Former Associate Professor of Linguistics) [email protected] Working Version 16.2
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Cognitax Tool Grammar: Re-factoring the Generative Program A pervasive action dimension for linguistic description, theory and models 12 Lawrence R. Smith (Former Associate Professor of Linguistics) [email protected] Working Version 16.2 This is a preliminary and frequently changing dynamic document responsive to reader critique and is likely not the latest version available by contacting the author. (Note the title has changed.3) The later version always supersedes the earlier and typically may include major revisions. Comments and challenges are welcome for future versions. The extended version under development is freely available on request from the author. 1 We are indebted for the incisive comments of readers who suggested constructive improvements even as the ideas presented here were sometimes at considerable variance with their own current working frameworks. We owe special thanks to the following for comments on either parts or the whole of this work: John Hewson, Paul Postal, Vit Bubenik, Pieter Seurens and Willem de Reuse. 2We had considered an alternative title for this paper since it seeks to explain malformation: “A Review of Verbal Misbehavior” 3 From version 12.9 ‘Cognitax’ replaces ‘Pragmatax’ to clarify that Tool Grammar is distinct from pragmatics, as well as separate work that may refer to grammatical tools. Both were absent from the title in an earlier version. 1 Operative Motivating Hypotheses of Tool Grammar 1. There exists an empirically evident necessity for representation of linguistic structural action intent which has been generally overlooked in the theory of language, including centralized configurational syntax in the generative program. 2. Linguistic structural action intent extends the basic Chomskyan focus on linguistic creativity (unbounded generation from finite means) to a new level of representation useful for explaining and constraining the inventive means by which the species- specific features of human language are effected. Theoretical gains are sought by extending the Chomskyan idea to generation of structure from intent. 3. The inclusion of intention in linguistic rules both enables solutions of resistant and intractable problems, and otherwise enables a wider set of more generalized and more natural solutions while probing explanations for the profoundly important syntactic observational effects uncovered by generativist methodology (e.g. locality, crossover, C-command, control). 4. The exclusion of linguistic intention and action from generative rules introduces artefactual complexity and precludes the strongest possible natural constraints on characterizations of the human faculty of language. 5. Theorizing based on linguistic action intent leads to thinner, simplified, more directly empirical argumentation compared to the indirections necessitated by complex syntactic analysis based on central configurational syntax. 6. The inclusion of linguistic action intent in generative rules enables a deepening understanding of the role of generative constructs such as C-Command and Merge in the computational facility which underlies human language, revealing a new level of significance for Minimalism’s most basic claims. 7. Functional explanations based on linguistic intent for a wide range of unacceptable sentences contribute to an understanding how human languages are readily learned largely in the absence of exposure to negative data. 8. Careful examination of linguistic intent as a methodology can greatly reduce the entropy of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic theory by independently explaining a plethora of ill formed sentences in a straightforward way, leaving a more tractable set of separate theoretical problems for these disciplines. 9. Scientific validity is enhanced by revising the architecture of generative linguistics from a bi-directional sound-meaning connection to a functional connection between linguistic action intention and external linguistic representation. 2 Contents 1 Introduction and Summary ................................................................................... 5 2 Re-factoring the Generative Program ................................................................... 7 3 Background: Cognitax is Linguistic Action .......................................................... 9 4 Comparison with Chomsky’s Galilean Challenge .............................................. 12 5 Ill-Formedness and a Working Methodology ..................................................... 25 6 Specific Objectives and Scope ............................................................................ 26 7 Illustrating Linguistic Action: Passive is Not Active .......................................... 29 8 Actionemes as Pseudo-Code ............................................................................... 31 9 Motivation for a New Orientation....................................................................... 32 10 Evidence from Meta Reference ...................................................................... 35 11 Some Historical Antecedents to Cognitax ...................................................... 35 12 Basic Constraints on Focus Constructions ...................................................... 36 13 Tools versus Rules .......................................................................................... 37 14 Distinguishing Grammar from Meaning ......................................................... 39 15 Linguistic Fieldwork and Actioneme Transcription ....................................... 43 16 Labrador Inuttut Inverted Number Marking ................................................... 46 17 Inverse Number Marking Phenomena Elsewhere ........................................... 46 18 Crossover Phenomena ..................................................................................... 47 19 English Reflexives .......................................................................................... 48 20 Poetics as an Argument for Psychological Reality ......................................... 58 21 The Role of Intention in Verbal Control ......................................................... 60 Introduction and Summary ............................................................................... 60 A Fundamental Starting Point ........................................................................... 63 Wager Class Verbs as a Proof of Concept Challenge ........................................ 67 Implications and Conclusions ........................................................................... 69 22 Certainty Verb Subcategorization ................................................................... 72 23 Placement Alternations ................................................................................... 73 24 Complement versus Adjunct in Noun Phrases ................................................ 76 25 Auxiliary Movement and WH in Questions ................................................... 77 26 Islands and Embedded Wh Constructions ...................................................... 79 27 More on Island Constraints ............................................................................. 83 28 Stevens Poetry ................................................................................................. 85 29 Postal Puzzles.................................................................................................. 86 30 Polarity Items .................................................................................................. 88 31 Syntax Emerging from Action Semantics: Lexical Selections & Categorizations 92 32 Limitations of Cognitax Constraints to Displace Mechanisms of Syntax ...... 95 33 Even/Only Phenomena.................................................................................... 97 34 Covert Modification in Floated Quantifiers: Iteration and Totality ................ 98 35 Testability, Verifiability, Formalism .............................................................. 100 36 Theoretical Status, Universals and the Architecture of Competence in the Chomskyan Framework ............................................................................................................... 100 3 37 Toward a TG Generative Framework ........................................................... 101 38 Extending the Minimalist Rule Framework for Cognitax Tool Grammar .... 101 39 Relationship of TG Cognitax to Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics ............ 101 40 Relationship to Speech Act Research ........................................................... 101 41 Dynamic Semantics and Discourse Representation Theory ......................... 101 42 Donkey Pronouns .......................................................................................... 101 43 TG and Information Structure ....................................................................... 105 44 Wh-islands in degree questions .................................................................... 106 45 Rhetorical Structure Theory .......................................................................... 121 46 Stronger Constraints for Modeling the Faculty of Language ....................... 121 47 Summary and the Architecture of Competence ............................................ 122 48 Shortcomings and Future Work .................................................................... 126 Works Cited................................................................................................................................