AW: Trees, pheno, tectogrammar

[Tibor Kiss]

Hi Carl,

yes, agreed, but I thought the conceptual advantage of a Dowty-ian
Pheno/Tecto distinction would be that both levels can be worked on
independently. If syntax must mediate between these levels, and we have
syntax anyway, I don't think that wee need these additional levels.

So, to paraphrase your reaction: my observation is damaging for Dowty's
initial proposal, for Kathol's thesis, for Kathol/Kasper/Pollard on
extraposition, right?

Best,

T.

> 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.
>
>
>
>