31.903, Review: Syntax: Kertész, Moravcsik, Rákosi (2019)

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Subject: 31.903, Review: Syntax: Kertész, Moravcsik, Rákosi (2019)

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Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2020 22:15:56
From: Gözde Mercan [gozdebahadir at gmail.com]
Subject: Current Approaches to Syntax

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-2951.html

EDITOR: András  Kertész
EDITOR: Edith  Moravcsik
EDITOR: Csilla  Rákosi
TITLE: Current Approaches to Syntax
SUBTITLE: A Comparative Handbook
SERIES TITLE: Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Gözde Mercan, University of Oslo, Norway

SUMMARY

“Current Approaches to Syntax: A Comparative Handbook” of the Comparative
Handbooks of Linguistics Series of De Gruyter Mouton is a reference book
edited by András Kertész, Edith Moravcsik and Csilla Rákosi. It aims to
provide a systematic comparison of various contemporary syntactic approaches
and encourages metatheoretical reflection for practitioners of syntactic
research. The 600-page book consists of 21 chapters and two parts. The
Introduction by Edith Moravcsik starts with discussing how to compare
syntactic frameworks and why it is desirable to undertake this endeavour. The
chapter also outlines the four parameters for the comparison of syntactic
theories: “goals”, “data”, “tools” and “evaluation”, which all the authors of
the chapters in Part I were asked to apply as headings. Section 3 of the
Introduction “Parameters of metatheories” was written by Csilla Rákosi. This
section discusses the necessary congruities and possible differences between
metatheories of syntax. Section 4 of the Introduction provides some sample
comparisons among theories on the basis of the internal organization of syntax
(levels), of grammar (components) and of cognition (modularity). The
conclusion to the Introduction discusses conflict resolution as an additional
parameter of theory comparison. 

Part I of the book is entitled: “Approaches to syntax” and contains thirteen
chapters written by practitioners of the relevant syntactic theories. Due to
space limitations, I will not be able to provide a summary of each chapter in
this review. As noted, all these chapters contain the same four main
subsections. Each chapter also involves a sample (partial) analysis of the
same sentence: “After Mary introduced herself to the audience, she turned to a
man that she had met before”. My evaluation in the next part will be focused
on the volume in general and on the Introduction and Conclusions; therefore,
if I have any specific comments on the chapters, I will note them here. 

Chapter 2 written by Cristiano Broccias is on Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar
(CG). The chapter mentions a crucial issue, which is also relevant for the
whole book as I will further elaborate below, namely, the challenge of testing
theoretical claims with psycholinguistic data. It also acknowledges the
unclarity as to whether the processing described by Langacker is from the
perspective of the speaker or the hearer. Chapter 3 is on Construction Grammar
(CxG) and is written by Rui P. Chaves. In Chapter 4, Peter W. Culicover and
Ray Jackendoff present their “Simpler Syntax” (SS).  Chapter 5 by Mary
Dalrymple and Jamie Y. Findlay introduces Joan Bresnan and Ron Kaplan’s
Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). In Chapter 6, Sam Featherston describes the
Decathlon Model. Chapter 7, written by Norbert Hornstein is entitled: “The
Stupendous Success of the Minimalist Program”. In this chapter, Hornstein
clarifies the objectives of the Minimalist Program (MP) and argues that it has
been successful in meeting these goals. The message of the chapter is
expressed clearly, occasionally with a humorous style. One addition that would
help the reader would be to include the references to the studies which
criticize MP, as examples of its hostile reception, so that one could locate
and read these criticisms directly. Chapter 8 written by Ray Jackendoff and
Jenny Audring is on “The Parallel Architecture” (PA) of Jackendoff. In Chapter
9, Ritva Laury and Tsuyoshi Ono introduce Usage-based Grammar. Chapter 10,
entitled “Optimality-theoretic Syntax” is written by Géraldine Legendre. In
Chapter 11, J. Lachlan Mackenzie presents The Functional Discourse Grammar
(FDG) approach to syntax. Chapter 12 written by Stefan Müller and Antonio
Machicao y Priemer is on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) which was
developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag. In Chapter 13, Timothy Osborne
presents “Dependency Grammar” (DG). Finally, Chapter 14 by Mark Steedman
introduces Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG). 

Part II of the volume, entitled “Metatheoretical foundations” contains 6
chapters. Chapter 15, “Syntactic knowledge and intersubjectivity” is written
by Philip Carr. Chapter 16 written by Esa Itkonen is entitled: “Hermeneutics
and generative linguistics”. Chapter 17, “The uncertainty of syntactic
theorizing” by András Kertész and Csilla Rákosi presents a metatheoretical
model which uncovers the mismatch between the research practice of generative
linguistics and the self-image of generative linguists. Chapter 18 entitled
“The multiparadigmatic structure of science and generative grammar” is written
by Stephan Kornmesser. Chapter 19 by Peter Ludlow is entitled: “The philosophy
of generative linguistics: best theory criteria”. In Chapter 20, “The research
programme of Chomskyan linguistics”, Pius ten Hacken defines the concept of a
research programme and applies it to Chomskyan linguistics and selected
competing frameworks. The chapter is clear and convincing in its presentation
of what constitutes a research program. On the other hand, in the discussion
of the alternatives to grammaticality judgements, it only refers to early
psycholinguistics experiments, ignoring the vast recent literature. As I will
explain in more detail in the next section, recent developments in
psycholinguistics, especially regarding the now well-established structural
priming phenomenon (Bock 1986, Pickering & Ferreira 2008, Branigan & Pickering
2017 among others) have exciting consequences for syntactic theorizing.
Structural priming constitutes a more direct source of information for mental
syntactic representations than grammaticality judgements. This would have
implications for ten Hacken’s conclusions that “By their nature, however,
psycho- and neurolinguistic data do not replace the kind of data that can be
gathered from grammaticality judgements and corpora” (p. 559) and that “… it
is in general hard to link any actual experiments directly to the form of the
grammar” (p. 566). 

The final chapter of the book is Chapter 21, “Conclusions: On the use of the
comparison of syntactic theories” by András Kertész and Csilla Rákosi. In this
chapter, the authors provide a historical outline of the philosophy of science
in relation to linguistic metatheorizing leading towards “metatheoretically
reflected object theoretical research”. In conclusion, the chapter suggests a
number of questions for reflection for each of the four parameters used in
this volume and outlines the factors that have shaped the relationship between
metatheoretical reflection and object-theoretical syntactic research.   

EVALUATION

The editors of this volume succeed in the challenging endeavour of providing a
systematic comparison of the contemporary theories of syntax. The four
parameters for comparison which the authors of all the chapters in Part I
follow help the reader to see the similarities and differences between
frameworks clearly. In addition, the editors also ask the authors of these
individual chapters to provide an analysis of the same sentences, which is
very useful for the assessment of the analytical approaches. 

The intended target audience of the volume consists of grammarians,
philosophers of science and cognitive scientists. Indeed, the book is of great
interest for any researcher working on syntax and linguistic metatheories.
However, it may not be particularly suitable for beginners of syntax and
undergraduate linguistics students, as it would be helpful to have some
familiarity with at least one of the contemporary theories of syntax as well
as some knowledge on the history of  generative grammar and a basic grasp of
the main concepts in the philosophy of science. 

The editors have been objective and impartial regarding the specific competing
theories. The chapters in Part I appear in alphabetical order on the basis of
the authors’ last names. The fact that each chapter in this part has the same
four parameters as headings does indeed provide common grounds for comparison
for the reader as noted above. It is also very interesting to observe that
some sections are relatively longer or shorter in certain chapters and that
they tend to have different subsections. There are unavoidably some overlaps
and cross-references among the various chapters as individual authors also
sometimes compare their own approach to that of others. The main strength of
the book as a whole is that it encourages linguists to engage in
metatheoretical reflection and self-criticism, which should be crucial for any
practitioner of research on syntax. 

The goal of metatheoretical self-reflection becomes even more evident in Part
II. In fact, reading this volume feels like reading two really good books that
complement each other very well. The chapters in Part I give an idea about the
range of existing theoretical frameworks and provide introductions into their
respective theories, which already encourages metatheoretical reflection. The
chapters in Part II, on the other hand, are different in nature than those in
Part I in that Part II is explicitly metatheoretical in scope. The chapters in
Part II discuss the theories on the theories of syntax and relate the
object-based syntactic research to the philosophy of science.   

The Introduction to the volume presents the goals of the book very clearly and
lays out the parameters of comparison. Section 2.1 describes the necessary
congruities and possible differences between approaches with respect to the
parameter “goals”. I believe that this section would have been more
comprehensive if two issues were mentioned in more detail. 

The first issue relates to the “psychological reality” of syntactic theories.
Certain chapters address this issue directly and this is a topic that comes up
throughout the book. The Introduction states that “If we assume that syntax
is, minimally, about the way words are selected and linearly ordered in
sentences, all syntactic theories must account for the selection and ordering
of words” (page 2). It is not completely clear in this definition whether this
refers to the actual cognitive processes or some sort of abstraction. The
terminology here is very similar to that in Levelt (1989)’s model of language
production, for example. Is a distinction to be made here between the verbs to
generate and to produce (as mentioned in Chapter 15 on page 433), possibly
also related to the competence-performance distinction? This stance also seems
to reflect the speaker’s perspective, if so, what about the
parsing/processing/comprehension of syntax by the listener? Although point 4
on page 4 mentions “cognition”, a more clear presentation of the relationship
between syntactic theory and psycholinguistic research would be desirable, as
this would also have implications for the “data” paradigm. 

The other issue on which the Introduction could have elaborated further is the
topic of “language universals”. Although point 3 (page 4) mentions
“crosslinguistic context”, theories may differ with regard to whether they aim
to arrive at linguistic universals or focus solely on grammars of specific
languages. As this is another topic that is discussed in various chapters in
the book, it may have helped to also address this in more detail in the
Introduction. As for section 3 of the Introduction, it would have been helpful
to provide a brief review of some basics such as Popper’s falsificationism and
the standard view for readers who may be unfamiliar with these concepts which
are crucial for understanding the chapters in Part II. In fact, as I will
explain below, it would have been more desirable to have such a small
introductory section at the beginning of Part II. 

The Conclusions chapter makes metatheoretical reflection more prominent as a
goal of the present volume. While the Introduction focused more on the
comparison of theories, the emphasis shifts towards metatheoretical reflection
in the Conclusions. Section 2 of the Conclusions chapter provides a brief
overview of the historical development of the philosophy of science. As this
section is very informative for readers who may not be familiar with the
subject, it would have been more helpful to have it at the beginning of Part
II instead. It would really make it easier for the reader to interpret the
chapters in Part II if there were some sort of introduction to basics such as
Popper’s falsificationism, logical positivism, the Standard view and Kuhn’s
work at the beginning of this part. Such a section would also make the
transition between Part I and Part II smoother. 

The Conclusions chapter also involves a discussion of the methodology in
linguistics. There is a very important self-criticism for linguists regarding
the “discord between the practice of linguistic research and the self-image of
linguists” (p. 576) and the misunderstanding of metatheoretical reflection for
decades. The section also involves a summary of the insights related to the
acknowledgement of the pluralism and uncertainty of data. However, as I
mentioned above, with regard to Chapter 20 in particular, the discussion of
data types throughout the volume fails to mention “structural priming”, the
tendency to repeat grammatical form (Bock 1986, also see Pickering & Ferreira
2008 for a critical review) which is a direct psycholinguistic source of
information for linguistic theories. I find this surprising given that this
phenomenon, which was introduced more than 30 years ago, is very relevant to
the context of the volume and that it is now widely accepted in the
literature. Structural priming is a sound, implicit psychological alternative
to explicit acceptability judgments (Branigan & Pickering 2017, also see open
peer commentary in the journal “Behavioral and Brain Sciences”). Branigan and
Pickering (2017) reject the traditional division which assumes that it is the
linguists’ task to study the representation of language whereas the role of
psycholinguists is to study language processing. They indicate that most
research on representations has been carried out on the basis of acceptability
judgements (which is also evident in the present volume). The authors explain
the limitations of acceptability judgments and argue for the use of structural
priming as a more psychologically grounded source of data. They also state
that structural priming has reached a state of methodological maturity now,
which enables them to present an outline theory of syntax based on structural
priming data. The inclusion of this new syntactic approach in comparative
handbooks of syntactic accounts such as the present volume will definitely
make the relevant psycholinguistic literature more accessible to syntactic
theoreticians in the future.

Overall “Current Approaches to Syntax: A Comparative Handbook” is an excellent
reference book which I highly recommend to every linguist working on syntax.
As the editors indicate, it would enable practitioners of specific syntactic
theories to gain knowledge about the work carried out in different approaches.
This would undoubtedly facilitate communication across frameworks and lead to
better mutual understanding. The volume encourages readers to open up to new
possibilities and expand their horizons. The four parameters provided by the
editors do indeed facilitate systematic comparison among theories. As such, it
is also a valuable resource for educators who would like to present their
students with the wide range of syntactic frameworks available, in advance
syntax graduate courses, for instance. Similarly, psycholinguists and
cognitive scientists carrying out data-driven research, who would like to test
which theory’s predictions match their experimental data the best, would also
benefit from this reference book. Although the inclusion of more relevant
psycholinguistic work which shares the same goal of describing “the selection
and linear ordering of words in sentences” would have led to fruitful
discussions, the book is still of great interest to cognitive scientists and
psychologists working of language and syntax. Indeed, the volume motivates
readers to follow the work in related disciplines regardless of what their
background may be. 

The most prominent strength of the book is that it promotes “metatheoretically
reflected object theoretical research”. It illustrates the importance of
metatheoretical reflection for grammarians very convincingly. The sort of
self-reflection on both scientific methods and metatheories, which is
suggested in this volume, would certainly help improve research practices of
individual syntacticians. To conclude, “Current Approaches to Syntax: A
Comparative Handbook” is a must-have reference book that would be a valuable
addition to the libraries of syntacticians, philosophers of science and
cognitive scientists interested in the study of grammar.

REFERENCES

Bock, J. Kathryn. 1986. Syntactic persistence in language production.
Cognitive Psychology 18(3). 355-387.

Branigan, Holly, P. & Martin J. Pickering. 2017. An experimental approach to
linguistic representation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40. e282. 

Levelt, Willem, J. M. 1989. Speaking: From intention to articulation.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pickering, Martin J. & Victor S. Ferreira. 2008. Structural priming: a
critical review. Psychological Bulletin 134(3). 427-4.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Gözde Mercan is a psycholinguist with a PhD in Cognitive Science from Middle
East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Her research focuses on the
processing and mental representation of language, mainly through the
structural priming paradigm. She has conducted structural priming experiments
on various linguistic forms in Turkish, English and Norwegian with monolingual
and multilingual participants. She is also interested in language acquisition
in children and adults. Currently, she is an (external) affiliate of the
Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan of the University of
Oslo.





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