16.3442, Review: Syntax/Lang Acquisition: Hegarty (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3442. Thu Dec 01 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3442, Review: Syntax/Lang Acquisition: Hegarty (2005)

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What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
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1)
Date: 28-Nov-2005
From: Christiane Bongartz < chris.bongartz at uni-koeln.de >
Subject: A Feature-Based Syntax of Functional Categories 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:41:40
From: Christiane Bongartz < chris.bongartz at uni-koeln.de >
Subject: A Feature-Based Syntax of Functional Categories 
 

AUTHOR: Hegarty, Michael
TITLE: A Feature-Based Syntax of Functional Categories 
SUBTITLE: The Structure. Acquisition and Specific Impairment of 
Functional Systems
SERIES: Studies in Generative Grammar 79
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2258.html 

Christiane M. Bongartz, Department of English, University of Cologne

In the spirit of Minimalist syntax (Chomsky, 1995a, 1995b, 2000, 
2001), Hegarty builds on previous attempts to dispense with functional 
categories as theoretical primitives (cf. Giorgi & Pianesi, 1996, 1997). 
According to his proposal, functional features combine in different 
ways to form bundles before they project onto functional architecture. 
In a comprehensive proposal that accounts in a principled way for 
various possible feature configurations, the author develops 
constraints that regulate the distribution and projection of functional 
features and block overgeneration.

In the remainder of the discussion, Hegarty illustrates how this 
account of functional projection can serve as descriptive and 
explanatory framework for a diverse range of linguistic applications. 
Covering data from language change over time and from cross-
linguistic variation, as well as from first language acquisition in normal 
development and from children with Specific Language Impairment 
(SLI), Hegarty shows how seemingly disparate surface phenomena 
can be plausibly related once a feature-based notion of functional 
categories is adopted. The result is an impressively well-rounded and 
instructive illustration of how theory development and empirical 
validation can go hand in hand.

SYNOPSIS
Exposition and application motivate the organization of the book (the 
complete table of contents is available at 
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0511/2005011296.html), which is 
divided into nine chapters. Chapter 1 (Introduction) and Chapter 2 lay 
out the theoretical foundation for six empirically-oriented chapters and 
the short concluding chapter.  In the first chapter, ideas of minimalist 
syntax are presented with a special focus on functional feature 
projection and feature ordering. The theoretical core of the discussion 
can be found in Chapter 2, where functional categories are derived as 
feature matrices. Three constraints are central to the proposal, 
namely the Economy of Feature Projection, the Economy of Projection 
of Infl-Categories, and the Minimal Feature Ordering principle. 
Together, they regulate possible functional feature bundles and their 
projection onto clausal structures.

In the following applied chapters, the author first illustrates the 
descriptive and explanatory adequacy of his feature-based account of 
functional categories for phenomena of linguistic variation. Chapter 3, 
devoted to verb-second patterns in Germanic languages (especially 
Old English and Middle English), illustrates how different sets of 
restrictions on feature co-occurrence motivate cross-linguistic and 
language-internal variation of syntactic structures, as well as change 
over time. In Chapter 4, a synchronic perspective is adopted, and clitic 
placement and climbing (in Modern Greek and the Romance 
languages) receive an explanation in terms of movement driven by 
feature-matching associations. Also devoted to synchronic description 
is Chapter 5, which gives an account of tenseless clauses in Modern 
English. The relative paucity of projected features in the data 
presented here, the author argues, obtains a motivated explanation 
only when one supposes that features are projected and combined 
according to minimal necessity. 

Data from language acquisition serve as the second empirical testing 
ground for Hegarty's proposals. Central to the discussion here are 
claims previously made in the literature about the development of 
functional categories (especially Radford, 1990, Guilfoyle & Noonan, 
1992, Vainikka, 1993/94). Chapter 6, the first of three chapters 
focusing on acquisition, re-examines longitudinal data for three 
children obtained from the CHILDES database. Based on the evidence 
thus presented, Hegarty stipulates that adult grammars differ from 
grammars in early childhood in the distribution of features into feature 
matrices. Convergence with adult grammar is seen as the result of 
maturation, during the course of which children move from an initially 
empty inventory of functional features through stages of gradual 
feature acquisition that go hand in hand with the acquisition of 
ordering and co-occurrence constraints. In Chapter 7, Hegarty goes 
on to delineate the growth process involved in convergence with adult 
grammars. Drawing on quantified data, he shows that development 
over time involves an increase in the number of feature matrices that 
can be projected as functional categories. Non-adult combinations, on 
this account, are indicative of the maturation involved. When 
functional categories are taken as primitives (e.g. I or C, as proposed 
in the literature), however, such non-adult combinations cannot be 
accounted for. The final chapter on acquisition, Chapter 8, focuses on 
data from children with SLI. Here, Hegarty illustrates how his feature-
based account of functional categories can explain SLI phenomena as 
the result of deficient resources for the projection of feature matrices 
as functional categories. An overall summary, Chapter 9, concludes 
the book.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

The case made by Hegarty for functional categories as projections of 
feature-bundles rather than primitives of syntactic structure is of much 
theoretical appeal. A rigorous application of minimalist ideas appears 
easily compatible with the enterprise of systematically breaking down 
the functional categories in sentences and nominal phrases into 
functional features. Especially elegant in this respect is how Hegarty 
works out how these features, allowed to combine freely into feature-
bundles, can account for variation in functional architecture both in 
terms of an individual's linguistic competence and in terms of 
typological differences between and among languages. 

It is a definite strength of this ambitious book that it defines its 
proposals with respect to those made previously in the literature, while 
at the same time seeking a much wider scope and contributing new 
data (e.g. in Chapter 5). In what might be called an exemplary 
illustration of the dialectic relationship between theory-development 
and evidence of relevant linguistic phenomena, the book first 
establishes theoretical tenets, then offers a discussion of cross-
linguistic data, and finally gives an account of language acquisition. A 
buy-one-get-three pitch would be well suited for this triangulation, 
because all parts appear well reasoned and thoroughly composed. A 
discussion of the book in a graduate seminar, for example, will bring 
home the point of what Chomsky (1986) demanded in postulating that 
linguistic theory ought not only to describe knowledge of language but 
also to explain the acquisition of such knowledge.

Due to the scope of the material, appreciation and evaluation of the 
presented evidence will be facilitated by special expertise of readers 
in either typology or acquisition studies. For this reviewer, especially 
the sections with a psycholinguistic focus proved a test case for 
plausibility. While the cohesiveness of the argument is always 
maintained, the sequencing of Chapters 6 and 7 on language 
acquisition might have been negotiated somewhat more overtly. 
Theories and predictions made in continuity accounts have been 
placed in the latter chapter, but readability and clarity would have 
benefited from addressing the theoretical proposals prior to all 
discussion of data. Some methodological issues in this part, while 
addressed briefly by the author, cannot ultimately be resolved, such 
as, for example, the focus on child language production in the 
normalization procedures that informed data quantification. Still, the 
use of data from the public domain (cf. CHILDES database, 
http://childes.psy.cmu.edu) makes the whole range of data available 
for follow-up analyses, which no doubt will prove stimulating to further 
discussion.

Overall transparency and thorough documentation characterize the 
book as a whole. Figures and language examples have been carefully 
edited with only the very occasional typographical error (p. 
17 'welchen film'), relevant and up-to-date sources have been listed in 
the bibliography, and a highly accessible index allows efficient work 
with the book as a reference. For those planning to use the book in 
graduate education, it will be useful to explain the notations used in 
syntactic bracketing and tree diagrams, however; basic notational 
conventions have been taken as given.

In general, the care taken to ground the theoretical proposals made in 
the book in data from diverse linguistic areas should prove thought-
provoking for linguists in all the areas the book addresses. For 
psycholinguistic research in particular, one can expect a renewal of 
the discussion about what drives acquisition of functional projections. 
Certainly, the falsifiability of Hegarty's claims will motivate further 
inquiry. One promising area of application, beyond the scope of the 
argument presented in the book but in very close proximity to it, would 
be the field of second language acquisition, which has regularly 
responded to developments in generative theory with productive lines 
of research. In particular, the inquiry into what motivates differences 
between native and non-native grammatical representations should 
receive new momentum with the testable hypotheses offered in 
Hegarty's feature-based account of functional projections.

REFERENCES

Chomsky, Noam (2001) Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz 
(ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1-52.

Chomsky, Noam (2000) Minimalist inquiries: the framework. In Roger 
Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka (eds.), Step by step: 
essays in Minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik. Cambridge, 
MA: MIT Press, 89-155.

Chomsky, Noam (1995a) Bare phrase structure. In Gert Webelhuth 
(ed.), Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. 
Oxford: Blackwell.

Chomsky, Noam (1995b) Categories and transformations. In The 
Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 219-394.

Chomsky, Noam (1986) Knowledge of language: its nature, origin, and 
use. New York: Praeger.

Giorgi, Alessandra & Fabio Pianesi (1997) Tense and aspect: from 
semantics to morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Giorgi, Alessandra & Fabio Pianesi (1996) Verb movement in Italian 
and syncretic categories. Probus 8, 137-160. 

Guilfoyle, Eithne & Máire Noonan (1992) Functional categories and 
language acquisition. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 37 (2): 241-272.

Radford, Andrew (1990) Syntactic theory and the acquisition of 
English syntax: the nature of early child grammar of English. Oxford: 
Blackwell.

Vainikka, Anne (1993/1994) Case in the development of English 
syntax. Language Acquisition 3 (3): 257-325. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Christiane M. Bongartz is Professor of English Linguistics at the 
University of Cologne. Her research interests include language 
typology, generative grammar and problems of second language 
acquisition, especially those related to the syntax-morphology 
interface.





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