33.2465, Review: Syntax: van Gelderen (2021)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2465. Thu Aug 11 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2465, Review: Syntax: van Gelderen (2021)

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Billy Dickson
Managing Editor: Lauren Perkins
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Goldfinch, Nils Hjortnaes,
        Joshua Sims, Billy Dickson, Amalia Robinson, Matthew Fort
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Hosted by Indiana University

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Amalia Robinson <amalia at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2022 14:02:41
From: Gema Chocano [gema.chocano at uam.es]
Subject: Third Factors in Language Variation and Change

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36807937


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-384.html

AUTHOR: Elly  Van Gelderen
TITLE: Third Factors in Language Variation and Change
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Gema Chocano, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

SUMMARY

Recent studies couched within Chomsky’s (1995 and subsequent work) Minimalist
Program (MP) pay special attention to third factor properties (Chomsky 2005,
2007, 2019, etc.), i.e., general principles of growth and development which
characterize not only language but crucially any computational system. This
book focuses on some of those principles of computational efficiency, most
notably Minimal Search (MS), as instantiated by the Labeling Algorithm (LA),
and Determinacy, as well as their role in language variation and change. The
data analyzed come from both modern and earlier stages of (mainly) Germanic
and Romance languages.

The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1, “The Shift Towards a
Minimal UG,” discusses the reasons for the shift in generative grammar towards
third factor principles, mainly the need for an impoverished Universal Grammar
(UG) that meets the requirement of evolvability: if the Faculty of Language
(FL) is the product of exaptation just only 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, UG
must be extremely simple, containing just an operation for binary set
formation (MERGE). The rest of the apparently specific linguistic properties
are, in fact, general principles of computational efficiency. The chapter
presents two of these in some detail. The first is LA, a case of MS: upon
MERGE of {X, YP}, LA labels the new unit by locating the most prominent, i.e.
closest, lexical item, the head. However, if MERGE results in a set formed by
two complex objects, {XP, YP}, MS fails: both X and Y are equally prominent.
LA then requires that either XP or YP disappear by displacement, so that only
X or Y is available, or that XP and YP share (Agree in) features, which become
the label of the new unit. As for Determinacy, the book adopts the formulation
in Goto & Ishii (2019), which basically amounts to restricting the number of
copies of a syntactic object that must undergo further displacement in the
derivational space (the phase) to only one, much in the spirit of
anti-locality conditions of earlier proposals like Grohmann (2003). The
chapter finishes with a brief discussion of types of
changes—grammaticalization and renewal as in van Gelderen’s (2011 and
subsequent work) linguistic cycle)—and an overview of the content of the next
chapters.

Chapter 2, “Labeling in Language Change,” revisits van Gelderen’s previous
work on grammaticalization and renewal in linguistic cycles in which
grammaticalization entails the reanalysis of a phrase into a head. First
discussed are the subject and object cycles, in which subject and object
pronouns are respectively reanalyzed as agreement markers on T/v in languages
that range from nominative-accusative languages like Colloquial French, (some
varieties of) Spanish, Athabaskan, Persian, Arabic, and Kosraean, to (full or
split) ergative-absolutive systems like Jacaltec Mayan and Kurdish. Second,
the grammaticalization and reanalysis of demonstratives to articles is
discussed, as in Tono O’odham, English, etc., or to complementizers, as in
German, English, etc. Finally discussed is the negative cycle, in which a
negative phrase grammaticalizes to a negative head. These four phenomena
receive a unified account: according to third factor principles of efficient
computation, the language learner analyzes a phrase (subject pronoun, object
pronoun, demonstrative, negative adverb, …) as a head, thus replacing {XP, YP}
with {X, YP}. The advantage of {X, YP} over {XP, YP} is that it is easier to
label, since MS suffices, i.e., feature sharing by Agree is not required.
However, there seem to be cases in which {XP, YP} is less prone to reanalysis,
probably for reasons having to do with the relevance of the shared feature at
the Conceptual-Intentional (CI) interface. The specific case the chapter
addresses is that of wh-phrases such as ‘whether’ and ‘how’, which are never
reanalyzed as heads in the history of English.

Chapter 3, “Determinacy in Language Variation,” addresses linguistic variation
connected to third factor principles. The discussion focuses on Determinacy,
which, it will be recalled, basically bans the presence of multiple copies of
a syntactic object in the derivational (phasal) space. Applied to the CP
phase, Determinacy disallows the copy of a subject at the edge of the lower vP
phase to co-occur with the copy undergoing MERGE with T (the specifier of TP
in earlier versions of generative syntax) if the subject must undergo MERGE
with C too (for instance, in the case of a subject wh-phrase). Languages vary
in the ways they avoid this kind of configuration: in some of them (Modern
English), C (CP) is optionally deleted; in others T (TP) is optional (Dutch)
or simply absent (Old English). CP-deletion is argued to account for phenomena
such as subject-less relative clauses in some present-day English dialects,
that-trace effects in most present-day English dialects, and C-less complement
clauses in all of them. Optionality/lack of T (TP) is argued to explain why
that-trace effects, subject-less relative clauses, and C-less complement
clauses are not attested in either Old English or Dutch, and why
complementizer agreement is possible in some Dutch dialects.

Chapter 4, “Determinacy in Language Change,” considers three widely attested
instances of reanalysis as a way to comply with Determinacy: topic as subject,
demonstrative subject as copula, and lower verb as higher auxiliary. Data in
the first case come from French and Brazilian Portuguese (and, with additional
complexities, Kimbundu and Lunda as well as Maltese). In the second case, a
demonstrative is argued to become a copula in Egyptian, Arabic, and Hebrew.
Finally, Old English lexical verbs denoting motion, ability, volition, and
intention, are shown to be reanalyzed as auxiliaries. The chapter also
includes a section on floating quantifiers, which the author shows to behave
uniformly in Earlier and Modern English: given that, in all relevant periods,
the displaced DP and the floated quantifier (QP) are distinct syntactic
objects, there is no Determinacy violation, and thus no need for reanalysis
has ever arisen.

Chapter 5, “Labeling and Determinacy: Verb-Second and Expletives,” capitalizes
again on the distinction from Chapter 3, based on Determinacy, between
languages with optional or no T (TP) and languages with obligatory T (TP). The
former (Dutch, German, Old English) are argued to allow Verb-Second (V2) and
vP expletives but disallow TP expletives; the latter (Modern English) lack V2
and vP expletives but license TP expletives. Optionality or complete absence
of T (TP) is said to be empirically supported by several pieces of data, among
which the impossibility of stranding verbal prefixes in V2 structures, the
requirement of strict adjacency between the infinitival marker (a prefix) and
the infinitive itself, the presence of scrambled objects preceding a subject,
and the possibility of fronting a vP containing a subject. The chapter also
includes several sections on the changes that show how, at the end of the Late
Middle English period, English, a language with no (T) TP, becomes a T (TP)
language. In this connection, there is an interesting and novel discussion of
so-called double expletive structures in Old English, characterized by
containing expletive ‘þa’ preceding C, and expletive ‘þær’ preceding v,
something which was possible only with unaccusative verbs. In subsequent
periods, ‘þa’ disappears along with V2, but ‘þær’ still appears as a remnant
in, for example, Chaucer. The chapter finishes with an appendix which
speculates on the source of English expletive ‘there’ as the product of
grammaticalization of the demonstrative pronouns ‘þara’, ‘þære’, and not
locative ‘þær’ as in traditional accounts such as Jespersen (1937), Butler
(1980), Breivik (1983), Freeze (1992), and Ingham (2001).

Chapter 6, “Adjunct Incorporation and Avoiding Pair-Merge,” revisits van
Gelderen’s (2019) Adjunct Incorporation Principle (AIP) in the light of
computational efficiency, i.e., as a third factor principle. The point of
departure is Chomsky’s (2000, 2004, etc.) pair-merge, the syntactic operation
responsible for adjunction. For reasons related to an extra operation that,
according to Chomsky (2004), syntactic objects created by pair-merge must
undergo at externalization, pair-merge is considered to be more costly than
set-merge; therefore, reanalysis of pair-merge structures as set-merge
structures is expected. The chapter addresses several of these cases:
locational adjuncts in DPs are reanalyzed as demonstratives in Afrikaans and
other Germanic languages (German, Dutch and Belgian varieties); the Middle
English manner VP adjunct ‘al redie’ is reanalyzed as the specifier of an
aspectual head; VP-adjoined relational adverbs and adverbial demonstratives
are reanalyzed as pre- or post-verbal heads in German, English, etc.; the Old
English prepositions ‘æfter’ and ‘for’, which are the heads of prepositional
VP adjuncts undergoing increasingly frequent topicalization, are reanalyzed as
complementizers. The chapter closes with two more cases of linguistic change
which seem to support the view that language learners privilege set-merge over
pair-merge: the reanalysis of originally VP-adjuncts like ‘for’ and ‘since’
clauses as CP-adjuncts; the reanalysis of adverbial subordinate clauses as
insubordinate, i.e., syntactically independent, ones; and, finally, the
reanalysis of VP adjuncts either as predicates or arguments. Examples of
reanalysis of a VP adjunct as a predicate are the English structures with
‘appear’ and ‘remain’. Reanalysis of a VP adjunct as an argument is
illustrated by the transitivization that English verbs like ‘climb’ and
‘lament’ undergo, respectively, during the Middle English and the Early Modern
English periods.

Chapter 7 presents the main conclusions.

EVALUATION

This book is a highly valuable pioneering study in the impact of third factor
principles on language variation and change, and thus essential reading for
researchers and advanced students in both syntactic theory and historical
linguistics. From the perspective of diachronic studies, the book has, in my
view, two main merits. The first is that of re-examining remarkable findings
in van Gelderen’s (and other researchers’) previous work in the light of more
recent advances in the MP, thus successfully connecting earlier economy
principles like van Gelderen’s (2004, 2019) Head Preference Principle and
Adjunct Incorporation Principle to LA and thus MS, a third factor principle.
The second merit of the study is that it deals with a great array of data of
earlier and modern languages. Some of the earlier data can be considered new,
insofar as they are not in the literature or, if they are, they have never
been discussed in detail. An example of the former case is the set of
indicative and subjunctive sentences the author provides as support for the
absence of that-trace effects in Old English. The latter case is exemplified
by van Gelderen’s discussion of Old English double expletive structures.

The book is, additionally, a remarkable contribution to the field of syntactic
theory itself. Van Gelderen’s proposals are ambitious, as is made clear by the
wide range of phenomena they are treated by resorting almost exclusively to LA
and/or Determinacy. In this respect, I think that LA-based analyses fare
better than Determinacy-based analyses, which raise interesting questions that
surely will deserve further attention in future research. Two of these are, in
my opinion, especially prominent: the potential overlapping of Determinacy
with MS, on the one hand, and its interaction with Chomsky’s (2005, 2008)
Feature Inheritance (FI) as appears in the relevant chapters of the book, on
the other. Regarding the former, if, as conventionally argued, by MS only
heads of non-trivial chains are visible to relevant probes, Determinacy
becomes completely dispensable. Note that, in contrast, MS does not, since it
is independently needed as an essential part of LA. With respect to the
latter, if, as argued in the book, V2 languages comply with Determinacy by not
inserting T (TP), then subject-verb agreement must be the result of
inheritance of features from C to v. Such an analysis, which van Gelderen
adopts, is based on the controversial view that a probe (the features on v) is
able to probe and value features on a goal (the subject at the vP-edge) out of
its conventional probe range, the c-command domain. On the other hand, absence
(or optionality) of T (TP) in V2 languages may face some empirical
difficulties too. Here I would like to refer just to the order of subjects
relative to scrambled objects. Van Gelderen argues that the fact that subjects
may follow scrambled, i.e. vP-external, objects in V2 languages like German
and Dutch shows that German and Dutch subjects are in vP and not in TP.
However, German and Dutch subjects may precede scrambled objects even in
subordinate clauses, which poses the question of the exact position they
occupy in these structures if TP is absent. Other minor, but interesting
issues, relate to the timing of operations in the phasal domain in
CP-deletion, which van Gelderen takes to proceed in an ordered fashion, rather
than simultaneously as in Chomsky (2008), or the labeling problems in
quantifier float structures, which the author notes herself.

Summarizing, this book is an impressive example of how solid and fine-grained
previous proposals for variation and change can benefit from recent advances
in theoretical syntax, while being an inspiring model of how diachronic
research can and must contribute to theoretical syntax. The book is an
outstanding piece of research, in which the number of relevant issues
convincingly settled compares to the number of avenues for further work it
opens. 

REFERENCES

Breivik, Leiv Egil. 1983. Existential There. Bergen: University of Bergen.

Butler, Milton. 1980.  Grammatically motivated subjects in Early English.
Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.

Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In David Michaelis,
Roger Martin, and Juan Uriagereka (eds.), Step by Step: Essays in Minimalist
Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik, 89-155. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Adriana Belletti (ed.),
Structures and Beyond, 104-131. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Chomsky, Noam. 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry
36.1: 1-22.

Chomsky, Noam. 2007. Approaching UG from below. In Uli Sauerland and
Hans-Martin Gärtner (eds.), Interfaces + Recursion = Language, 1-29, Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.

Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos Otero, and María
Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.), Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory: Essays in
Honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, 291-321, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2019. The UCLA Lectures. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005485.

Freeze, Ray. Existentials and other locatives. Language 68: 553-95.

Ingham, Richard. 2001. The structure and function of expletive there in
pre-modern English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 5: 231-249.

Jespersen, Otto. 1937. Analytic syntax. London: Allen and Unwin.

van Gelderen, Elly. 2004. Grammaticalization as economy. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.

van Gelderen, Elly. 2011. The linguistic cycle. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

van Gelderen, Elly. 2019. Cyclical change and problems of projection. In Anne
Breitbarth, Miriam Bouzouita, Lieven Danckaert, and Elisabeth Witzenhausen
(eds.), Cycles in Language Change, 13-32, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goto, Nobu and Toru Ishii. 2019. The principle of determinacy and its
implications for MERGE. In Proceedings of the 12th GLOW in Asia & 21st SICOGG,
91-110. http://sicogg.or.kr/GLOW-Asia-12-2019/proceedings/.

Grohmann, Kleanthes. 2003. Prolific domains: on the anti-locality of movement
dependencies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Gema Chocano is a Lecturer in the English Department at the Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid. She is mainly interested in the syntax of Germanic and
Romance languages, especially in what concerns word order variation.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2465	
----------------------------------------------------------