33.1436, Review: Linguistic Theories; Syntax: Van Gelderen (2017)

Sat Apr 23 14:53:07 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1436. Sat Apr 23 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1436, Review: Linguistic Theories; Syntax: Van Gelderen (2017)

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Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2022 10:50:47
From: Hassan Makhad [hmakhad at hotmail.com]
Subject: Syntax

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-5342.html

AUTHOR: Elly van  Gelderen
TITLE: Syntax
SUBTITLE: An Introduction to Minimalism
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Hassan Makhad, Cadi Ayyad University

SUMMARY

This is a review of Van Gelderen (2017), “Syntax: An Introduction to
Minimalism”, intended as a syntax coursebook. It presents a comprehensive
introduction to modern generative syntactic theory that aims at enabling
students to become familiar with the tenets of Minimalism. It consists of a
table of contents, lists of abbreviations, tables and figures, a preface, nine
chapters, bibliographical references, an appendix of exercise answers, and an
index. All of these components are included in 167 pages. Each of the nine
chapters is provided with a title, keywords, and a brief summary. They also
all terminate with a series of exercises. 

Chapter One is set to provide a background on Generativism, namely its nature,
objectives, and major developments. It points out that generative grammar
emphasizes the innate makeup of the faculty of language and the role of
Universal Grammar (UG). In this model, the “poverty of the stimulus” justifies
the inherent properties of language acquisition. Children can come up with
sentences they have never heard before. They also have accurate grammatical
judgments for data they have never encountered previously. It similarly
introduces notions of parameterization and labeling of categories. Besides
that, it presents a model of derivation that first draws linguistic elements
from the lexicon. These items then merge into phrases in a bottom-up fashion,
ultimately feeding the Conceptual-Intentional (CI) and Sensory-Motor (SM)
interfaces.  

Chapter Two examines the basic information of the English lexicon. It explains
that the latter consists of lexical and functional categories and establishes
a distinction between the two on the basis of various semantic and structural
properties. It also draws attention to various characteristics that
differentiate types of lexical categories, namely morphological, syntactic,
and semantic dissimilarities. The author examines the following English
grammatical categories: Determiners (D), Tense (T), and Complementizer (C).
She comprehensively discusses the details of these components in the rest of
the chapter. Interestingly, the chapter sets apart the pronoun as a mixed
entity that delineates properties of both lexical and functional categories. 

Chapter Three builds on the distinctions introduced in the previous chapter
and goes on to specify the structural attributes of phrases. It shows how
words combine to make larger phrasal units. It explains the manner in which
phrase building ensures that structural hierarchies are respected. It also
addresses issues of phrase functions in a clause. It provides a set of
standard constituency tests for determining syntactic structure. These include
movement, substitution, pronominalization, and coordination. In addition, the
chapter deals with the structural representations of clauses and the
connections that hold among clause units.

Chapter Four is mainly about verbs and argument structure. It discusses the
semantic functions of arguments and argues that the latter all originate
within VP.  It sheds light on the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis and makes it
clear that Subjects become situated under TP only as the result of movement.
It also addresses the issue of VP-shells and splits VP up into VP and vP. 
This separation turns out to be very insightful in addressing transitivity
issues. It especially solves difficulties related to double object
constructions as well as dilemmas of unergative and unaccusative structures.
The chapter also gives a brief discussion of verbs’ inner aspect (Aktionsart).
It similarly alludes to empty categories in pro-drop and control
constructions.

Chapter Five centers on TP and shows that T comprises information about
finiteness, Mood, Aspect, Case, and Agreement. It shows that T contains
information about tense in terms of [pres], [past], or [fut] features. However
case and agreement features are marked on the subject. T subsequently
values/checks those features against the subject. It shows that Mood, Aspect,
and Voice mediate between VP/vP and TP in clause structure. It also provides
arguments to justify movement to T in terms of the position of adverbials and
negation. When a verb is positioned to the left of an adverb or negation, it
has undergone raising to T. When it occurs to the right, it has not moved.  

Chapter Six deals with the role of CP in clauses. It demonstrates that C
provides information about clause types, showing whether a sentence is
interrogative, declarative, or subjunctive, etc. In addition, it illustrates
that C contains certain kinds of pragmatic information about the sentence,
such as topicalization. In the case of English interrogative sentences,
wh-elements must obligatorily move to the specifier of CP. As C contains
question features, it triggers wh-raising and T adjunction to C, particularly
in the case of auxiliaries and modals. The chapter additionally explains how
sometimes wh-extraction is blocked out of constructions called islands (e.g.,
clausal complements of a noun or relative clauses). It shows that the
constraint requires wh-constructions to respect subjacency / phase boundaries.
Furthermore, the chapter discusses topicalization and focus structures and
indicates, on the basis of CP adverbials and constituent orders, the
possibility of CP expansion to accommodate all the left-periphery elements.

Chapter Seven concerns the Determiner Phrase (DP). It provides a broad
examination of the information encoded within D, especially definiteness,
specificity, and genericity (with null D). It proposes that Number Phrase
(NumP) is present within DP structure. It similarly demonstrates that D
encompasses determiners, demonstratives, and possessives, while quantifiers
can be adjoined to DP. In the same fashion, adjectives can be added to NPs.
One important proposal of the chapter is the extension of argument structure
to DP. It demonstrates that deverbal nouns inherit the argument structure of
their base verb form. Likewise, it provides evidence for nominal movement
within DP, on the basis of  Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew data. (English
displays insufficient evidence for such behavior.) 

Chapter Eight explores one of the most important proposals in the Minimalist
Program (MP), namely feature analyses. This part clarifies the assumed feature
types and their properties. It states that the MP has shifted its focus from
UG towards innate principles not specific to the faculty of language. These
include simplicity, efficient computation, and economy. Features thus play a
significant role in the MP and can account for all parametric variation. There
are three types of features: semantic, phonological, and formal. The latter
are relevant in syntax. They comprise categorial, Case, and phi-features.
Moreover, features consist of two classes: interpretable and uninterpretable.
The former are significant at the CI interface. They include categorial and
phi-features. The uninterpretable features are only relevant for the SM
interface. They incorporate Case on nominals and phi-features of verbs.
Another important difference is that interpretable features have a value,
whereas uninterpretable ones do not. They thus need to be valued / checked
against interpretable ones in the course of the derivation. This proposal
accounts for Affix-hopping, where uninterpretable features get valued by lower
interpretable ones.

Chapter Nine is the conclusion and sums up the contents of the book. It gives
a brief review of the generative model and a brief outline of the chapters.
Besides its summary, it raises pertinent questions to stimulate further
discussion of the contents of each chapter. 

EVALUATION

The book is an insightful introduction to generative Syntax and its major
recent developments. It provides the reader with a wealth of information and
necessary details about the MP, in a straightforward and gradual fashion. This
simplicity is the main strength of the book. Effectively, this quality is
highly required as the book is designed to help students get access to the
complex syntax of natural language. This approach makes it easier for them to
discover and practice Minimalism.

In addition, the presence of exercises at the end of each chapter is intended
to encourage students to apply the learned material. The exercises
convincingly make them test their understanding of the model and its concepts
and, consequently, help them to check their learning improvement. The book is
thus engagingly written to accommodate progressive instruction.

Although the book is primarily intended for students, it can also be very
helpful for syntax teachers and researchers. This usefulness is justified
because the book is extremely instructive. It provides readers with a very
interesting analytical approach to syntactic phenomena.  Both students and
faculty will find the book a valuable learning tool as it offers the
fundamentals of Minimalism in a simplified way. 

However, it seems that the book did not undergo proper proof-reading as it
contains several typos and grammatical imprecisions. For instance, example
(44) is referred to as (55), on page 24. On pages 36-37, the author claims
that adverbs and adjectives can be pronominalized just as VPs can. She gives
the following examples:

(14) I was happy and so was she. 

(15) He behaved nicely, and so did she.

(17) Gijsbert washed the dishes and Marieken did so as well. 

Her argument is not clear in these examples. It seems to me that in the three
cases, it is a VP that is replaced by the form ‘so’ and the auxiliary. 

Similarly, on page 38-39, she discusses example (19) ‘She saw the hobbit with
glasses’. Then on page (39) (first line), she uses ‘man’ instead of ‘hobbit’.
On the same page, (39) line 2, she writes “V’ (pronounced V-bar)”. Such
information between parentheses is already mentioned in page (32), “X’ theory
(pronounced as X-bar)”. Still on the same page, paragraph 3, line 2, van
Gelderen says: “The T includes information on whether the sentence is finite
or past or present.” Again this sentence is not quite accurate:when a sentence
is finite, it is (for example) either past, present, or future. 

On page (47), example (41) is ‘The husband of Jane voted for himself’. The
text then says: “the higher DP (in bold) is the phrase that serves as
antecedent.” However, it is the reflexive which is in bold, not the
antecedent.

On page (78), example (14) is ‘They possibly saw him last night’. Van Gelderen
claims that ‘last night’ indicates tense. I guess the author confuses tense
with time. Tense is marked on the verb. ‘Last night’ is an adverbial of time
that is compatible with the tense of the verb.

In page (122), paragraph 1, line 1, the author says: “…have about features and
interpretable…” The presence of the conjunction ‘and’ here was not clear to
me. On the same page, ‘have’ in (6 a-b) and (7 a-b) should be ‘has’, as
elements come from the lexicon fully inflected.

There are many other problems. For instance, the author sometimes uses
examples that are overly complex and do not help readers to follow the
argument. Example (10) on page 16 is a case in point. Example (36) in page 45
is another instance. She also talks about examples and discusses related
issues before presenting them. Besides that, she does not explain new terms
and concepts and assumes the reader is familiar with them. For instance, she
uses “valuation” in Chapter Five without explaining what it is and how it
works. Finally, some authors are mentioned in the text, but are not present in
the bibliography. A case in point is Reichenbach (1947).

Despite the above-mentioned shortcomings, the book remains invaluable and very
useful, especially for Syntax students and for people desiring to gain insight
into the working mechanisms of Minimalism. I also find the book very
informative. The presentation of linguistic facts and analyses is highly
appealing to readers. The style is particularly plain and coherent. The book
is greatly recommended as an introductory course book for people concerned
with theoretical linguistics.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Associate Professor at Cadi Ayyad University, the Polydisciplinary Faculty of
Safi. Research interests are Morpho-syntax of afro-asiatic languages, mainly
Tashelhiyt and Arabic. Other interests are educational reform, language policy
and administrative reform.

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