tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post2420151703053217589..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: The 2nd Hilbert Question: Barbara Citko on Diagnostics for MultidominanceNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-68343040313033273032014-12-03T15:55:21.711-08:002014-12-03T15:55:21.711-08:00@Thomas:
this may surprise you, but I agree. I ju...@Thomas:<br />this may surprise you, but I agree. I just wanted to point out what I took to actually like behind Barbara's MD proposal. I have no doubt that we can arrange things so that things work out. The question is what makes the two different kinds of cases tick. I also wanted to observe, and you have verified my hunch, that I don't think that the Kracht stuff was actually particularly relevant. Thx.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-78883452995077747822014-12-03T15:01:07.989-08:002014-12-03T15:01:07.989-08:00I think this is once again an instance of 2: the M...I think this is once again an instance of 2: the MD derivation via simultaneous Merge yields certain effects given certain assumptions. You can get those effects in a variety of ways without a simultaneous Merge representation. Your second paragraph already points in this direction: we can simply model these cases with sideward movement, and as long as we distinguish these cases from Nunes' sideward movement, the two can be made to behave differently. We could even go meta-derivational and have a non-MD derivation tree that produces an MD-derivation tree that then produces an output structure. Only if you fix certain parameters of the theory do these emulation strategies become difficult or impossible, and Kracht does not fix these parameters.<br /><br />You might object now that the emulation strategy makes the theory less elegant, but that's actually not obvious because it solves e.g. the BPS problem you notice right away. But I really don't want to argue that point in great detail because I think that's exactly the wrong way to approach the issue: MD structures are not the object of interest, it's the phenomena that are analyzed in those terms. They seem to have some property that makes them particularly amenable to such an analysis, so we need to figure out what that property is (or develop a convincing argument that the phenomena above are just a historical accident of the development of the field because every random sample of phenomena can be made to form a natural MD-class). Discussing how MD structures can be reencoded without multi-dominance doesn't strike me as particulary fruitful because there is just way too much wiggle room.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-39236969031982332582014-12-03T09:04:31.557-08:002014-12-03T09:04:31.557-08:00I am confused by something. If (3i) is part of the...I am confused by something. If (3i) is part of the game -- that is, the assumption that literally every movement operation results in multidominance (let's add Zhang 2004 to the list of references, btw) -- then I'm not sure there's anything that wouldn't fall under the heading of a "multidominance structure." For one thing, it is not completely clear that there is a single linguistic utterance where literally every single sub-constituent remains in situ (maybe certain fragment answers?). And even if there is, the question of how to identify a "multidominance structure" becomes very close to the question of how to identify a "structure in which movement has occurred."<br /><br />So if the Hilbert Question is along the lines of "is (3i) correct?" (i.e., does every movement operation result in multidominance), then I understand the question. (Though the answer might still be something like, "it's a notational choice" -- see the discussion above -- though the details of that discussion are above my pay grade.)<br /><br />But if the Hilbert Question is "how do we diagnose multidominance given that something like (3i) <i>is</i> true, then I guess I just don't understand the question.Omerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06157677977442589563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-51906208477174010692014-12-03T07:35:17.471-08:002014-12-03T07:35:17.471-08:00From my reading of the multi-dominance (MD) litera...From my reading of the multi-dominance (MD) literature, what does most of the work is not the MD assumption but a further assumption about how MD structures can be derived. In particular, the assumption that the structure in (1) above is derivable by simultaneously merging ZP with X and Y. In other words, ZP is not FIRST merged with X (say) and then merged with Y but is merged in ONE step with BOTH. This distinguishes MD approaches to RNR, for example, with Nunes style sidewards movement analysis. What's the reason for this? Mainly, I believe, to allow such derivations to escape island constraints. The evidence seems to be that RNR, for example, is not subject to bounding effects, which would be odd if this were a species of movement. So, here's a question for you Thomas: does Kracht's formulation of copies vs MDs have anything to say about the derivational history of these structures? And if it does can it distinguish between those MDs which are products of Movment and this that are products of Merge? This is what is required. The issue has been case as a question of MD vs copy, but I suspect that there is at least one more dimension to the problem: "copies" via merge or via move? If one wants simultaneous merge then it looks like one will want MD (or MD seems very natural). And that's what I believe is driving a lot of the discussion. Is this right Barbara?<br /><br />One more question once I'm at it: how do structures like (1) translate into BPS. It can't be something like {a,[b},x] ('[' used to disambiguate the brackets) as this makes not set theoretical sense. So is it {a,b} {b,x}? If so, then if one allows sidewards movement, this will be structurally indistinguishable from a Nunes style derivation. The issue really coming down to a question of derivational history not derived object.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-3215864585921981132014-12-02T17:23:02.677-08:002014-12-02T17:23:02.677-08:00I'd like to amend your question with some tech...I'd like to amend your question with some technical observiations. This post got way longer than I anticipated and meanders quite a little bit, so if you want to get the overall gist just go down all the way to the last paragraph.<br /><br />The implicit assumption is that multi-dominant structures can be distinguished from traces or copies with chain formation, yet all formal results on this issue point in the other direction. Marcus Kracht's 2001 L&P paper showed in great detail that the three representation formats are interchangeable. This can also be seen with MGs, where all information is already present in the derivation trees --- which have neither chains, nor copies, nor multi-dominance arcs --- and the mapping to the desired type of phrase structure tree can be switched in and out as one sees fit.<br /><br />I don't mean to imply that these technical results render the problem vacuous, but they show that the way we formulate this Hilbert question needs to be sharpened. Here's two issues that detractors could raise:<br /><br />1) Why not be 100% multi-dominant?<br />The Hilbert question as stated is about multi-dominant (MD) structures in an otherwise non-MD theory. So the first question is, is there any reason to have a non-MD theory in the first place? Kracht's result show us that there isn't, but there are reasons to prefer MD over copies, mostly related to space usage --- programming languages, for example, share identical objects where possible in order to save memory. So shouldn't the question rather be, what are tests for non-md status?<br /><br />2) What are your parameters? Why should those be the right parameters?<br />The whole driving point of the MD literature is that an MD structure behaves differently (or at least seems to) from a non-MD structure in their assumed theory, which operates with specific definitions of c-command, constituency, locality domains, and so on. But it's unclear why these parameters should have to be fixed, and if so, how the Hilbert question could be turned into a concrete research program given the lack of consensus when it comes to technical details. Minor differences in the definition of c-command (e.g. lowest dominating node VS all dominating nodes) give very different results in MD-structures.<br /><br />In my opinion, the issue you worry about is completely independent of MD, and adding it to the picture only muddies the water. You ask whether there are tests to identify MD-structures, but that is a little bit like asking whether there are tests to identify the arrows in the lines of a Feynman diagram. MD is a technical analysis, it is not a term refering to specific constructions. I'm sure that this point is completely obvious to you and you're using the style of analysis as a shorthand for the empirical objects the analysis is applied to. The reason I point out this duality, though, is that only certain phenomena seem natural candidates for an MD-analysis. So I would say a more direct paraphrase of your Hilbert question is the following:<br /><br />- Is there a property P that all the structures that are analyzed in MD-terms have in common?<br />- If so, how can we express P in a fashion that is independent of the specifics of the formalism?<br />- Finally, is there representation format that allows for a more succinct formulation of P?<br /><br />PS: Sorry for the necro, the last few weeks have been very busy but I'm slowly working my way backwards through all the posts I missed.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.com