26.2634, Review: Ling Theories; Morphology; Socioling; Syntax: Picallo (2014)

Tue May 26 19:54:09 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-2634. Tue May 26 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.2634, Review: Ling Theories; Morphology; Socioling; Syntax: Picallo (2014)

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Date: Tue, 26 May 2015 15:53:44
From: Kariema El Touny [k.eltouny at gmail.com]
Subject: Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3072.html

EDITOR: M. Carme Picallo
TITLE: Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Kariema El Touny, Women's College for Arts, Science, and Education, Ain Shams University

Review's Editors: Anthony Aristar and Sara Couture

SUMMARY

The book is a collection of articles that were presented at the workshop
“Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework” in Barcelona 2010. It is
divided into two parts, which correspond to the two main strategies for
describing and explaining variation within the Minimalist framework. On the
one hand, there is the view that maintains the use of parameters, albeit with
some modifications. On the other, variation is described and explained without
the notion of parameters.

Introduction: Syntactic Variation and Minimalist Inquiries
M. Carme Picallo

Prior to providing a comprehensive overview of the content of the volume, the
editor gives an account of the basic components, initial merits, and
subsequent failings of the Principles and Parameters theory since its
inception in the late 1970s. Similarly, the development of the Minimalist
Program in the 1990s is presented along with its salient features.

Part I The Parametric Approach: The PP Revisited View

On the Elements of Syntactic Variation
Luigi Rizzi

The author sheds light on the debate within the theory of parameters
pertaining to their function. He starts by describing the origins of the
parametric approach, and its impact on the study of syntax and acquisition.
Following this, he discusses the benefits of combining the principles and
parameters approach in its current state with minimalist syntax to reach a
better system in the study of language variation. Finally, he utilizes the
results of Franck et al. (2013) study of 19-month old infants exposed to
French to highlight the relevance of language acquisition studies in the
debate between “language faculty” versus “culture” approaches to language
acquisition and cross-linguistic variation. 

Types of Cross-Linguistic Variation in Case Assignment
Mark Baker

In this article, the author promotes his Baker (2010) approach called Formal
Generative Typology. In it, he combines integrating abstractedness in language
description and analyzing the outcome of a precise formalization of the
patterns with a radical comparison of different linguistic systems. He reviews
two of his earlier research studies, Baker (2008a) and Baker and Vinokurova
(2010), which focus on overt structural case, to compare Chomskyan and
Marantzian case assignment proposals. He presents typological evidence, from
25 Indo-European and Niger-Congo languages, that supports a Marantzian
approach in the study of structural ergative case.

Parameters and the Three Factors of Language Design
Anders Holmberg and Ian Roberts

The authors argue for the validity of parameters in describing and explaining
linguistic variation in general and comparative syntax, specifically Universal
Grammar research. They adopt an ‘emergentist’ view to parametric variation
explaining that cross-linguistic variation is a result of the interaction of
Chomsky’s (2005:6) three factors of language design:

F1: the genetic endowment, Universal Grammar.
F2: the environment: Primary Linguistic Data for language acquisition.
F3: General principles of computation and cognition.    (p.61)

They provide a case study of English and Finnish answers to yes/no questions
to further support their postulation. They argue that it is a case of
parametric variation in (narrow) syntax. They explain how structures are
derived by different implementations of Agree and Move/internal merge

Cross-Linguistic Variation in the Syntax of Subjects
Anna Cardinaletti

Cardinaletti hypothesizes that the properties of a functional lexicon is where
parameters exist and directly affect computational operations. The author
discusses two cases of variation, related to Move and Spell-Out, found in
Romance and Germanic languages. The first case study analyzes the location of
the subject in interrogative sentences, for example, subject DP-verb inversion
in English and other languages. The second case study is about null subjects,
i.e.the micro-variation between Italian and Northern Italian dialects.

Contact and Change in a Minimalist Theory of Variation
Ricardo Etxepare

The author provides an extensive analysis of the dative case and its agreement
properties in the Navarro-Labourdin variety of North-Eastern Basque (spoken in
France). He attributes the changes in this language variety, starting from the
19th century, to be a result of Basque-French interaction. He claims that the
emergence of a dative alternation could be accounted for in a single
parameter, where the Dative is associated to a directional Path (pp123).
However, this parameter is not the only explanation for variation in this
language variety. Thus, he incorporates Chomsky’s (2005) three factors into
the analysis.

Towards Elegant Parameters: Language Variation Reduces to the Size of
Lexically-Stored Trees
Michal Starke

Although the author starts with a pessimistic view towards current variation
research, he offers a solution and opens the door for further research. He
attributes the dwindling amount of research studies into cross-linguistic
variation to the ongoing success of the Principle and Parameters theory
(PandP, Chomsky 1981). He examines the mechanism by which PandP gained its
popularity in analyzing the ‘invariant’ parts of the grammar (principles), and
how its parochial approaches resulted in treating features as ‘invariant’ as
well. His solution is a theory of parameters that explains language variation
as a case of lexical elements spelling out bigger or smaller syntactic
phrases.

Part II Variation without Parameters

What Principles and Parameters Got Wrong
Cedric Boeckx

The author argues for the abandonment of the notion of parameters since it has
lost its original function of accounting for cross-linguistic variation, and
provides evidence from minimalism and biolinguistics to support his claim. He
examines the shortcomings of Principles and Parameters theory observed by him
and others, and presents the arguments made by pro-parameters theorists and
refutes them.

Variability and Grammatical Architecture
David Adger

In his article, Adger aims at providing a research program, in which
minimalist theories are used in sociolinguistic analyses, in order to  benefit
researchers of both fields. He gives an outline of the program with the topic
of internal factors to show its mechanism. 

Syntactic Doubling and Deletion as a Source of Variation
Sjef Barbiers

The author presents a case study of focus doubling in Dutch to support two
hypotheses. The first hypothesis presented is that syntactic doubling is a
core property of natural language syntax and necessary for interpretation at
the level of Logical Form (LF). The second is that syntactic doubling is a
valuable source for cross-linguistic intralinguistic variation.

EVALUATION

The book is a useful guide for researchers interested in current polarizing
views within the Minimalist framework. A common theme of the first section is
that even though the Principles and Parameters theory is a good (but not a
perfect) model, the minimalist approach is better suited for the analysis of
cross-linguistic variation. The second section abandons the notion of
parameters altogether with the authors supporting their claims by presenting
new research programs and/or case studies where a phenomenon could be
described and explained without resorting to parametric analyses.

One negative observation of the volume is the concluding remarks chapter at
the end. It is completely redundant and does not offer any new insights since
these ‘remarks’ could be construed from the articles themselves.

REFERENCES

Baker, Mark (2008a). The Syntax of Agreement and Concord. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Baker, Mark (2010). ‘Formal generative typology’, in Brend Heine and Heiko
Narrog (eds), Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Baker, Mark and Nadezhda Vinokurova (2010). ‘Two modalities of case assignment
in Sakha’, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28:593-642.

Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

Chomsky, Noam (2005). ‘Three factors in language design’, Linguistic Inquiry
36:1-22.

Franck, J., S. Millote, A. Posada, and L. Rizzi (2013). ‘Abstract knowledge of
word order by 19 months: An eye-tracking study’, Language Acquisition
34:323-36.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kariema El Touny holds an MA from Women’s College, Ain Shams University. Her
interests include (but are not limited to) Syntax, Arabic Dialectology,
Typology, and Theory Construction. She presented and published her research on
Cairene Arabic syntax within the frameworks of the Minimalist Program and
Optimality Theory.

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