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Imaginary mistakes versus real problems in generative grammar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2003
Abstract:
Jackendoff claims that current theories of generative grammar commit a “scientific mistake” by assuming that syntax is the sole source of linguistic organization (“syntactocentrism”). The claim is false, and furthermore, Jackendoff's solution to the alleged problem, the parallel architecture, creates a real problem that exists in no other theory of generative grammar.
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1. It is important to note that the minimalist program is a program for research investigating very general questions concerning the optimality (in some interesting sense) of the computational system for human language and more generally the possible “perfection” of language design. (See Chomsky 1995; Freidin 1997 for discussion.) These questions by themselves do not provide a theoretical framework or a particular model, let alone a specific theory. At present, the minimalist program is being investigated in a variety of ways, where specific proposals are often mutually exclusive, as is normally the case in linguistics, and rational inquiry more generally.
2. Thus phrase structure is constructed via transformation and therefore there is no phrase structure rule component. Movement transformations in this theory also involve a form of merger, where the syntactic object moved is concatenated with the root of the phrase containing it. When two independent objects are merged, this is called external Merge; whereas when a syntactic object is displaced to an edge of the constituent containing it, this is called internal Merge. The two types of Merge correspond to the distinction between generalized versus singulary [sic, technical term] transformations in Chomsky (1957 and earlier).
3. There is no further conversion of LF to “semantic representation” as indicated in Figure 1. Furthermore, following up on Note 1, recent proposals have questioned the existence of any level of representation like LF (see Chomsky 2002).
4. The same argument can be made regarding semantic representation. Assuming that the structures Jackendoff proposes for the semantic representation of verbs are on the right track, these structures could just as easily be part of the semantic specification of the lexical entry for predicates where the elements labeled “Object” in Jackendoff's lexical representations are variables to be replaced with constant terms from the actual sentence in which the predicate occurs. Again, there is no need to generate these semantic representations independently of the syntax and then have the problem of relating the two independent representations.
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