tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post299074060271957715..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Phases: some questionsNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-14148262708109287562013-05-20T09:40:29.312-07:002013-05-20T09:40:29.312-07:00I agree that phases, if they work, can limit inter...I agree that phases, if they work, can limit interaction between domains to a select number of elements. But this was also true of earlier subjacency accounts, no? What do phases add? <br /><br />As for the order of operations: so far as I know, bottom up grammars are easy enough to put into Left-Right parsers (e.g. left corner parsers) and so the fact that grammars generate bottom up does not mean that they must be so used. All the bottom up stuff does is make evident what the constituents are. It does not say that sentences are produced or parsed this way. However, I agree that anything that breaks long computations into smaller independent ones would be welcome. Phases do this, as do barriers and bounding nodes. That made the latter two interesting and it holds for phases as well.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-20665472765866179402013-05-19T22:23:04.225-07:002013-05-19T22:23:04.225-07:00I see bottom-upness as at least a presentational p...I see bottom-upness as at least a presentational problem, and possibly a real one, that could be defused by showing how the theory doesn't mandate any particular order of computatation. Phases might be able to help by limiting the interactions between different levels.<br /><br />The idea that Kayardild speakers, for example, literally have to compose their subordinate clause fully, spell it out into a buffer somewhere, produce the main clause and then finally speak their subordinate clause (Norvin Richards' and David Pesetsky's idea for how to manage Tangkic languages by delaying spellout), strikes most people as completely absurd; just saying that the theoretical order of operations isn't the real one was OK 40 years ago but is certainly not OK now.<br /><br />Thinking in the mode of categorial grammar or LFG's glue semantics, you could however envision a system whereby the contents of what a finite clause would have in its escape hatches (including, for Kayardild, complementizing oblique case under many circumstances) was posited as an assumption, the main clause computation done, then a subordinate clause with the appropriate properties produced to discharge the assumption.<br /><br />Without a phase-like idea, you couldn't do something like this, due to no clear statement about what you have to know about the subordinate clause to produce the main one.<br /><br />Or so it seems to me. Of course if I'd managed to work out how to implement something like this with a decent amount of syntactic detail, it would have appeared on lingbuzz rather than here.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-40293570940782704402013-05-19T19:01:00.819-07:002013-05-19T19:01:00.819-07:00Not sure in get this Avery. Do you mean bottom up ...Not sure in get this Avery. Do you mean bottom up being the problem? Not sure how phases per se solve this problem. But I might be misunderstanding. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-54649892011728395732013-05-19T16:36:30.766-07:002013-05-19T16:36:30.766-07:00Part of the bad impression that Minimalism seems t...Part of the bad impression that Minimalism seems to make on so many people might be caused by the fact that it superficially looks as if sentences in many languages have to be construct in close to the reverse order in which they are produced, whereas, it seems to me that part of the promise of phases would be to eliminate this feature by isolating the processing over the higher/earlier parts of the sentence from the lower/later ones (to stuff transmitted through the escape hatches, whatever they turn out to be).<br /><br />Perhaps some kind of unification of MP with Categorial Grammar could achieve this, since the latter is heavily local, and inherently order-independent (with a lot of substantial math not very far in the background), but underpowered for dealing with syntactic details, as far as I can make out.<br /><br />AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-60304196280503161602013-05-10T19:42:51.107-07:002013-05-10T19:42:51.107-07:00So the Kayardild challenge to phases, as I see it,...So the Kayardild challenge to phases, as I see it, is that the case-marking on members of things that ought to be inside phases is often conditioned by things that ought to be outside them, without any worked out account that I have noticed of what kind escape-hatch is required (including in Norvin's recent paper that someone either here or on fb directed me towards). So for example (12-62) from Evans' 1995 grammar:<br /><br /> ki-lda kurri-j, ngijuwa <br /> 2-pl-NOM see-ACT 1sgSUBJ:COBL <br /><br /> murruku-rrka kala-thurrk<br /> woomera-MLOC:COBL cut-IMMED:COBL<br /><br /> 'You see/saw that I am/was cutting a woomera'<br /><br />(rats, gloss alighment trashed by blogger)<br />'ACT' is the 'Actual' tense-mood ':COBL' is the `complementizing oblique' which is stuck with some morphological fusion onto all members of subordinate clauses that don't share their subjects with the main clause (and various other kinds of clauses). MLOC is `modal locative' case that the object of a realis verb would show.<br /><br />Can't find a 'cut a woomera' example of this kind, but here's an MLOC marked object for 'cut a boomerang':<br /><br /> (7-7) ngada kala-tharri wangalk-i<br /> lsgNOM cut-NEG.ACT boomerang-MLOC<br /><br />Surely most of us could come up with a new kind of escape hatch for this if we had to hand it a paper about it the day after tomorrow, but it would be nice to have something more considered.<br /><br />I think it also challenges the bottom-up conception of current minimalism: equipping words with, say sequences of features that can be merged and interpreted later in the derivation seems a tad perverse than suggesting that morphology has some capacity to access aspects of the previous production and planning of the constituent(s) that the word is inside of.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-61507429252680072052013-05-09T23:33:04.991-07:002013-05-09T23:33:04.991-07:00I'm replacing with a shorter version of that c...I'm replacing with a shorter version of that comment.<br /><br />Other kinds of lack of repair: <br />- Multiple remnant sluicing doesn't fix violations of the right roof constraint (Howard Lasnik has some manuscripts online discussing these cases)<br />- Left branch extraction<br /><br />Work arguing that repair is illusory <br />- Merchant (2001) (discussion of relative clause islands)<br />- Fukaya (2007) (PhD thesis, good evidence from the interpretation of RC island ameliorating sluices here)<br />- Szczegielniak (2008) for sluicing in Polish<br />- Barros (2012) (CLS 48 proceedings)<br />- Barros, Elliott and Thoms (2013) (CLS 49 handout available on my website)<br /><br />The Max Elide idea is interesting for the VPE cases, but I think it can be controlled for by blocking de-accenting lower in the structure:<br /><br />(1) SAM speaks GREEK, but I don't know which language SALLY does. <br />(2) *SAM hired someone who speaks GREEK, but I don't know which language SALLY did (hire someone who speaks).<br /><br />(1) isn't perfect, but way better than (2), Merchant (2008) discusses cases like these w.r.t. Max Elide and I believe concludes it couldn't be behind the lack of repair effects in VPE cases. Matt Barroshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11519692292179124347noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-44900290971183279332013-05-09T21:51:52.306-07:002013-05-09T21:51:52.306-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Matt Barroshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11519692292179124347noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-81970274286666201462013-05-09T16:54:01.746-07:002013-05-09T16:54:01.746-07:00Could you elaborate a little bit. This is interest...Could you elaborate a little bit. This is interesting. What's the work that argues it is illusory? I know the VP ellipsis stuff which shows that one gets island effects, but what are the results that show that the apparent obviation of island effects under ellipsis is an illusion.<br /><br />Btw, I agree that the *-trace stuff is very unsatisfying. I've always taken it to be a stand in until something better came along. I actually like some version of Max Elide properly understood as a kind of A over A effect with deaccenting. What I mean is that you can elide or deaccent, but you cannot deaccent some and elide some. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-87297189453836853512013-05-09T14:56:53.637-07:002013-05-09T14:56:53.637-07:00It is a neat result, but I agree that the details ...It is a neat result, but I agree that the details are hazy - and there are many many cases where island repair effects are mysteriously missing. The *-trace theory for island escaping XPs is unsatisfying, and makes the wrong predictions in many cases. <br /><br />There is a strain of work that takes island repair under ellipsis to be illusory - such approaches also make the right predictions (in many cases if not all) regarding when such effects should be missing (e.g. contrastive clausal ellipsis, VP ellipsis, and certain left branch extractions). <br /><br />If these approaches can be maintained, this would make one result of PT less "neat" - that is, there'd be one less empirical/conceptual argument in favor. <br /><br />Matt Barroshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11519692292179124347noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-86300605812397085142013-05-09T11:17:28.122-07:002013-05-09T11:17:28.122-07:00Any chance that we can tie this with Chomsky's...Any chance that we can tie this with Chomsky's suspicion that it's phonological expression that's really costly? I don't see how, but it would address your linearization remarks (note: address, not resolve).Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-7165589706471479092013-05-09T11:14:19.154-07:002013-05-09T11:14:19.154-07:00In the classical ST account, the insides also beca...In the classical ST account, the insides also became unavailable, but this was because they were "too far away" rather than because they were non longer in a manipulable format. The idea of SO being the source of opacity revolves around getting some handle on why island effects are obviated under ellipsis. This is a neat result and it is unclear why this should hold on the classical theory. However, I think that the main problem with classical ST wrt this obviation of islandhood under ellipsis is that it was conceptualized as a PFish condition on rule application, rather than as an output condition. If the latter perspective is taken then whether the format changes or not, the empirics remain the same. What SO might do is provide a rationale for this PFish effect. However, I think that this is more metaphorical than tightly deductive. At any rate, tying island amnesties to absence of linearization has a nice feel to it, even if the details, imo, are a bit hazy. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-39212448578904944232013-05-09T09:46:26.418-07:002013-05-09T09:46:26.418-07:00True, being unstructured per se is not central to ...True, being unstructured per se is not central to my question. The main point is that Juan's theory stops short of saying that the spelled-out stuff is "completely gone", and therefore doesn't run into the recombination problem.<br /><br />Having said that, becoming unstructured does seem to be a pretty well-suited metaphor for this common kind of "becoming unavailable" that both phases and subjacency implement. Once we get to, say, the end of an embedded CP phase or bounding domain, we want the CP <b>as a whole</b> to still be present, to serve as the complement of the embedding verb (e.g. 'wonder'). Where for "serve as the complement" you can read any of the usual ways you might like to think of this: satisfying subcategorization, being linearized to its immediate right, serving as its semantic argument, whatever. For these purposes, the CP domain "as a whole" <b>is</b> available. It's the internal structure that's unavailable.<br /><br />So certainly there may be alternatives to saying that a spelled-out chunk "becomes unstructured". But also "becoming unavailable" doesn't quite do justice the details, since only the insides of the spelled-out domain become unavailable.Tim Hunterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11810503425508055407noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-52037524265715484552013-05-09T09:13:09.707-07:002013-05-09T09:13:09.707-07:00There seems to be a bit of a tension in phase theo...There seems to be a bit of a tension in phase theory between (i) motivating phases in terms of computational complexity and (ii) dealing with non-cyclic cross-phasal interpretative dependencies. On the strongest conception of phases, a completed phase is Spelled Out, interpreted at both interfaces, and never needs to be looked at again. This seems very efficient, but it's hard to reconcile with (e.g.) cross-phasal variable binding. If phases are just linearization domains, the existence of cross-phasal interpretative dependencies is no longer problematic. But then, it's not obvious why linearizing a structure chunk-by-chunk should be more efficient than linearizing it all in one go. Any reasonable linearization algorithm can be implemented by traversing the tree using bounded memory. In contrast, it seems plausible that the difficulty of interpreting a structure might grow very quickly as it gets bigger, so that interpreting chunk-by-chunk would actually be more efficient.Alex Drummondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04676457657606185543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-17841192469179960322013-05-09T08:20:10.724-07:002013-05-09T08:20:10.724-07:00Or just becoming unavailable? Being unstructured ...Or just becoming unavailable? Being unstructured is one way, but is this the only/best way?Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-26863726068766436962013-05-09T08:17:43.178-07:002013-05-09T08:17:43.178-07:00From note 6: The problem is that such early shippi...From note 6: <i>The problem is that such early shipping makes linearization problematic. It is also necessitates processes by which spelled out material is “reassembled” so that the interfaces can work their interpretive magic (think binding which is across interfaces, or clausal intonation, which is also defined over the entire sentence, not just a phase).</i><br /><br />This point has always worried/confused me. Just take linearization to keep things concrete: When we're deriving 'Who did John meet yesterday', if 'meet yesterday' is "sent to the interfaces" at the end of the vP phase and 'who did John' is "sent to the interfaces" at the end of the CP phase, what determines that we get the desired word order instead of 'meet yesterday who did John'? I think Boeckx and Grohmann call this "the recombination problem".<br /><br />I'm a fan of thinking of spellout along the lines of what Uriagereka's original MSO paper supposed, which seems to avoid this problem: nothing "disappears" or is "sent away", instead a chunk of structure just gets flattened into an unstructured word-like chunk, which can participate in the next phase up in the same way as a simple lexical word does.<br /><br />So, I'd like to add a question: why think of spellout as "disappearing" or "sending away", rather than "becoming unstructured"?<br />Tim Hunterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11810503425508055407noreply@blogger.com