17.596, Review: Textbooks/Syntax: Haegeman (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-596. Wed Feb 22 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.596, Review: Textbooks/Syntax: Haegeman (2005)

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What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our 
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1)
Date: 21-Feb-2006
From: Ferid Chekili < feridchekililg at yahoo.fr >
Subject: Thinking Syntactically 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:53:01
From: Ferid Chekili < feridchekililg at yahoo.fr >
Subject: Thinking Syntactically 
 

AUTHOR: Haegeman, Liliane
TITLE: Thinking Syntactically
SUBTITLE: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis
SERIES: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Blackwell Publishing
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2631.html 

Ferid Chekili, Department of English, Faculté des Lettres, University of 
Manouba, Tunisia.

DESCRIPTION

''Thinking Syntactically'' contains five chapters, each divided into two 
parts: discussion and exercises. The textbook is intended 
for ''introductory syntax classes'' (p.x). The author describes the aim of 
the book as follows (p. vi): ''...to reconstruct and to illustrate as 
explicitly as possible the thinking behind generative syntax. In other 
words, the aim is to illustrate how to ''think syntactically''.

Chapter one (Introduction: the Scientific Study of Language) deals 
with the definition of Linguistics as a science, together with the 
implications of such a definition. Like other sciences, Linguistics is 
argued to be based on the relationship between data observation and 
theory development, i.e. 'induction', and also on further refining initial 
hypotheses (i.e. 'deduction'). Like other sciences, Linguistics is also 
shown to be systematic and explicit, and to display economy and 
doubt. The ultimate aim is explanation of the data. This is illustrated by 
the relation between English subject-auxiliary inversion and question. 
To explain the impossibility of subject-verb inversion - as opposed to 
subject-auxiliary inversion - it is necessary, she argues, to consider 
other languages. Implicit in the discussion, is the importance of 
structure and how it relates to and determines interpretation.

In chapter two (Diagnostics for Syntactic Structure), she presents a 
number of tests for constituent structure, including substitution, 
question formation, movement, ellipsis, clefting and pseudo-clefting, 
and coordination. She also adduces arguments in support of a 
particular structure of the VP and of a more articulated hierarchical 
structure that is subject to binary branching. Investigation of the NP 
shows the need for a specifier position having agreement and subject 
properties. This leads to extending the concept of specifier to the 
sentence. The approach she uses in the book and that she wants the 
reader/student to learn is illustrated here: starting from a given set of 
data, she formulates hypotheses, tests these using further data, then 
examines the predictions of these claims, looks for counterexamples, 
draws conclusions (analysis)on the basis of different types of 
motivations (empirical-e.g. substitution- and theoretical-e.g. the 
hypothesis that structure is related to interpretation (p.79)): this is 
called argumentation.

Chapter three (Lexical Projections and Functional Projections): This 
chapter refines the representation of the structure of the sentence: 
the sentence is taken to be a projection of I(nflection) which relates to 
V(erb) either by raising V to I (French) or by lowering I to V (English). 
The triggering factor is argued to be the 'strength' of the inflection. 
Also discussed are the operations of Merge and Move. So is the verb 
in relation to its arguments. The auxiliaries be and have are analysed 
as verbs whereas modal auxiliaries are taken to be inflectional 
elements. Finally, some initial theoretical motivations for a VP-internal 
subject position are presented. 

Chapter four (Refining Structures: from One Subject Position to 
Many): In order to better capture the relationship between form and 
meaning, she argues, in line with others, for a VP-internal subject 
position: the VP-internal subject hypothesis. The chapter uses both 
theoretical and empirical arguments in favour of this claim: 
theoretically, such a position would not only eliminate the exceptional 
status of the VP by assuming that it too has a specifier, but would also 
explain the thematic relation between the verb and the subject. The 
empirical motivation comes from the distribution of floating quantifiers 
and that of the subject NP in existential sentences. Finally, she 
provides evidence for the existence of intermediate specifier positions 
of the projections headed by the auxiliaries through which the subject 
moves successive cyclically on its way from Spec VP to Spec IP.

Chapter five (the Periphery of the Sentence): The last chapter focuses 
on the periphery of the sentence where illocutionary force is encoded, 
namely, the complementizer phrase (CP). The derivation of questions 
is shown to involve the operation Move. The distinction between short 
movement and long movement is explained and the latter is shown to 
involve certain intervention effects. Relative clauses are argued to 
involve the same kind of mechanisms and are subject to the same kind 
of constraints as those elaborated for interrogative clauses. 

EVALUATION

The chapters progress from simple to more complex and all begin with 
an overview and end with a summary, a fact with obvious pedagogical 
value.

The author makes explicit the concepts and methodology 
(experimentation, types of data, induction/deduction, prediction, 
theory...) that the generative syntactician uses implicitly. For example 
in chapter one, she offers a clear and simple explanation of the 
definition of Linguistics as the 'science of language', using analogies 
from outside Linguistics;  in chapter two, she makes a clear and 
insightful presentation of the concept of structure, representation, the 
motivations for layered structure... . Similarly, she spells out what 
other introductory textbooks use implicitly. For example, whereas 
other textbooks would take certain things for granted, here, every step 
of the analysis is commented upon; e.g. whereas others would simply 
give a definition of 'head' and 'projection', she emphasizes the 
deductive nature of the definition (101-102). Particulary interesting is 
the way she makes the reader/student think in advance about the 
various aspects of the analysis by e.g. addressing them directly and 
prompting them to think about a given problem. (cf. e.g. the discussion 
of VP-layering and of adjunction -pp92ff.) 

In her argumentations (e.g. for constituent structure), she uses 
processes that are popular among linguists (movement, deletion, 
focus...) thus fulfilling a dual purpose, namely, motivating the particular 
claim she is making and describing the process in question. 

The way she makes explicit the proposed syntactic structures and 
interpretations gives the book a less abstract nature. Similarly, her 
extensive use of attested data (on top of the experimental or 
constructed ones) though not obligatory, add a real-world dimension 
to the analysis. 

Finally, another strong feature of the book is that every move that is 
made in the course of the analysis is accounted for and related to the 
general goal of teaching the reader how to ''think syntactically''. To 
achieve this goal, some of the most important issues in syntactic 
theory (successive cyclicity, shortest move, subject/object 
asymmetries...) are presented and discussed. To achieve the same 
goal, she explains at length (in chapter five) what may count as 
evidence: because attested examples are at times impossible to find 
(as in the case of ungrammaticality), or may not constitute evidence 
for a given hypothesis (cf. the discussion in chapter five) we must rely 
on constructed sentences to test our hypotheses. 

The exercises, which cover a sizeable portion of the book, do not 
simply serve an illustrative/applicative purpose. Some further explore 
the predictions of the analysis proposed in the text; others bring 
additional information, raise further issues not considered in the body 
of the text, or show the reader how concepts developed to deal with 
English work in relation to less familiar languages (cf. e.g. the 
structure of VSO languages including Arabic, Celtic and Greek in the 
exercises part of chapter four).

The book also contains a number of minor methodological 
weaknesses: 

There is some repetition. However, this may be necessary at times 
when dealing with beginners. 

Although in general, the book is fairly accessible to its intended 
audience, it is not certain the targeted introductory syntax classes 
need or understand the technical discussion about theory-building 
that she presents in chapter one. 

Going through the book, the reader cannot help experiencing a 
feeling of 'deja-vu': the presentation and discussion, though couched 
in a different model, are at times reminiscent of the ones in Haegeman 
(1991). Most of the ingredients come from the latter but the aim for 
which they are presented is different.

There is very little discussion of acquisition aspects of language. This 
is surprising in a textbook aiming at showing how explanatory 
adequacy can be attained. (cf. e.g. the discussion in chapter one or 
the discussion of binary branching (102ff.))

The originality of the book should not be overestimated, I believe: all 
introductory textbooks in syntax aim, implicitly or explicitly, not only at 
presenting the theory and the facts of language, but also at showing 
the reader/student how the syntactician goes about doing his work. In 
other words, such books also aim to teach how to ''think syntactically''. 
Of course, here, this is done more consciously and explicitly. 

Although the author does not aim at providing detailed analyses of the 
facts of syntax, at times, the proposed analyses raise doubts precisely 
because of their sketchy nature: For instance, the analysis of negation 
and do-insertion (179-181) is not convincing as it introduces a 
disjunction between NOT (assuming it is an adjunct) and other 
adjuncts: only NOT can block lowering of I onto V because I, she 
argues, must remain filled when NOT is present. Compare (1) and (2):

(1)
a. John -ed always buy the paper
b. John always bought the paper
(2)
a. John -s not eat chocolate
b. *John not eats chocolate

The explanation in terms of the semantic characteristics of negation -
independently of whether it is correct or not- raises questions: when 
do we take into consideration semantics in our syntactic analyses and 
when do we not do so? This is important and ought to have been 
further commented upon here even if it has been -both by the author 
herself and others (see references in fn4, p.217)-elsewhere. 

At times, the analysis takes short-cuts. For example, in investigating 
whether VPs also have a specifier position on a par with NPs and IPs 
(p.245), instead of following the procedure she normally adopts and 
tries out several possibilities, the author hits on the right solution 
immediately by proposing that the specifier of VP is the subject. After 
all, in previous models, VP specifiers were taken to include adjuncts 
and quantifiers. 

Finally, the analysis of Standard Arabic (SA) sentence structure 
(exercise 6 of chapter four) according to which agreement obtains in 
the typical configuration -spec, head in IP- which she uses to account 
for the agreement in (3):

(3) l-?awlaad-u katab-uu (versus kataba l-?awlaad-u )

is somewhat confusing for the reader who is not familiar with the 
relevant literature as he will certainly wonder about the agreement - in 
Gender - of (4)((1b) in the book under review):

(4) katab-at Mona risaalat-an

which obtains in the absence of a Spec,IP position (cf. e.g. Chekili 
2002 and references there). 

REFERENCES

Chekili, Ferid. 2002. Agreement Asymmetries and the Lexical/ Null 
Subject Parameter. Al'Arabiyya, Journal of the American Association 
of Teachers of Arabic 35:87-127.

Haegeman, Liliane. 1991. Introduction to Government and Binding 
Theory. Oxford. Basil Blackwell. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

The reviewer is professor of English and Linguistics at the University 
of Manouba, Tunisia. He is currently working at Nizwa College of 
Education, Oman as part of a cooperation program. His research 
interests include Syntax, the Syntax-Morphology interface, 
Comparative Syntax, and SLA.





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