FL and the envelope of variability

I read a nice little paper that I would like to bring to your attention. The article(by Alison Henry) is ostensibly about Q-float in varieties of Irish English and it elaborates a point made in earlier work by Jim McCloskey (2000). Jim’s paper used the distribution of quantifiers floated off of WH elements to provide evidence for successive cyclicity (the Qs could be stranded in what are effectively phase edges (aka “escape hatches”)). You are all likely more familiar with this work than I am so I won’t review it here. Henry’s interesting paper makes three additional interesting points:

1.     The paper observes that the Q stranding provides evidence for vP as a phase edge as it seems possible to strand material in this position in several dialects.

2.     The parallel between the stranding facts in A’ movement configurations with that of Q float in A-movement configurations suggests that these should be treated uniformly andthis implies that Q-float in A-movement configurations piggy backs on movement as Sportiche originally suggested rather than these Qs being based generated like adverbials in vP edge positions for semantic reasons.

3.     It suggests an interesting way of parsing these Q stranding effects to shed light on what wrt the phenomenon reflects universal features of FL/UG and what is more G specific.

Like I said, this is a nice little paper and a quick and illuminating read. Before ending, let me say a word or two about the points above.

First, if correct, it provides as the paper notes, interesting evidence for the claim that vP is a phase edge. There is also counter evidence for this claim coming from Keine and Bhatt’s work on non-local agreement in Hindi (thx to Omer for bringing this to my attention). However the Henry data seems compelling, at least to me, and clearly points to something like a landing site under CP for A’-movement. At the very least this now sets up a nice research question for some ambitious syntax grad student: how to reconcile the Irish English data with the Hindi data. Good luck.

The paper’s second point also seems to me quite solid. If the stranding data under A-movement is a proper subset of that under A’-movement then it is hard to see what could motivate treating them as generated by entirely different mechanisms. In fact, theoretically, this would seem to me to be a disaster, invoking the worst kind of constructionism. Linguists have a habit of theoretically reifying surface data in their generative procedures. This leads to multiplication of G operations that have similar effects, which requires enriching the structure of FL/UG. This is a habit to be resisted, IMO. In fact, as a working hypothesis, I believe that we should standardly assume that FL can only do things in one way. There are never two roads to Rome! Henry’s paper shows how productive this kind of assumption can be empirically.

Third, and this IMO is the paper’s most interesting feature, it proposes a very reasonable view of one rich source of variation. Henry’s paper notes that we can find Qs stranded in anyphase edge (and base position) when we take the unionof all the dialects. No singledialect appears to allow Qs to surface in every position. Thus, it might seem as if each dialect has a different Q float mechanism. And, of course, in one sense this is correct. Each G must have somedifference or there would be no dialectal differences. However, as Henry’s paper argues, we can see this another way. The data points to the conclusion that FL/UG actually permits stranding in anyposition but specific LADs acquire Gs with further restrictions. In other words, FL/UG provides an envelope of possibilities that particular Gs further restrict. How? Via learning from the input. The paper makes the plausible point that PLD could fix the specific landing spots allowing the dialect specific G to use the FL/UG provided options as templates for where Qs could appear. This seems to me like a very reasonable idea and allows us to use the full range of variation as a window into the properties of FL/UG.

Two points: First, I have no idea how robust the Q float data are in the PLD and whether there is enough there to fix the various dialects.[1]However, Henry’s speculation can be tested. We are talking about data that should be easy to spot in a CHILDES data base for Irish English (if there is one).  One nice feature of this data: it will all fall into the domain of 0⁺learning (discussed here) and so be the right rain size to be acquirable via PLD. 

Second, the idea that Henry’s paper illustrates with Q float is one that others (e.g. Idsardi and Lidz and yours truly) have suggested for other syntactic phenomena.[2]We know that I-Merge generates copies in many places and which copy is pronounced should have an impact on surface order given standard linearization procedures. We can put these things together in Henryish fashion and note that what FL/UG provides via Merge is an envelope of possibilities that PLD then winnows out to provide some basic word order templates. On this view, FL/UG provides representations for the class of possible dependencies and PLD provides evidence for selecting among these possibilities wrt linearization. If this is correct, then specificlinearizations in specific Gs are not going to reflect much on the structure of FL/UG though the full range of typological options attested might well do so. At any rate, Henry provides a nice case study of the logic that Idsardi and Lidz were proposing more generally.

Enough said. Like I said, Henry’s paper is interesting and very well written and reasonably compact. Wish I had written it. 

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[1]In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that the range of variation might be more idiolectal than dialectal, but I really do not know enough to ground this suspicion.

[2]Eric Raimy and Lidz have suggested something like this for phonological phenomena as well. They argue that phonological structures are graphs, not strings, and so linearization is as much an issue in phonology as it is in syntax. If you haven’t read this stuff, you should take a look. It’s quite cool.

Universals; structural and substantive

Linguistic theory has a curious asymmetry, at least in syntax.  Let me explain.

Aspects distinguished two kinds of universals, structural vs substantive.  Examples of the former are commonplace: the Subjacency Principle, Principles of Binding, Cross Over effects, X’ theory with its heads, complements and specifiers; these are all structural notions that describe (and delimit) how Gs function. We have discovered a whole bunch of structural universals (and their attendant “effects”) over the last 60 years, and they form part of the very rich legacy of the GG research program. 

In contrast to all that we have learned about the structural requirements of G dependencies, we have, IMO, learned a lot less about the syntactic substances: What is a possible feature? What is a possible category? In the early days of GG it was taken for granted that syntax, like phonology, would choose its primitives (atomic elements) from a finite set of options. Binary feature theories based on the V/N distinction allowed for the familiar four basic substantive primitive categories A, N, V, and P. Functional categories were more recalcitrant to systematization, but if asked, I think it is fair to say that many a GGer could be found assuming that functional categories form a compact set from which different languages choose different options. Moreover, if one buys into the Borer-Chomsky thesis (viz. that variation lives in differences in the (functional) lexicon) and one adds a dash of GB thinking (where it is assumed that there is only a finite range of possible variation) one arrives at the conclusion that there are a finite number of functional categories that Gs choose from and that determine the (finite) range of possible variation witnessed across Gs. This, if I understand things (which I probably don’t (recall I got into syntax from philosophy not linguistics and so never took a phonology or morphology course)), is a pretty standard assumption within phonology tracing back (at least) to Sound Patterns. And it is also a pretty conventional assumption within syntax, though the number of substantive universals we find pale in comparison to the structural universals we have discovered. Indeed, were I incline to be provocative (not something I am inclined to be as you all know), I would say, that we have very few echt substantive universals (theories of possible/impossible categories/features) when compared to the many many plausible structural universals we have discovered. 

Actually one could go further, so I will. One of the major ambitions (IMO, achievements) of theoretical syntax has been the elimination of constructions as fundamental primitives. This, not surprisingly, has devalued the UG relevance of particular features (e.g. A’ features like topic, WH, or focus), the idea being that dependencies have the properties they do not in virtue of the expressions that head the constructions but because of the dependencies that they instantiate. Criterial agreement is useful descriptively but pretty idle in explanatory terms. Structure rather than substance is grammatically key. In other words, the general picture that emerged from GB and more recent minimalist theory is that G dependencies have the properties they have because of the dependencies they realize rather than the elements that enter into these dependencies.[1]

Why do I mention this? Because of a recent blog post by Martin Haspelmath (here, henceforth MH) that Terje Lohndal sent me. The post argues that to date linguists have failed to provide a convincing set of atomic “building blocks” on the basis of which Gs work their magic. MH disputes the following claim: “categories and features are natural kinds, i.e. aspects of the innate language faculty” and they form “a “toolbox” of categories that languages may use” (2-3). MH claims that there are few substantive proposals in syntax (as opposed to phonology) for such a comprehensive inventory of primitives. Moreover, MH suggests that this is not the main problem with the idea. What is? Here is MP (3-4):

To my mind, a more serious problem than the lack of comprehensive proposals is that linguistics has no clear criteria for assessing whether a feature should be assumed to be a natural kind (=part of the innate language faculty).

The typical linguistics paper considers a narrow range of phenomena from a small number of languages (often just a single language) and provides an elegant account of the phenomena, making use of some previously proposed general architectures, mechanisms and categories. It could be hoped that this method will eventually lead to convergent results…but I do not see much evidence for this over the last 50 years. 

And this failure is principled MH argues relying that it does on claims “that cannot be falsified.”

Despite the invocation of that bugbear “falsification,”[2] I found the whole discussion to be disconcertingly convincing and believe me when I tell you that I did not expect this.  MH and I do not share a common vision of what linguistics is all about. I am a big fan of the idea that FL is richly structured and contains at least some linguistically proprietary information. MP leans towards the idea that there is no FL and that whatever generalizations there might be across Gs are of the Greenberg variety.

Need I also add that whereas I love and prize Chomsky Universals, MH has little time for them and considers the cataloguing and explanation of Greenberg Universals to be the major problem on the linguist’s research agenda, universals that are best seen as tendencies and contrasts explicable “though functional adaptation.” For MH these can be traced to cognitively general biases of the Greenberg/Zipf variety. In sum, MH denies that natural languages have joints that a theory is supposed to cut or that there are “innate “natural kinds”” that give us “language-particular categories” (8-9).

So you can see my dilemma. Or maybe you don’t so let me elaborate.

I think that MH is entirely incorrect in his view of universals, but the arguments that I would present would rely on examples that are best bundled under the heading “structural universals.” The arguments that I generally present for something like a domain specific UG involve structural conditions on well-formedness like those found in the theories of Subjacency, the ECP, Binding theory, etc. The arguments I favor (which I think are strongest) involve PoS reasoning and insist that the only way to bridge the gap between PLD and the competence attained by speakers of a given G that examples in these domains illustrate requires domain specific knowledge of a certain kind.[3]

And all of these forms of argument loose traction when the issue involves features, categories and their innate status. How so?

First, unlike with the standard structural universals, I find it hard to identify the gap between impoverished input and expansive competence that is characteristic of arguments illustrated by standard structural universals. PLD is not chock full of “corrected” subjacency violations (aka, island effects) to guide the LAD in distinguishing long kosher movements from trayf ones. Thus the fact that native speakers respect islands cannot be traced to the informative nature of the PLD but rather to the structure of FL. As noted in the previous post (here), this kind of gap is where PoS reasoning lives and it is what licenses (IMO, the strongest) claims to innate knowledge. However, so far as I can tell, this gap does not obviously exist (or is not as easy to demonstrate) when it comes to supposing that such and such a feature or category is part of the basic atomic inventory of a G. Features are (often) too specific and variable combining various properties under a common logo that seem to have little to do with one another. This is most obvious for phi-features like gender and number, but it even extends to categories like V and A and N where what belongs where is often both squishy within a G and especially so across them. This is not to suggest that within a given G the categories might not make useful distinctions. However, it is not clear how well these distinctions travel among Gs. What makes for a V or N in one G might not be very useful in identifying these categories in another. Like I said at the outset, I am not expert in these matters, but the impression I have come away with after hearing these matters discussed is that the criteria for identifying features within and across languages is not particularly sharp and there is quite a bit of cross G variation. If this is so, then the particular properties that coagulate around a given feature within a given G must be acquired via experience with that that particular feature in that particular G. And if this is so, then these features differ quite a bit in their epistemological status from the structural universals that PoS arguments most effectively deploy. Thus, not only does the learner have to learn which features his G exploits, but s/he even has to learn which particular properties these features make reference to, and this makes them poor fodder for the PoS mill.

Second, our theoretical understanding of features and categories is much poorer than our understanding of structural universals. So for example, islands are no longer basic “things” in modern theory. They are the visible byproducts of deeper principles (e.g. Subjacency). From the little I can tell, this is less so for features/categories. I mentioned the feature theory underlying the substantive N,V,A,P categories (though I believe that this theory is not that well regarded anymore). However, this theory, even if correct, is very marginal nowadays within syntax. The atoms that do the syntactic heavy lifting are the functional ones, and for this we have no good theoretical unification (at least so far as I am aware). Currently, we have the functional features we have, and there is no obvious theoretical restraint to postulating more whenever the urge arises.  Indeed, so far as I can tell, there is no theoretical (and often, practical) upper bound on the number of possible primitive features and from where I sit many are postulated in an ad hoc fashion to grab a recalcitrant data point. In other words, unlike what we find with the standard bevy of structural universals, there is no obvious explanatory cost to expanding the descriptive range of the primitives, and this is too bad for it bleaches featural accounts of their potential explanatory oomph.

This, I take it, is largely what MH is criticizing, and if it is, I think I am in agreement (or more precisely, his survey of things matches my own). Where we part company is what this means. For me this means that these issues will tell us relatively little about FL and so fall outside the main object of linguistic study. For MH, this means that linguistics will shed little light on FL as there is nothing FLish about what linguistics studies. Given what I said above, we can, of course, both be right given that we are largely agreeing: if MH’s description of the study of substantive universals is correct, then the best we might be able to do is Greenberg, and Greenberg will tell us relatively little about the structure of FL. If that is the argument, I can tag along quite a long way towards MH’s conclusion. Of course, this leaves me secure in my conclusion that what we know about structural universals argues the opposite (viz. a need for linguistically specific innate structures able to bridge the easily detectable PoS gaps).

That said, let me add three caveats.

First, there is at least one apparent substantive universal that I think creates serious PoS problems; the Universal Base Hypothesis (UBH). Cinque’s work falls under this rubric as well, but the one I am thinking about is the following. All Gs are organized into three onion like layers, what Kleanthes Grohmann has elegantly dubbed “prolific domains” (see his thesis). Thus we find a thematic layer embedded into an agreement/case layer embedded into an A’/left periphery layer.  I know of no decent argument arguing against this kind of G organization. And if this is true, it raises the question of why it is true. I do not see that the class of dependencies that we find would significantly change if the onion were inversely layered (see here for some discussion). So why is it layered as it is? Note that this is a more abstract than your typical Greenberg universal as it is not a fact about the surface form of the string but the underlying hierarchical structure of the “base” phrase marker. In modern parlance, it is a fact about the selection features of the relevant functional heads (i.e. about the features (aka substance) of the primitive atoms). It does not correspond to any fact about surface order, yet it seems to be true. If it is, and I have described it correctly, then we have an interesting PoS puzzle on our hands, one that deals with the organization of Gs which likely traces back to the structure of FL/UG. I mention this because unlike many of the Greenberg universals, there is no obvious way of establishing this fact about Gs from their surface properties and hence explaining why this onion like structure exists is likely to tell us a lot about FL.

Second, it is quite possible that many Greenberg universals rest on innate foundations. This is the message I take away from the work by Culbertson & Adger (see here for some discussion). They show how some order within nominals relating Demonstratvies, Adjectives, Numerals and head Nouns are very hard to acquire within an artificial G setting. They use this to argue that their absence as Greenberg options has a basis in how such structures are learned.  It is not entirely clear that this learning bias is FL internal (it regards relating linear and hierarchical order) but it might be. At any rate, I don’t want anything I said above to preclude the possibility that some surface universals might reflect features of FL (i.e. be based on Chomsky Universals), and if they do it suggests that explaining (some) Greenberg universals might shed some light on the structure of FL.

Third, though we don’t have many good theories of features or functional heads, a lazy perusal of the facts suggest that not just anything can be a G feature or a G head. We find phi features all over the place. Among the phi features we find that person, number and gender are ubiquitous. But if anything goes why don’t we find more obviously communicatively and biologically useful features (e.g. the +/- edible feature, or the +/- predator feature, or the +/- ready for sex feature or…). We could imagine all sorts of biologically or communicatively useful features that it would be nice for language to express structurally that we just do not find. And the ones that we do find, seem from a communicative or biological point of view to often be idle (gender (and, IMO, case) being the poster child for this). This suggests that whatever underlies the selection of features we tend to see (again and again) and those that we never see is more principled than anything goes. And if that is correct, then what basis could there be for this other than some linguistically innate proclivity to press these features as opposed to those into linguistic service.  Confession: I do not take this argument to be very strong, but it seems obvious that the range of features we find in Gs that do grammatical service is pretty small, and it is fair to ask why this is so and why many other conceivable features that we could imagine would be useful are nonetheless absent.

Let me reiterate a point about my shortcomings I made at the outset. I really don’t know much about features/categories and their uniform and variable properties. It is entirely possible that I have underestimated what GG currently knows about these matters. If so, I trust the comments section will set things straight. Until that happens, however, from where I sit I think that MH has a point concerning how features and categories operate theoretically and that this is worrisome. That we draw opposite conclusions from these observations is of less moment than that we evaluate the current state of play in roughly the same way.

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[1] This is the main theme of On Wh Movement and I believe what drives the unification behind Merge based accounts of FL.

[2] Falsification is not a particularly good criterion of scientific adequacy, as I’ve argued many times before. It is usually used to cudgel positions one dislikes rather than push understanding forward. That said, in MH, invoking the F word does not really play much more than an ornamental role. There are serious criticisms that come into play.

[3] I abstract here from minimalist considerations which tries to delimit the domain specificity of the requisite assumptions. As you all know, I tend to think that we can reduce much of GB to minimalist principles. The degree to which this hope is not in vain, to that degree the domain specificity can be circumscribed to whatever it is that minimalism needs to unify the apparently very different principles of GB and the generalizations that follow from them.

An interesting PoS argument makes it to the "show"

Linguists tend to publish for other linguists. And this is fine. However, it was not always so. There was a time when linguists saw themselves as part of a larger cog-psy community and published in venues frequented by non-linguists. Cognition was a terrific venue for such work and it enabled linguistic discoveries to influence debates about the nature of mind (and, occasionally, even the brain). However, even in these golden years very few linguists published in the leading general science journals and this had the effect of segregating our work from the scientific mainstream. Books like Pinker’s The Language Instinct were effective conduits to the larger scientific community, but really nothing gains scientific street cred like publishing in the big three peer reviewed high impact journals like Science, Nature and PNAS. Moreover, as readers of FoL know, I believe that the single best way to politically advance linguistics and protect it economically is to disseminate our results to our fellow scientists. So, with this as prelude, I am delighted to note a paper that has yesterday appeared in PNAS of that ilk. The paper (here) has three authors: Chung-hye Han, Julien Musolino and Jeff Lidz (HML). Aside from being very GFL (i.e. “good for linguistics”) that such things are being published in PNAS it’s also a very good paper that I heartily recommend you take a look. It even has the virtue of being a mere 6 pages (a page limit we should encourage our own journals to try to approximate). So what’s in it? Here is a quick précis with some comments.

The paper argues that FL requires that speakers adopt (at least in the unmarked case) a single G when exposed to PLD. The reasoning for this conclusion is based on a novel Poverty of Stimulus (PoS) argument. What makes it novel is that the paper outlines how a particular kind of variation can be driven by properties of FL. Let me explain.

The standard PoS argument looks at invariances across Gs and shows how these can be accounted for with some or another proposed innate feature of FL. Variation among Gs is then attributed to the differential inductive effects of the Primary Linguistic Data (PLD). What HML shows is that this same logic allows FL to accommodate some G variation just in case the PLD is insufficient to fix a G parameter in the LAD (aka language acquisition device (i.e. kid)). In such cases, if FL requires an LAD to construct a single G for given PLD, then we expect to find variable Gs in a population of speakers with the following three key features: (i) Speakers exhibit variability wrt a certain set of (relatively recondite) grammatical phenomena, (ii) This variability is attested between but not within speakers, and (iii) The variability is independent between speakers and parents. Let me say a word about each point.

As regards (i), this is the fact HML discovers (actually this possibility is first described in an earlier 2007 HML paper). HML shows that in Korean the height of the verb explains scope of negation effects. These effects are quite obscure and verb height cannot be induced from the inspection of surface forms as they can be in languages like French and English. In effect HML shows argues (IMO, shows) that “children’s acquisition of this knowledge [viz. the scope facts, NH]…is not determined by any aspect of experience…because the experience of the language learner does not contain the necessary environmental trigger” (1).

As regards (ii), HML shows that the variation is consistent within speakers across different negative constructions and over time. In other words, once a LAD’s G fixes the position of a verb (and with it negation) it fixes it there consistently.

As regards (iii), the G variation in the population is effectively random. It is not possible to predict any speaker’s positioning of the verb by examining the Gs of parents (or, for that matter, anyone else). In other words, as there is no data that could fix where the verb sits in a Korean G then the fact that it gets fixed is a product of the structure of FL and so we expect random variation.

This is a very clever argument. Note, that it directly supports the logic of general PoS arguments without assuming G invariance of the output. Or, to put this another way: PoS arguments generally proceed from invariant properties of Gs to features of FL. HML notes that it is consistent with PoS logic that there be variation so long as it is random. The fact that one can find such cases further strengthens PoS logic.

The paper has two other virtues, IMO, more directly relevant to syntactic theory.

First, it provides a model of the kinds of things that syntacticians keep asking for. Syntacticians keep asking whether psycho-ling results can help choose between various alternative syntactic proposals. In principle the answer is, of course, yes. However, paradigms of this are hard to find. HML provides an example where a psycho-ling result could be close to dispositive.  The relevant syntactic alternatives hail from the earliest days of Minimalism when V raising was a hot topic of inquiry.

Cast your mind back to the earliest days of the Minimalist Program (MP), indeed all the way back to 1995 and the Black Book. Chapters 2 and 3 presented alternative theories of V raising. The chapter 2 theory (see 138ff) basically provided a theory in which French (where Vs overtly raise to T) is the unmarked case and English (where V does not overtly raise) is the marked one. The markedness contrast is argued to be a reflection of a leading MP idea (viz. economy). The idea is that overt raising involves fewer operations than overt lowering plus LF raising so an English G is less economical than a French one as a matter of FL principle (not UG incidentally, but FL) for it uses more elaborate derivations in getting V to T.

The cost accounting changes in chapter 3 (roughly 195-198) where English “procrastinating” Gs are the unmarked case. The idea is that LF operations without PF effects are more economical than ones that result in PF “deletions” (an idea, btw, that lingers to the present in current MP accounts that take Gs to relate meanings with sound). This requires rethinking how syntactic morphemes are licensed (checking) and how they enter derivations (fully featurally encumbered), but given this and some other assumptions French overt raising in the chapter 3 theory is less grammatically svelte than covert V to T, and hence less preferred.

HML bears directly on these two theories and argues that they are both wrong.  Were the chapter 2 story right then we would expect that all Korean Gs assigned Korean Vs high positions. Were the chapter 3 theory right they would all have low positions. The fact that both are available and equally so argues that neither option is better than the other. This leaves open the question of what theory allows both Gs to be equally available (see below). I suspect that a single cycle theory with copy deletion can be made to work, but who knows. Now that HML has shown that both are equally fine, we know that neither of the earlier stories can possibly be correct. Note that this does not mean that the HML account is inconsistent with any markedness view of V raising. This brings me to the second virtue of the HML story. It raises an interesting theoretical question.

So far as I know, there is currently no G story for why it is that LADs need choose a singly G for V raising. The data are quite clear that this is what happens, but why this is required is theoretically unclear. Thus, HML raises an interesting grammatical question: what is it about FL/UG that forces a choice? I can imagine some answers having to do with how complex the lexicon is and that having functional heads that optionally assign features to V in one of two ways is more costly than having one that does it only one way. This might have the desired effects if judiciously worked out. However, this then predicts that some Gs, mixed Gs, will be more costly than uniform Gs. This, in effect, makes English the marked case again given the fact that English Gs raise be and have (and maybe modals) but not more “lexical” verbs.[1] At any rate, none of this is a theory, but the HML data raise an interesting theoretical question as well as closing off two reasonable prior alternatives. So it serves as a nice example of how psycho work can impact syntactic theory.

Let me end with one more point. Unlike much publicity concerning linguistics, the HML work offers an excellent example of what linguistics has achieved. This exploits real linguistic advances to make its scientifically interesting point. And this is in contrast to lousy ways of advertising our linguistic wares. One reaction to the invisibility of linguistics in the general scientific culture has been to try to co-opt anything “languagy” to promote linguistics. The word of the year competition at the LSA is an excellent (sad) example.[2]  The idea seems to be that this kind of thing garners media attention and that there is no such thing as bad publicity. I could not disagree more. The word of the year has nothing to do with linguistics, nothing to do with the serious advances GG has made, and relies on no expert/professional knowledge that linguistics brings to the scientific table. As such it does nothing to advertise our scientific bona fides. It’s, IMO, crap.  And using it to advance the visibility of linguistics is both counterproductive and dishonest. I don’t know about you, but scientific overreach (aka, scientism) makes my teeth hurt. This should not be what a professional linguistics organization (the LSA) should be doing to promote linguistics.  What should it be doing? Advertising work like HML, i.e. making this kind of work more widely accessible to the general scientific community. This is what I had hoped the LSA initiative (noted here) was going to do. To date, so far as I can tell, this hope has not been realized. Instead we get words of the year and worse (see here). It’s almost like the LSA is embarrassed by work in real linguistics. Too bad, for as HML indicates, it can sell well.

So, read the HML paper and advertise it to scientific colleagues outside linguistics proper. It is both interesting in itself and good publicity for what we do. It’s real linguistics with a broader reach.

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[1] And this might predict that mixed Gs will necessarily only allow Vs robustly indicated in the data to be “different,” (e.g. raise). This is consistent with what we find in English where be and have are pretty PLD robust. It would be interesting to crank these cases through Charles Yang’s forthcoming learner and see what the limits on exceptionality would be for such a story.

[2] Thx to Alexander Williams for some co-venting about this.