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Order and Structure

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Order and Structure Order and Structure by Colin Phillips B.A., Modern Languages University of Oxford, 1990 Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology August 1996 © 1996 Colin Phillips. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Signature of Author: Department of Linguistics and Philosophy August 31st 1996 Certified by: Alec Marantz Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: Wayne O’Neil Professor of Linguistics Head, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Introduction 2 Introduction Order and Structure by Colin Phillips Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on August 31st, 1996 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics. ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to argue for the following two main points. First, that grammars of natural language construct sentences in a strictly left-to-right fashion, i.e. starting at the beginning of the sentence and ending at the end. Second, that there is no distinction between the grammar and the parser. In the area of phrase structure, I show that the left-to-right derivations forced by the principle Merge Right can account for the apparent contradictions that different tests of constituency show, and that they also provide an explanation for why the different tests yield the results that they do. Phenomena discussed include coordination, movement, ellipsis, binding, right node raising and scope. I present a preliminary account of the interface of phonology and morphology with syntax based on left-to-right derivations. I show that this approach to morphosyntax allows for a uniform account of locality in head movement and clitic placement, explains certain directional asymmetries in phonology-syntax mismatches and head movement, and allows for a tighter connection between syntactic and phonological phrases than commonly assumed. In parsing I argue that a wide range of structural biases in ambiguity resolution can be accounted for by the single principle Branch Right, which favors building right-branching structures wherever possible. Evidence from novel and existing experimental work is presented which shows that Branch Right has broader empirical coverage than other proposed structural parsing principles. Moreover, Branch Right is not a parsing-specific principle: it is independently motivated as an economy principle of syntax in the chapters on syntax. The combination of these results from syntax and parsing makes it possible to claim that the parser and the grammar are identical. The possibility that the parser and the grammar are identical or extremely similar was explored in the early 1960s, but is widely considered to have been discredited by the end of that decade. I show that arguments against this model which were once valid no longer apply given left-to-right syntax and the view of the parser proposed here. Thesis Supervisor: Alec Marantz Title: Professor of Linguistics 3 Introduction 4 Introduction Acknowledgments I left this part to the very end, thinking it might be easy, but I hadn’t reckoned with the enormous number of people who deserve credit for what follows, many of whom probably don’t even get a mention here. Alec Marantz has been far more than my advisor and committee chair. It goes without saying that this thesis has greatly improved as a result of many hours of discussion with Alec and by his constant written feedback. We have argued and argued about this, and it was always valuable. But Alec has been more than my thesis advisor. We have collaborated for three years as novice neurolinguists, with Alec as our intrepid leader. Alec has been my running training partner for a number of years, and he played a large part in my ‘other’ big project of this year, which was to qualify for the Boston Marathon. He has always been willing to give help and advice, ranging from more regularacademic matters to feeding my cat and helping me move house, with a whole lot of other things in between. He is a good friend. I have learned a lot about doing linguistics from David Pesetsky. He seemed to know where this thesis was headed well before I did. His infectious enthusiasm made an great difference to the enjoyment I got from working on this, and he never failed to find the fatal flaws in my logic, which led to a good many matters being clarified, in my head as much as on the page. Beyond this thesis, his co-directorship (with Ken Wexler) of the joint program in linguistics and cognitive science has had an enormous impact on what I have got out of my time at MIT. Noam Chomsky’s immense influence on this work should be clear, and my discussions with him always led me to rethink whatever I had been thinking about. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising, since what I’m trying to do here is something that Noam had already done long before I was born. I only wish that I had begun to meet regularly with Noam at an earlier point. I can say for sure that I would not have written this thesis had it not been for Ted Gibson. Three years ago, before Ted came to MIT, parsing was the last thing that I was expecting to write my dissertation about. This thesis had its beginnings in a (very late) term paper I wrote for a class of Ted’s, and somehow it developed from there, with Ted as my main advisor in this area for the first year. Thankfully, none of the original paper has survived to this version. Working with Ted has been extremely rewarding, and a good deal of fun, too. Particularly the material in Chapter 3 has benefitted from countless hours of discussion with Ted. Ted is the only professor with whom I have left an appointment running, so that we would not miss the final subway of the night, at 12:15am! Beyond my committee a number of people have provided large amounts of feedback, information and other assistance with this thesis. I am amazed at how 5 Introduction helpful people are around here—it is a wonderful community of linguists. Heidi Harley, Jonathan Bobaljik and Andrea Zukowski all read the entire document and provided detailed comments. Danny Fox, Uli Sauerland and Carson Schütze all read sizeable chunks and returned sizeable comments with amazing speed. Many other people have directly contributed to the thesis, in the form of discussions, correspondence, judgements, criticisms, technical assistance, and miscellaneous wisdom: Carl Alphonce, Albert Alvarez, Kevin Broihier, Andrew Carnie, Paul Crook, Janet Fodor, Danny Fox, Bob Frank, Lyn Frazier, Paul Gorrell, Paul Hagstrom, Ken Hale, Koji Hoshi, Dick Hudson, Edith Kaan, Masa Koizumi, Howard Lasnik, Martha McGinnis, Don Mitchell, Shigeru Miyagawa, Renate Musan, Orin Percus, Norvin Richards, Uli Sauerland, Julie Sedivy, Mike Tanenhaus and Myriam Uribe-Echevarria, Ken Wexler and Kazuko Yatsushiro, Elron Yellin. The experimental work reported in Section 2 of Chapter 3 was conducted in collaboration with Ted Gibson. Thanks to Neal Pearlmutter, Ariel Salomon, and San Tunstall for their invaluable assistance with these experiments. Work on this thesis was supported in part by the NSF funded program ‘Language: Acquisition and Computation’ (#DIR9113607) awarded to MIT. …and that’s just the dissertation. I also owe a great debt to the many other people who have helped me through my first six years of being a linguist and my first six years of living in the United States. My introduction to linguistics and to the USA came when I was a visiting student at the University of Rochester in 1990-1991. I had only intended to be in this country and in linguistics for a year, but the warm welcome and the exciting intellectual environment that I found there quickly made me change my plans. Itziar Laka inspired me, because she cared about finding the right answer more than anybody I had encountered in my earlier life as a medievalist. Sandro Zucchi and Roberto Zamparelli provided many many hours of discussion and instruction. Many many other people in Rochester provided a warm welcome. The absence of any distinction between theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics which I encountered in Rochester has had clear influences on the document that follows. I benefitted immensely from living with Hamida Demirdache, Tom Green and Kumiko Murasugi in my first year at MIT. From remedial phonology help to forming a band, this was an extremely happy time. I was lucky enough to spend the first 4 years of my time at MIT with a wonderful group of classmates: Masha Babyonyshev, Andrew Carnie, Heidi Harley, Shawn Kern, Masa Koizumi, Renate Musan, Orin Percus, Hubert Truckenbrodt, and adoptively Jonathan Bobaljik. Since most of them graduated and left a year ago, I have missed their company and lively discussions very much this year. There are many many other people who have helped to make my stay at MIT incredibly rewarding. Apart from the people already mentioned and the people who I will kick myself for forgetting right after I hand this in (it is, after all very late as I write, or is it early?), there are Morris Halle, Tony Harris, Irene Heim, Maya Honda, Dianne Jonas, Michael Kenstowicz, LING88–95 (that’s just about everybody), Gary Marcus, all of the MITWPLers past and present, Wayne O’Neil, David Poeppel, lots of great people in the BU Applied Linguistics 6 Introduction Program (you know who you are), and Linda Thomas, my companion in ‘Broca’s Area’ for much of the writing of this thesis, Leo my furry companion at home for the rest of the writing.
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