Trees, pheno, tectogrammar

[Carl Pollard]

Hi Tibor,

Your observation is damaging only to theories in which a
phenogrammatical difference is possible without a corresponding
tectogrammatical one.  But the architecture I am proposing is one
where phonological interpretation (broadly construed, to include word
order) and semantic interpretation are both functions of (or, "read
off of") tectostucture, so this cannot arise, at least not for
"disclocations" that involve any difference in interpretation.  (This
follows Lambek's (1988, 1999) hypothesis that semantic interpretation
is a structure=preserving functor, and so a function, from syntax to
semantics.) If there are any genuine cases of "true free word order"
in the sense that permuted word strings can have EXACTLY the same
interpretation, then the phenostructures would be permutation
equivalence classes (that is, roughly, they would form a commutative
monoid, not a free monoid). Formally, this is a phonological analogue
to underspecification in semantic interepretation.

This also means there cannot be any direct communication between phonology
and semantics, but instead syntax must always mediate.

Carl
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tibor wrote:

Separating tectogrammar (combination->interpretation) from
phenogrammar leads to the assumption that linear re-ordering does not
have effects on meaning. A version of this view also seems to be
endorsed by MP people, a nd earlier by GB people who assumed that
extraposition and scrambling are to be handled as phonological
operations. (The last time I came across such an idea, but in the
context of verb-second, is Reuland's (2001) paper on Binding.)

BUT: This assumption is clearly wrong for a wide variety of
dislocation operations, such as extraposition and scrambling. For
extraposition, this has already been discussed in Culicover/Rochemont
(1990), and my _Semanti c Constraints on Relative Clause
Extraposition_ is almost entirely devoted  to promote the view that
extraposition has semantic effects and is constrain ed by rules of
interpretation (earlier views in the same direction are Wittenburg
1987 and Stucky 1987, both in Syntax and Semantics ).

For scrambling, the effects on quantification and variable binding are
dramatic (and have been completely ignored in e.g. Kathol's thesis).

To cut a long story short: Separating tectogrammar from phenogrammar does
not work.