Omer on the autonomy of syntax; though you will be surprised what the autonomy is from!

Here is a post from Omer that bears on the autonomy issue. There are various conceptions of autonomy. The weakest is simply the claim that syntactic relations cannot be reduced to any others. The standard conception is that it might reduce to semantic generalizations or probabilistic generalizations over stings (hence the utility of 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously'). There are, however, stronger versions that relate to how different kinds of information intersect in derivations. And this is what Omer discusses: do the facts dictate that we allow phonological/semantic information intersperse with syntactic information to get the empirical trains to run on time. Omer takes on a recent suggestion that this is required and, imo, shreds the conclusion. At any rate, enjoy!