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Symmetrizing Syntax seeks to establish a minimal and natural
characterization of the structure of human language (syntax),
simplifying many facets of it that have been redundantly or
asymmetrically formulated. Virtually all past theories of natural
language syntax, from the traditional X-bar theory to the
contemporary system of Merge and labeling, stipulate that every
phrase structure is "asymmetrically" organized, so that one of its
elements is always marked as primary/dominant over the others, or
each and every phrase is labeled by a designated lexical element.
The two authors call this traditional stipulation into question and
hypothesize, instead, that linguistic derivations are essentially
driven by the need to reduce asymmetry and generate symmetric
structures. Various linguistic notions such as Merge, cyclic
derivation by phase, feature-checking, morphological agreement,
labeling, movement, and criterial freezing, as well as parametric
differences among languages like English and Japanese, and so on,
are all shown to follow from a particular notion of structural
symmetry. These results constitute novel support for the
contemporary thesis that human language is essentially an instance
of a physical/biological object, and its design is governed by the
laws of nature, at the core of which lies the fundamental principle
of symmetry. Providing insights into new technical concepts in
syntax, the volume is written for academics in linguistics but will
also be accessible to linguistics students seeking an introduction
to syntax.
Symmetrizing Syntax seeks to establish a minimal and natural
characterization of the structure of human language (syntax),
simplifying many facets of it that have been redundantly or
asymmetrically formulated. Virtually all past theories of natural
language syntax, from the traditional X-bar theory to the
contemporary system of Merge and labeling, stipulate that every
phrase structure is "asymmetrically" organized, so that one of its
elements is always marked as primary/dominant over the others, or
each and every phrase is labeled by a designated lexical element.
The two authors call this traditional stipulation into question and
hypothesize, instead, that linguistic derivations are essentially
driven by the need to reduce asymmetry and generate symmetric
structures. Various linguistic notions such as Merge, cyclic
derivation by phase, feature-checking, morphological agreement,
labeling, movement, and criterial freezing, as well as parametric
differences among languages like English and Japanese, and so on,
are all shown to follow from a particular notion of structural
symmetry. These results constitute novel support for the
contemporary thesis that human language is essentially an instance
of a physical/biological object, and its design is governed by the
laws of nature, at the core of which lies the fundamental principle
of symmetry. Providing insights into new technical concepts in
syntax, the volume is written for academics in linguistics but will
also be accessible to linguistics students seeking an introduction
to syntax.
Collected for the first time in a single volume, these essays and
articles by Naoki Fukui form an outline of some of the most
significant and formative contributions to syntactic theory.
Focusing particularly on the typological differences between
English/type language and Japanese/type languages, Fukui examines
the abstract parameters that both link and divide them. Linguistic
universals are considered in the light of cross-linguistic
variation and typological (parametric) differences are investigated
from the viewpoint of universal principles. The book's main focus
is the nature and structure of invariant principles and parameters
(variables) and how they interact to give principled accounts to a
variety of seemingly unrelated differences between English and
Japanese. The contrasts between these two types of language is an
ideal testing ground, since the languages are superficially
different in virtually every aspect of their linguistic structures
from word order and wh-movement, to grammatical agreement and
case-marking systems, among many others. These articles constitute
a considerable contribution to the development of the
principles-and-parameters model in its exploration and refinement
of theoretical concepts and fundamental principles of linguistic
theory, leading to some of the basic insights that lie behind the
minimalist program.
Collected for the first time in a single volume, these essays and
articles by Naoki Fukui form an outline of some of the most
significant and formative contributions to syntactic theory.
Focusing particularly on the typological differences between
English/type language and Japanese/type languages, Fukui examines
the abstract parameters that both link and divide them. Linguistic
universals are considered in the light of cross-linguistic
variation and typological (parametric) differences are investigated
from the viewpoint of universal principles. The book's main focus
is the nature and structure of invariant principles and parameters
(variables) and how they interact to give principled accounts to a
variety of seemingly unrelated differences between English and
Japanese. The contrasts between these two types of language is an
ideal testing ground, since the languages are superficially
different in virtually every aspect of their linguistic structures
from word order and wh-movement, to grammatical agreement and
case-marking systems, among many others. These articles constitute
a considerable contribution to the development of the
principles-and-parameters model in its exploration and refinement
of theoretical concepts and fundamental principles of linguistic
theory, leading to some of the basic insights that lie behind the
minimalist program.
This collection of nine papers brings together Naoki Fukui's
pioneering body of work on Merge, the basic operation of human
language syntax, from the two distinct but related perspectives of
theoretical syntax and neurosciences. Part I presents an overview
of the development of the theory of Merge and its current
formulations in linguistic theory, highlighting the author's
previously published papers in theoretical syntax, while Part II
focuses on experimental research on Merge in the brain science of
language, demonstrating how new techniques and the results they
produce can inform the study of syntactic structures in the brain
in the future. By combining insights from theoretical linguistics
and neurosciences, this book presents an innovative unified account
of the study of Merge and paves new directions for future research
for graduate students and scholars in theoretical linguistics,
neuroscience, syntax, and cognitive science.
This collection of nine papers brings together Naoki Fukui's
pioneering body of work on Merge, the basic operation of human
language syntax, from the two distinct but related perspectives of
theoretical syntax and neurosciences. Part I presents an overview
of the development of the theory of Merge and its current
formulations in linguistic theory, highlighting the author's
previously published papers in theoretical syntax, while Part II
focuses on experimental research on Merge in the brain science of
language, demonstrating how new techniques and the results they
produce can inform the study of syntactic structures in the brain
in the future. By combining insights from theoretical linguistics
and neurosciences, this book presents an innovative unified account
of the study of Merge and paves new directions for future research
for graduate students and scholars in theoretical linguistics,
neuroscience, syntax, and cognitive science.
The book proposes a theory of phrase structure in which structures
are built by a simple adjunction operation, and specifiers are
solely characterised by agreement. Having introduced some of the
basic notions of the principle-and-parameters theory in Chapter 1,
Chapter 2 discusses and illustrates the fundamental difference
between lexical and functional categories: Lexical categories have
Lexical Conceptual Structure in the sense of Hale and Keyser
(1986), whereas functional categories lack such intrinsic semantic
property. Instead, functional categories possess agreement features
which connect two distinct syntactic categories. Based on this
fundamental difference, a new system of projection called the
relativized X-bar theory is introduced. Chapter 3 explores various
consequences of the projection system introduced in Chapter 2. In
Chapter 4, the discussion focuses on the phrase structural
properties of Japanese.
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