relation is meant and also whether the categories identiWed may represent X. Zimmermann (1990: 864 V.) set up an inventory of seven features with the values ‘þ’ and ‘’. These features are claimed to be universal, with particular languages making use of them in diVerent ways. The features identiWed are the following: [V], [N], [A], [Adv], [Det], [Q], and [K] (¼ ‘conjunction’). Applying these features, Zimmermann describes 21 syntactic categories for German. Some of the features or feature combinations are related to syntactically relevant semantic properties and some to morphosyntactic properties. The feature [þV], for example, relates to whether lexical items include a ‘hidden argument’15 in their semantic form which allows the item to combine with adverbial modiWers or sentence adverbials. The feature combination [þV, A] indicates that the items thus speciWed combine with verbal inXection, whereas the combination [þV, þA] describes nonWnite verbal constructions. The combination [þA, Adv] identiWes items that are subject to adjectival inXection, whereas the combination [þA, þAdv] describes the corresponding uninXected forms. Only items speciWed as [þV, A] and as [V, þN, Adv] project a speciWer position, the speciWer having the feature [þDet]. [þDet] indicates the semantic property of determining the reference of its projection. Zimmermann identiWes determiners ([þDet, þN, þA]: der, dieser, jener) and quantiWers ([þDet, þQ, þN, þA]: jeder, einige) as speciWers in the projection of nouns ([V, þN, Adv]) and complementizers ([þDet]: daß, ob) as well as lexically empty characterizations of modal sentences as speciWers in the projection of inXected verbs ([þV, A]). The examples illustrate that Zimmermann not only identiWes and describes a rather large set of categories but that – in addition – she explicitly describes relations between categories, namely between speciWers and heads of projections, and motivates these on semantic grounds. However, this applies only to nouns and inXected verbs and their speciWers. No speciWers are identiWed for other categories, which is problematic as will be seen below. In addition, it remains unclear how the grammar describes the relationship between 15 The identiWcation of such a ‘hidden’ argument goes back to D. Davidson (1967). This argument also plays an important role in Higginbotham’s modiWed Ł-theory, as will be seen in section 5.4.

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speciWers and heads and what the status of the features and feature combinations is within the grammar. Nevertheless, Zimmermann’s approach presents a systematic syntactic categorization of lexical items which identiWes natural – and motivated – relations between certain categories. The existence of a natural relationship between categories that represent lexical heads and categories that may represent speciWers in their projections is a topic focused on by Emonds (1985: 155 V.; 1987). In contrast to Zimmermann, Emonds identiWes speciWers not only in the context of N and V, but also in the context of A and P. Emonds (1987) is especially concerned with a recategorization of the traditional parts of speech as syntactic categories within the X-bar schema, describing pairs that consist of X and [Spec, X] as being mutually dependent and forming a structural unit. He claims that one member of the pair, the head, belongs to an open class and the second one, the speciWer, to a closed class (ibid. 10 f.). Emonds identiWes the four categories N, V, A, and P as possible heads of phrase structures that conform to the X-bar schema, with the category P – as suggested by JackendoV (cf. Emonds 1987) – including subsets of the traditional adverbs and of the subordinating conjunctions in addition to traditional prepositions, and A – as suggested by Radford (cf. Emonds 1987) – including not only traditional adjectives but also adverbs derived by attaching the suYx -ly to adjectival bases. He identiWes articles, demonstratives and quantiWers (e.g. a, this, both, some, any; cf. ibid. 8), as members of the category [Spec, N], ‘underived time and aspect adverbs’ (e.g. just, soon, always, again; cf. ibid. 21) as members of the category [Spec, V], ‘underived adverbs of degree’ (e.g. very, quite, rather, so; cf. ibid. 15 f.) as members of the category [Spec, A] and ‘underived intensifying adverbs’ (e.g. right; cf. ibid. 30) as members of the category [Spec, P]. This formation of pairs of categories (N, A, V, and P) and their respective speciWers by Emonds anticipates a systematic description of syntactic categories that is developed in more detail – and in part explained – with the identiWcation of functional categories and their relationship to lexical categories. This will be considered below. The answer given by Emonds and others to the question ‘What is X?’ is thus the following: X represents four lexical categories whose members form open classes and to which items which form closed classes are related as speciWers. Some of the closed classes represent minor categories as described by JackendoV and some represent categories

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described by Zimmermann. The four lexical categories are characterized by the features [þN, V], [N, þV], [þN, þV], and [N, V], whose status is however unclear. The consequences of this will be discussed in section 5.7. If lexical items are speciWed for these features, then this means that they can be lexical heads in an X-bar schema, which in general includes the property of projecting X’ and X’’ (¼XP). This property, however, may be restricted. Muysken and van Riemsdijk (1986) therefore suggest replacing the ‘bars’ of the projection levels of the X-bar schema (¼ X0, X’, X’’) by combinations of the feature [projection] and [maximal]. Accordingly, X0 is described as [X, proj, max], X’ as [X, þproj, max], and X’’ (¼XP) as [X, þproj, þmax]. This enables forms that do not themselves project but behave like forms which do project, to be speciWed as having this characteristic in the lexicon. Muysken and van Riemsdijk identify particles as examples, attributing to them properties of P except that they do not project. According to their suggestion, particles are speciWed for the feature combination [N, V, proj, þmax] (cf. 1986: 7). What needs to be kept in mind is that although it is the categories N, V, A, and P that are described by the feature combinations [þN, V], [N, þV], [þN, þV], and [N, V] respectively, these categories are not identical to the traditional parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, and preposition.

5.3.4 Identifying functional categories It has been shown that initially the X-bar schema was identiWed and formulated as a condition on the endocentricity of phrase structures, with members of the lexical categories N, V, A, and P as their heads. Further study revealed that clause or sentence structures are endocentric too. In this connection, it should be noted that complementizers which introduce clausal complements of verbs are determined by the selectional properties of these verbs, as illustrated by the examples in (12): (12) a. He asked if they would come. b. He said that they would come. From this it was inferred that the complementizers are the heads of these complement clauses and that the clause type introduced by a complementizer, i.e. whether the clause is Wnite or non-Wnite, depends on selectional properties of the complementizer, with for selecting

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non-Wnite clauses and if or that selecting Wnite clauses. This is shown in examples (13) and (12): (13) He shouted for them to come. It was concluded, therefore, that the inXection of the verb (I) represents the head of these clauses. As a result, C and I were identiWed as the heads of CP and IP respectively, C selecting IP as its complement and I selecting VP:

(14) CP

2 C’ 2 C IP 2 I’ 2 I VP

In the case of interrogatives, the head C is speciWed as [þWh] and in the case of declaratives it is speciWed as [Wh]. This speciWcation holds for complement clauses as well as for matrix clauses. I – in English – is speciWed as [þTense] and [Agreement] in the case of Wnite clauses and as [Tense] and [Agreement] in the case of non-Wnite clauses.16 I is lexically represented by inXectional aYxes ([þTense, þAgreement]), by the inWnitive marker to ([Tense, Agreement]), or by modal auxiliaries ([þTense, þAgreement]). Subjects of clauses are identiWed as speciWers of I, and if C is speciWed as [þWh], fronted Wh-phrases are identiWed as speciWers of C. The description of I and C presented above and the identiWcation of their complements and speciWers substantiated the view that it is not only the ‘major lexical categories’ N, V, A, and P but also ‘minor lexical categories’ or ‘non-lexical’ categories that are subject to the conditions of the X-bar schema. In his seminal work on the NP in English, in which he demonstrated that there are parallels between IPs and NPs concerning possible subject positions for example, Abney (1987) identiWed an additional non-lexical category, D, the former speciWer of N, which projects phrases whose internal structure conforms to the X-bar schema: D as a head selects an NP as its complement and projects a 16 Raposo (1987) points out that in Portuguese the combination of [þAgr] and [Tense] is possible.

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speciWer position for a possible subject. Abney referred to data from Hungarian, amongst other languages, which were Wrst presented and discussed by Szabolcsi (1984), to show that in some languages the subject in the speciWer position of D and D itself are speciWed for the same agreement features, as are the subject in the speciWer position of I and I itself. In addition, and this holds for English as well, D like I is a structural Case assigner: Whereas I assigns nominative Case to its speciWer on the basis of the feature [þTense], D assigns genitive Case to its speciWer on the basis of the feature [Poss]. This Case is then realized by the inXectional aYx ’s (cf. Abney 1987: 79):

(15)

DP 3 DP D’ g 2 John D NP g g ’s book

Using combinations of the features [N] and [F], Abney then described the ‘non-lexical’ or ‘functional’ categories he identiWed as speciWed for the feature [þF] and the lexical categories as speciWed for the feature [F], which together with the shared feature [þN] or [N] yield a description of ‘four major classes of syntactic categories’ (1987: 63): (16)

F

þF

N V, Aux, P(?) I, C þN N, A, Q, Adv D (ibid.) Abney explicitly rejected the inclusion of the feature [V] because he considered the description of the natural classes A and V on the one hand and N and P on the other, which are both based on these features, to be inadequate. With respect to P, he remarked that it is unclear whether it ought to be classiWed as a lexical or a functional category. This, together with his classiWcation of Q and Adv as nominal lexical categories, is noteworthy, as coming sections will show. In addition to his identiWcation of D as an additional ‘non-lexical’ category which is subject to the X-bar schema, Abney deserves special credit for having pointed out and characterized in detail, fundamental

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diVerences between two types of categories. These are non-lexical categories on the one hand, which he prefers to call ‘functional’ (cf. 1987: 54), and lexical categories on the other. According to him, members of functional categories form closed classes. They are phonologically and morphologically dependent, in general unstressed, and often clitics or aYxes. They select just one particular complement, which is not an argument, i.e. they do not Ł-mark it. In general, functional categories cannot be separated from their complement. They have no descriptive content, no meaning that relates to the world and they realize grammatical or relational properties rather than refer to classes of objects. In contrast, according to Abney, members of lexical categories form open classes, are independent, have descriptive content which relates to the world, and they Ł-mark their complements (cf. ibid. 64). This characterization adequately summarizes the properties that distinguish the functional categories and the lexical categories identiWed so far, i.e. C, I, and D on the one hand and N, V, A, and P on the other, and although Abney himself suggested a diVerent categorization, his work provided a solid basis for further investigations on whether lexical items not categorized so far or items which – like D – were categorized as speciWers of lexical categories should also be identiWed as members of functional categories. Subsequently, numerous items, among them some that Emonds had identiWed as speciWers, were analysed as either heads or speciWers of functional categories. Since the projections of these functional categories showed a close relationship to the projection of a particular lexical category and since they hierarchically dominate the projections of lexical categories, Grimshaw (1991) introduces the term ‘extended projections’ for functional projections. Thus, the projection of D is an extended projection of N, and C and I are extended projections of V. In the course of analysing lexical items as heads or speciWers of functional categories, the following additional functional projections were identiWed: in addition to projections of D, Q(uantiWer) (e.g. Lo¨bel 1989, 1990; Giusti 1991), and Num(ber) (Ritter 1991) as extended projections of N, Deg(ree) as an extended projection of A (e.g. Corver 1990; Zwarts 1992), and R (e.g. Zwarts 1992; Rauh 1996, 1997a,b, 2002a) alias ‘Place’ or ‘Path’ (Koopman 1993), Ext(ension) (Rauh 1996, 1997a,b, 2002a) alias ‘Deg(ree)’ (Koopman 1993; Haumann 2002), and C (Koopman 1993) as extended projections of P. As far as the

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extended projections of V are concerned, Pollock (1989) argued for splitting I into the categories Agr(eement) and T(ense), and Rizzi (1997) argued for splitting C into Force, Top(ic), Foc(us), and Fin(ite). In addition, the following functional categories were identiWed as extended projections of V: Neg(ation) (e.g. Pollock 1989; Haegeman 1995), Asp(ect) (e.g. Ouhalla 1991; van Gelderen 1993), Mood, and Modality (Cinque 1999). Cinque also motivated a split of Mood, Mod, Asp, and T into various syntactically diVerentiated categories on the basis of empirical evidence with respect to their relative positions. The resulting categories are: Moodspeech act, Moodevaluative, Moodevidential, Moodepistemic, T(Past), T(Future), Moodirrealis, Modnecessity, Modpossibility, Asphabitual, Asprepetitive(I), Aspfrequentative(I), Modvolitional, Aspcelerative(I), T(Anterior), Aspterminative, Aspcontinuative, Aspperfect(?), Aspretrospective, Aspproximative, Aspdurative, Aspgeneric/ progressive, Aspprospective, AspSgCompletive(I), AspPlCompletive, Voice, Aspcelerative(II), Asprepetitive(II), Aspfrequentative(II), AspSgCompletive(II) (Cinque 1999: 106)

The bases for the identiWcation of the various functional categories will be considered in section 5.4. Each of the functional categories is represented by features which are realized either by aYxes or by free morphemes and which may license speciWers in their projections. Languages make use of these possibilities in diVerent ways, as Cinque, for example, demonstrated on the basis of a consideration of numerous languages. And even in one and the same language, a functional category may be realized in diVerent ways. To give just one example from English: If Deg as the extended projection of A is speciWed for the feature [þgradable], it can be realized either by -est or by most or the feature can license the speciWer extremely. Given the identiWcation of functional categories, the question ‘What is X?’ can receive a more comprehensive answer than before: In addition to the four lexical categories, X can be represented by any of the functional categories. This requires that items which represent functional categories have a lexical entry. Compared to earlier models, e.g. the Standard Theory, this has the advantage that many more items are categorized and thus made available to the syntactic computational system, namely all the free morphemes which represent functional heads and which were not previously categorized, for example the inWnitive marker to or the comparative and superlative markers

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more and most in English, to mention just three. In some cases the result is a more adequate categorization, for example, in the case of pronouns. These are now analysed as intransitive determiners and no longer as members of the category N or NP, whose syntactic properties they only partly share. Another consequence is that the lexicon now lists items which are not traditionally considered lexical items, namely aYxes and features or feature bundles which, in addition to morphosyntactic speciWcations, may receive semantic speciWcations but no phonological speciWcations, i.e. are phonetically empty. In all cases, members of functional categories are lexically speciWed for features which deWne a category. For example, [past] deWnes the category T, [deWnite] deWnes D and [plural] deWnes Num. Since functional categories as extended projections have a close relationship to one of the lexical categories, van Riemsdijk (1990) and Grimshaw (1991) suggested this should be taken into account by adding to the feature representation of a functional category the representation of the lexical category to which it is related. Thus, for example, English the could be represented by [þN, V, þdeWnite] and -est by [þN, þV, þgradable]. The syntactic description of items listed in the lexicon as lexical or functional heads provides a partial syntactic determination of their category membership, and this must be supplemented by an identiWcation of the possible contexts of these items in sentence structures. It is important, therefore, to know what kinds of complements and what kinds of speciWers are licensed by these items and to know what hierarchical order of projections results from the licensing. The following section is concerned with the basis for and the consequence of the licensing of constituents in the (extended) projections of members of lexical and functional categories.

5.4 Lexical and functional categories and the licensing of constituents Section 5.3 showed that members of lexical as well as of functional categories can instantiate X0 in the X-bar schema. There are considerable diVerences, however, with respect to the manner in which members of these categories license speciWers and complements in their projections, and this will be discussed in this section.

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5.4.1 Licensing complements and specifiers of lexical heads In the PPT, as shown in section 5.2, complements of members of lexical categories are licensed in D-structure by the interaction of lexically determined properties with the projection principle, the Ł-Criterion, and the parametrized principles of Case theory. The lexical properties include the speciWcation of an argument structure which determines how many arguments an item licenses, which Ł-role they receive and whether an argument is an internal or an external one. The speciWcation of internal arguments has, since Grimshaw (1981), been called ‘s-selection’. In addition, the lexical properties contain a speciWcation of cselection, which determines the categorial realization of internal arguments unless it conforms to the canonical structural realization (CSR). Furthermore, a speciWcation of internal arguments for inherent Case is also part of the lexical properties. The projection principle is designed to guarantee that the complements determined by s-selection and c-selection are represented at D-structure as well as at the levels of S-structure and LF. The Ł-Criterion is designed to guarantee that each argument bears a Ł-role – which is also called ‘Ł-marking’ – and that it bears only one. Where complements are concerned, this is actually already Wxed, given the property of s-selection. If an argument structure contains more than one internal argument and if these arguments are not speciWed for inherent Case, then the order of these arguments is determined by Case theory. This holds for English, for example: if one of the arguments is realized by an NP then it must – due to the conditions of structural Case assignment, which takes place under adjacency – occupy a position adjacent to the Case assigning head. This shows that a speciWcation for structural Case assignment is one of the lexicallydetermined properties of members of lexical categories, which in English is the assignment of ‘accusative’ or ‘objective’ in the complement domain. This is expressed by the feature [N]. Due to the problems related to the features [N, V] – as discussed in section 5.3.2 – it was later suggested that structural Case assignment should be triggered by means of a speciWc Case feature, in this case [assign accusative/objective Case]. The above shows that in the PPT the licensing of the complements of members of (non-functional) lexical categories is determined by the lexically speciWed properties of s-selection, c-selection, and Case assignment. The following examples illustrate some of the consequences of this. If an internal argument is s-selected, an NP c-selected, and objective Case assigned, then the item thus speciWed represents a lexical head that is

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followed by an NP in D-structure which may remain in this position in Sstructure. If the head is speciWed as [N, þV] and selects an external argument, then it represents a syntactic (sub)category which is traditionally called ‘transitive verb’. If the speciWcations do not include a Case assignment feature and a speciWcation for an external argument then the item is followed by an NP in D-structure. However, due to Case requirements this NP must be moved to a position in S-structure where it is assigned Case. These feature speciWcations describe a syntactic (sub) category called ‘unaccusative verb’. If an item is speciWed as [N, V] in the lexicon, s-selects an internal argument in addition to an external one, c-selects an NP, and assigns it objective Case, then it is a member of a syntactic (sub)category traditionally called ‘preposition’. If the speciWcations do not include s-selection, c-selection, and Case assignment, then this represents a syntactic (sub)category traditionally called ‘adverb’. If there is no speciWcation for Case assignment and c-selection speciWes a CP or IP, then the syntactic (sub)category is traditionally called ‘subordinating conjunction’. This is not to say that the traditional parts of speech referred to, i.e. preposition, adverb, and subordinating conjunction, are identical to the syntactic categories with the same label that are described on the basis of feature speciWcations. The syntactic categories comprise just a subset of the items traditionally assigned to these parts of speech. An explanation of the licensing of speciWers of (non-functional) lexical categories owes much to insights presented by Sportiche (1988) and Koopman and Sportiche (1991). These are concerned with the subject position or rather the position of external arguments of verbs. Whereas it was previously assumed that external arguments are located in the [Spec, I] position in D-structure and S-structure, Sportiche and Koopman claimed that they are base-generated in [Spec, V] and then moved to [Spec, I] for Case reasons. Their claim is based, among other criteria, on word-order phenomena related to so-called ‘Xoated quantiWers’, such as all in (17): (17) The childreni [VP all ti left]. Examples of small clauses as in (18) suggest that external arguments of members of other lexical categories are base-generated in their Specpositions as well: (18) a. The professor considered [the students intelligent]. b. The captain wanted [the passengers oV the ship]. c. They made [the newcomer their chief].

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Examples like these led to the general assumption that speciWers in the projection of lexical heads are licensed by the interaction of a lexical speciWcation for an external argument and the Ł-Criterion. If, therefore, a member of a lexical category is not speciWed for an external argument, no speciWer will be licensed in its projection. This, for example, is the case with unaccusative verbs. The fact that they c-select an NP but do not assign Case to it induces the movement of this NP out of its [Comp, V] position to the [Spec, I] position, where it is assigned nominative Case. Weather verbs like rain or snow are not speciWed for an external argument either. Nor are they speciWed for an internal argument, which means that they do not license complements. This also holds for a subset of traditional prepositions, such as on in the context of rely and at in the context of good, which are governed by lexical heads and whose internal arguments they mark in a manner similar to inherent Case marking. These prepositions license neither a speciWer via an external argument nor a complement via an internal argument.17 They share with the prepositions that are speciWed for these two types of argument only the property of structural Case assignment. Apart from this, they exhibit properties of functional categories. The examples presented above show that the syntactic categorization of members of lexical categories is determined not only by their speciWcation for the feature [N, V] but, in addition, by their speciWcation for external and internal arguments, the latter being called ‘s-selection’, as well as by their speciWcation for c-selection and Case-assigning properties. As shown in section 5.3, functional categories were identiWed only in the course of the development of the PPT, and as a result insights concerning the licensing of their speciWers and their complements were gained and generalized later.

5.4.2 Licensing specifiers of functional heads The Wrst three functional categories identiWed, i.e. C, I, and D, already revealed that in well-formed constructions functional heads and their speciWers share particular functional features. Thus, C and [Spec, C] share the feature [þWh], I and [Spec, I] share the features 17 Since these prepositions are selected by lexical heads, they cannot head small clauses with their own subjects, and the close semantic relationship that holds between the lexical head and the complement of such a preposition, as in eHrelied on his intuition or eHwas good at tennis, which contrasts with the lack of such a relation between the preposition and its complement, indicates that it is not the preposition that s-selects this complement.

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[þAgreement] and [Nominative], and D and [Spec, D] share [þAgreement] and [Genitive]. Therefore, Fukui (1986: 78 V.) stated that functional heads and their speciWers are related to each other by agreement, which she called ‘SPEC-head agreement’.18 From this she concluded that the F-features of functional heads license functional speciWers via agreement. F-features, according to her, are the Case features nominative and genitive as well as [þWh] (ibid. 54).19 Chomsky (1986b: 24) noted that the ç-features (i.e. person, number, and gender) also participate in the ‘feature sharing’ of ‘SPEC-head agreement’. With the identiWcation of additional functional categories, the relationship of SPEC-head agreement was extended to include further F-features. Finally the Generalized Licensing Criterion of Sportiche (1993: 264) shown in (19), which generalizes over the Wh-Criterion formulated by Rizzi (1991 [1996]: 64) and the Neg-Criterion formulated by Haegeman and Zanuttini (1991: 244), expressed a general principle for the licensing of speciWers of functional categories:20 (19) i. A [þF] head must be in a spec-head relationship with a [þF] XP at LF ii. A [þF] XP must be in a spec-head relationship with a [þF] head at LF It is probably no coincidence that the term ‘criterion’ as well as the formulation of the principle follow the principle on whose basis speciWers of lexical categories are licensed: the Ł-Criterion. The licensing of speciWers of functional categories not only determines the syntactic category membership of functional heads by identifying their preceding contexts. At the same time, it determines the syntactic category membership of the items that are licensed as speciWers. For example, the items licensed as speciWers of a

18 Fukui remarks: ‘the relation between the speciWer position of a Functional category and its Functional head is basically an agreement relation (the ‘SPEC-head’ agreement in the sense of Chomsky (1985), see above)’ (1986: 76). 19 Fukui (1986) introduces the term ‘Kase’ for these three features and states: ‘The speciWer position of a Functional category can appear only when Kase is assigned to that position’ (ibid. 52). 20 It should be noted that the W h-Criterion as well as the eNg-Criterion describe the speciWer as an operator, which is no longer evident in the Generalized Licensing Criterion. Compare in this context the formulation of the W h-Criterion by Rizzi (1991 [1996]: 64): ‘A. A wh-operator must be in a Spec-head conWguration with X0 [þwh]. B. An X0 [þwh] must be in a Spec-head conWguration with a wh-operator’.

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[þWh]-speciWed functional head C are members of a category XP whose lexical head is speciWed as [þWh] and which – as a rule – are moved to the [Spec, C]-position by Wh-movement, thus occupying diVerent D- and S-structure positions.21 What is particularly signiWcant for the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories is the application of the Generalized Licensing Criterion to the licensing of adverbs as speciWers of functional categories, which Laenzlinger (1996) suggested and formulated in the Adv-Criterion. It supports a categorial description of numerous adverbs, categorially distinguished by Cinque (1999) due to their particular positions in sentence structures and analysed by him as speciWers of functional categories, to the eVect that they are speciWed for the same F-feature that also speciWes the functional head. Some of these adverbs do not project. Since Spec positions are XP positions, they are therefore, following Muysken and van Riemsdijk (1986), speciWed as [proj, þmax] (cf. section 5.3.3). Thus, as speciWers of distinct functional categories, the classes of adverbs identiWed by Cinque and illustrated using the following English examples, represent distinct syntactic categories: (20) [frankly Moodspeech act [fortunately Moodevaluative [allegedly Moodevidential [probably Modepistemic [once T(Past) [then T(Future) [perhaps Moodirrealis [necessarily Modnecessity [possibly Modpossibility [usually Asphabitual [again Asprepetitive(I) [often Aspfrequentative(I) [intentionally Modvolitional [quickly Aspcelerative(I) [already T(Anterior) [no longer Aspterminative [still Aspcontinuative [always Aspperfect(?) [just Aspretrospective [soon Aspproximative [brieXy Aspdurative [characteristically(?) Aspgeneric/progressive [almost Aspprospective [completely AspSgCompletive(I) [tutto AspPlCompletive [well Voice [fast/early Aspcelerative(II) [again Asprepetitive(II) [often Aspfrequentative(II) [completely AspSgCompletive(II). (cf. Cinque 1999: 106) In contrast to [þWh]-speciWers, Adv-speciWers are not moved but rather base-generated in their S-structure positions, and therefore this characteristic also contributes to distinguishing between syntactic categories.

21 W hether is an exception and is analysed as an XP base-generated in embedded [Spec, C]-positions. See, for example, Haegeman and Gue´ron (1999: 175 V.).

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5.4.3 Licensing complements of functional heads vs. licensing functional heads in extended projections of lexical heads As far as the licensing of the complements of functional categories is concerned, various considerations were presented which include matters concerning the licensing of hierarchically-ordered functional projections and concerning the identiWcation of functional categories in general. An important result of these considerations was a revision of the PPT, which Wnally led to the development of the Minimalist Program. It was Abney (1987: 56 V.) who, in connection with his distinction between lexical and functional categories, was the Wrst to suggest how the licensing of complements of functional categories could be described. He referred to the licensing of the complements of lexical categories on the basis of s-selection and c-selection and, by analogy with this, introduced the notion of f-selection for the licensing of the complements of functional categories. Whereas s-selection establishes a semantic relation between a head and its complement by assigning a Ł-role and whereas c-selection may allow for complements that vary categorially, i.e. the selection of NP, PP, or CP, for example, fselection requires that the relationship between a functional head and its selected complement is purely structural and that members of the same functional category always select the same category. For example, members of the category C always select an IP as their complement, members of I always select a VP and members of D always select an NP. Just like s-selection and c-selection, f-selection is a property speciWed in a lexical entry. An advantage of this approach is that the speciWcation of f-selection not only licenses complements of functional categories but automatically determines the order of functional projections relative to each other and relative to lexical projections. Grimshaw (1991) criticized the property of f-selection as a mere stipulation which says nothing about the inherent relationship that exists between functional and lexical projections and is determined by the lexical rather than the functional head. The justiWcation of Grimshaw’s criticism is immediately obvious in view of the fact that, for example, I in English hosts aYxes at D-structure which at S-structure, after the verb’s movement from V to I, are attached to the verb as its inXection marker. In the same way, in other languages Deg and D host aYxes at D-structure which are attached to A and N as inXection markers after

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movement to Deg and D.22 As shown in section 5.3.4, Grimshaw expressed this dependency of functional categories by specifying them for the same combinations of the features [N, V] as the lexical categories they depend on and by deWning functional projections as extended projections of lexical heads. An additional feature speciWes whether an item represents a lexical or a functional category and in what order the projections are realized: F0 speciWes a lexical category, F1 the functional category forming the Wrst extended projection, and F2 the functional category forming the second extended projection. Accordingly, the relationship between V, I, and C is described as follows: (21) V [þV N] (F0) I [þV N] (F1) C [þV N] (F2) (cf. Grimshaw 1991: 4) Grimshaw thus introduced a new approach to the relationship between functional categories and their complements. The licensing is not described top-down from the perspective of the functional category, as suggested by Abney, but bottom-up from the perspective of the projecting lexical head. As a result, questions concerning the identiWcation and description of syntactic categories are put diVerently. The relevant question here no longer is: How do members of functional categories license their complements? but rather: How are functional categories licensed as extended projections of lexical categories and what explains the order of the projections? Still within the framework of the PPT, two quite diVerent approaches, which in a way complement each other, were developed as initial answers to the Wrst part of the question. The Wrst approach was based on Higginbotham’s (1985) modiWed version of Ł-theory in connection with X-bar theory and was semantically motivated. The second approach was motivated by morphosyntax, took word-order phenomena into consideration, and was based on insights concerning the tight relationship between inXectional properties of lexical heads and functional categories in the extended projections of these lexical heads. Both approaches basically established an immediate 22 An example of the realization of Deg by an aYx in English is the comparative marker -er of A and an example of the realization of D by an aYx is -en of N in Norwegian as a marker of deWniteness.

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relationship between lexically speciWed features of members of lexical categories and the licensing of functional categories to the eVect that these features were part of their descriptions as syntactic categories. There are two innovations that make Higginbotham’s modiWed Ł-theory particularly striking. The Wrst concerns the semantic nature of the argument structures speciWed in lexical entries. According to Higginbotham, these are like argument structures of logical predicates that contain variables which have to be saturated either by replacing them by constants or by binding them by means of an operator. The second innovation concerns the introduction of an argument which in contrast to external and internal arguments is not speciWed for a particular Ł-role, but rather relates to the reference of the projection and is therefore called the ‘referential argument’. Following D. Davidson (1967), Higginbotham Wrst introduced a referential argument hE(vent)i for verbs,23 which, in contrast to Davidson’s suggestion, not only applied to action verbs but to verbs of state as well. In this case following Williams (1980), Higginbotham introduced a referential argument for nouns too, which, in line with Williams’s terminology, was later called ‘R(eferent)’.24

5.4.4 A modified Ł-theory and the licensing of functional heads and adjuncts in projections of lexical heads Higginbotham’s Ł-theory described the saturation of arguments using the verb ‘discharge’, distinguishing four modes, three of which are relevant here. The Wrst mode, ‘Ł-marking’, is equivalent to Chomsky’s Ł-marking as expressed in the Ł-Criterion, and it saturates the internal and external arguments of an argument structure by syntactically licensing these arguments. The second mode, ‘Ł-binding’, characterizes the licensing of functional categories as the binding of a referential argument. In this context, Higginbotham discusses the binding of hEi by I[þTense] and the binding 23 D. Davidson argues that the semantic representation of sentences which denote events must include an argument that represents an event. He suggests that the sentence Shem kicked Shaun should be represented in the following way: (9x) (Kicked (Shem, Shaun, x)). This he paraphrases as: ‘There is an event x such that x is a kicking of Shaun by Shem.’ (cf. 1967: 92). 24 According to Williams (1980), the argument hRi of nouns is the external argument. Higginbotham implicitly suggests that the argument identiWed by Williams is at the same time the external and the referential argument, expressed by h1i, which in the context of verbs describes the external argument (e.g. see, þV, N, h1, 2, Ei, ibid. 555). Deverbal nouns in particular show that for nouns too, external and referential arguments must be distinguished, which later led Zwarts (1992), for example, to represent the referential argument of nouns as hRi.

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of hRi by D. He thus attributes operator properties to the functional categories I[þTense] and D, which bind variables – here the referential arguments – in the argument structures of V and N, respectively. Abney aptly expresses the eVect of these properties in the following quote: The VP provides a predicate, that is, a class of events, and tense locates a particular event in time. The function of the determiner is to specify the reference of a noun phrase. The noun provides a predicate, and the determiner picks out a particular member of that predicate’s extension. (1986: 8)

Higginbotham related not only the licensing of functional categories to referential arguments in the argument structure of lexical heads but also the licensing of adjuncts, which tended to be neglected in Chomsky’s approach and which were described either as daughter and sister of X’ or as daughter and sister of XP in the X-bar schema. According to Higginbotham’s modiWed Ł-theory, adjuncts are licensed via the mode of Ł-identiWcation, which means that the external argument of the adjunct in a projection is identiWed or ‘uniWed’ with the referential argument of the lexical head of that projection. Thus, the licensing of the adjunct at the match in (22) is based on the identiWcation of the external argument of the PP with the referential argument hEi of saw: (22) John saw Mary at the match. Semantically, Ł-identiWcation expresses a conjunction of two predicates, which for (22) yields the following result: (23) 9E [saw (John, Mary, E) & at-the-match (E)] Zwarts (1992) adopted Higginbotham’s modiWed Ł-theory and on this basis explained the licensing of functional categories and adjuncts in (extended) projections of A and P in addition to the licensing of functional categories and adjuncts in (extended) projections of V and N. Following Corver (1990), he analysed forms like so, this, -er, and more in the context of gradable adjectives like tall or expensive as members of the functional category Deg which Ł-bind a referential argument in the argument structure of the adjectives and are thus licensed. Semantically, this claims that gradable APs describe a set of degrees (of a property) and that members of