Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T13:26:29.339Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Asymmetric Merge and Parataxis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Mark de Vries*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen

Abstract

I argue that syntactic structure encodes three types of asymmetries. The first corresponds to the asymmetry between mother and daughters nodes that is called dominance, that is, syntactic hierarchy. The second is the selectional asymmetry between sister nodes, which is translated into the precedence relation in the phonological component. The third, called behindance, is an alternative to dominance, and corresponds to parataxis. Parenthesis, coordination, and apposition are analyzed on the basis of behindance. In our derivational model of grammar it is defined as a special type of inclusion that blocks c-command. It follows that parenthetic material can neither move toward the matrix, nor be bound by a constituent from the matrix.

Résumé

Résumé

Je propose ici que la structure syntaxique encode trois types d’asymétrie. Le premier type correspond à l’asymétrie entre nœuds mères et filles qui s’appelle la dominance, c’est-à-dire, la hiérarchie syntaxique. Le deuxième type est l’asymétrie sélectionnelle entre nœuds sœurs, qui correspond à la relation de precedence dans le composant phonologique. Le troisième type, appelé arrièrage, est une alternative à la dominance et elle correspond à la parataxe. Les parenthèses, la coordination et l’apposition sont ainsi analysées en termes d’arrièrage. Dans le modèle dérivationnel de la grammaire, l’arrièrage est défini comme étant un type particulier d’inclusion qui bloque la c-commande. Il s’ensuit que le matériel en parenthèses ne peut ni se déplacer vers la phrase matrice, ni être liée par un constituant de celle-ci.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2008 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aoun, Joseph, Benmamoun, Elabbas, and Sportiche, Dominique. 1999. Further remarks on first conjunct agreement. Linguistic Inquiry 30:669–681.Google Scholar
Blevins, James. 1990. Syntactic complexity: Evidence for discontinuity and multidomination. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Bobaljik, Jonathan, and Brown, Samuel. 1997. Interarboreal operations: Head movement and the extension requirement. Linguistic Inquiry 28:345–356.Google Scholar
Bredschneijder, Martijn. 1999. Reeksvorming: initiële coördinatie in het Nederlands. TABU 29:1–20.Google Scholar
Burton-Roberts, Noel. 1999. Language, linear precedence and parentheticals. In The clause in English: In honour of Rodney Huddleston, ed. Collins, Peter and Lee, David, 33–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.45.05burGoogle Scholar
Camacho, José. 1997. The syntax of NP coordination. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Canac-Marquis, Réjean, and Tremblay, Mireille. 1998. The wh-feature and the syntax of restrictive and non-restrictive relatives in French and English. In Theoretical analyses on Romance languages, ed. Lema, José and Treviño, Esthela, 127–142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.157.07canGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Beyond explanatory adequacy. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 20.Google Scholar
Citko, Barbara. 2004. Agreement asymmetries in coordinate structures. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 12: The Ottawa Meeting 2003, ed. Arnaudova, Olga, Browne, Wayles, Rivero, Maria Luisa, and Stojanovic, Danijela, 91–108. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.Google Scholar
Citko, Barbara. 2005. On the nature of Merge: External Merge, internal Merge, and parallel Merge. Linguistic Inquiry 36:475–496.10.1162/002438905774464331Google Scholar
Collins, Chris. 2002. Eliminating labels. In Derivation and explanation in the Minimalist Program, ed. Epstein, Samuel and Seely, T. Daniel, 42–64. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470755662.ch3Google Scholar
Collins, Chris, and Branigan, Phil. 1997. Quotative inversion. Natural Language and Linguistic. Theory 15:1–41.10.1023/A:1005722729974Google Scholar
Corver, Norbert, and Thiersch, Craig. 2002. Remarks on parentheticals. In Progress in grammar: Articles at the 20th anniversary of the Comparison of Grammatical Models group in Tilburg, ed. van Oostendorp, Marc and Anagnostopoulou, Elena. Amsterdam: Meertens Institute Electronic Publications in Linguistics, www.meertens.knaw.nl/books.Google Scholar
Culicover, Peter, and Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. Semantic subordination despite syntactic coordination. Linguistic Inquiry 28:195–217.Google Scholar
Del Gobbo, Francesca 2003. Appositives at the interface. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Delorme, Evelyne, and Dougherty, Ray. 1972. Appositive NP constructions. Foundations of Language 8:2–29.Google Scholar
Demirdache, Hamida. 1991. Resumptive chains in restrictive relatives, appositives and dislocation structures. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
De Vos, Mark. 2005. The syntax of pseudo-coordination in English and Afrikaans. Doctoral dissertation, University of Leiden.Google Scholar
Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria. 2000. Asymmetries: Consequences for morphological configurations and paradigms. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47:81–101.10.1023/A:1014058313985Google Scholar
Doron, Edit. 1994. The discourse function of appositives. In Proceedings of the 9th annual conference of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics and the workshop on discourse, ed. Buchall, Rhonna and Mittwoch, Anita, 53–62. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Epstein, Samuel. 1999. Un-principled syntax and the derivation of syntactic relations. In Working minimalism, ed. Epstein, Samuel and Hornstein, Norbert, 317–345. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Es, Gustaaf van, and van Caspel, Paulus. 1975. Samengestelde zin: parataxis. Archief voor de Nederlandse syntaxis, University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Espinal, María Teresa. 1991. The representation of disjunct constituents. Language 67:726–762.Google Scholar
Fabb, Nigel. 1990. The difference between English restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses. Journal of Linguistics 26:57–78.10.1017/S0022226700014420Google Scholar
Frampton, John. 2004. Copies, traces, occurrences, and all that: Evidence from Bulgarian multiple wh-phenomena. Ms., Northeastern University, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Gärtner, Hans-Martin. 2002. Generalized transformations and beyond: Reflections on Minimalist syntax. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1524/9783050074757Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John. 1985. A principled exception to the coordinate structure constraint. In CLS 21: Proceedings of the twenty-first regional meeting of the Chicago Linguisic Society, Part 1, 133–143. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Goodall, Grant. 1987. Parallel structures in syntax: Coordination, causatives and restructuring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grootveld, Marjan. 1992. On the representation of coordination. Linguistics in the Netherlands 9:61–73.Google Scholar
Grootveld, Marjan. 1994. Parsing coordination generatively. Doctoral dissertation, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1988. Review of Grant Goodall, Parallel structures in syntax: Coordination, causatives and restructuring. Lingua 75:273–287.Google Scholar
Halitsky, David. 1974. Deep structure appositive and complement NPs. Language 50:446–455.10.2307/412217Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2004. Coordinating constructions: An overview. In Coordinating constructions, ed. Haspelmath, Martin, 3–39. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.58.03hasGoogle Scholar
Heijden, Emmeken van der. 1999. Tussen nevenschikking en onderschikking. Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Hendriks, Petra. 2004. Either, both and neither in coordinate structures. In The composition of meaning: From lexeme to discourse, ed. Meulen, Alice ter and Abraham, Werner, 115–138. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.255.08henGoogle Scholar
Hendriks, Petra, and Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 2001. Initiële coördinatie en de identificatie van woordgroepen. TABU 31:105–118.Google Scholar
Hoeksema, Jack. 2000. Negative polarity items: Triggering, scope, and c-command. In Negation and polarity: Syntactic and semantic perspectives, ed. by Horn, Laurence R. and Kato, Yasuhiko, 115–146. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 1998. Coordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johannessen, Janne Bondi. 2005. The syntax of correlative adverbs. Lingua 115:419–443.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Klein, M. 1977. Appositionele constructies in het Nederlands. Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Koster, Jan. 1999. De primaire structuur. TABU 29:131–140.Google Scholar
Koster, Jan. 2000a. Extraposition as parallel construal. Ms., University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Koster, Jan. 2000b. Variable-free grammar. Ms., University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Kraak, A., and Klooster, W.G.. 1968. Syntaxis. Culemborg, Netherlands: Stam-Kemperman.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George P. 1986. Frame semantic control of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. In CLS 22, Part 2: Papers from the parasession on pragmatics and grammatical theory at the 22nd regional meeting, ed. Farley, Anne M., Farley, Peter T., and McCullough, Karl-Erik, 152–167. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Langendoen, D. Terence. 2003. Merge. In Formal approaches to function in grammar: In honor of Eloise Jelinek, ed. Carnie, Andrew, Harley, Heidi, and Willie, MaryAnn, 307–318. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard, and Kupin, Joseph. 1977. A restrictive theory of transformational grammar. Theoretical Linguistics 4:173–196.10.1515/thli.1977.4.1-3.173Google Scholar
McCawley, James. 1968. Concerning the base component of a transformational grammar. Foundations of Language 4:243–269.Google Scholar
McCawley, James. 1982. Parentheticals and discontinuous constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry 13:91–106.Google Scholar
Moltmann, Friederike. 1992. Coordination and comparatives. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Mu’adz, Husni. 1991. Coordinate structures: A planar representation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Munn, Alan. 1987. Coordinate structure and X-bar theory. McCilt Working Papers in Linguistics 4:121–140.Google Scholar
Munn, Alan. 1993. Topics in the syntax and semantics of coordinate structures. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Nunes, Jairo. 2001. Sideward movement. Linguistic Inquiry 32:303–344.Google Scholar
Oirsouw, Robert R. van. 1987. Three dimensionality. In Formal parameters of generative grammar, Yearbook III, ed. Haan, Gerde and Zonneveld, Wim, 31–46. Dordrecht: Instituut A.W. Groot voor Algemene Taalwetenschap van de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht.Google Scholar
Pittner, Karin. 1995. Zur Syntax von Parenthesen. Linguistische Berichte 156:85–108.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. 1998. Three investigations of extraction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Progovac, Ljiljana. 1998. Structure for coordination. Part I and II. Glot International 3.7:3–6, and 3.8:3-9.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, and Svartvik, Jan. 1999. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. 15th ed. London: Longman. [1985.]Google Scholar
Riemsdijk, Henk van. 1998. Trees and scions — science and trees. Fest-web-page for Noam Chomsky’s 70th birthday, cognet.mit.edu/Books/celebration/essays/riemsdyk.html.Google Scholar
Riemsdijk, Henk van. 2004. Graft is the logically missing case of Merge. Visnyk of the Kiev National Linguistic University 7.Google Scholar
Rogers, James. 2003. Syntactic structures as multi-dimensional trees. Research on Language and Computation 1:265–305.Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1986. Infinite syntax! Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Safir, Ken. 1986. Relative clauses in a theory of binding and levels. Linguistic Inquiry 17:663–689.Google Scholar
Sampson, Geoffrey. 1975. The single mother condition. Journal of Linguistics 11:1–11.Google Scholar
Sauerland, Uli. 2001. On quantifier raising in German. Ms., University of Tübingen.Google Scholar
Schelfhout, Carla. 2000. Corpus-based analysis of parenthetical reporting clauses. In Computational linguistics in the Netherlands 1998: Selected papers from the ninth CLIN meeting, ed. van Eynde, Frank. Schuurman, Ineke, and Schelkens, Ness, 93–107. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Schelfhout, Carla, Coppen, Peter-Arno, and Oostdijk, Nelleke. 2003a. Intercalaties? Dat zijn geloof ik van die tussendingen ... Gramma/TTT 10:27–44.Google Scholar
Schelfhout, Carla, Coppen, Peter-Arno, and Oostdijk, Nelleke. 2003b. Positions of paren-theticals and interjections: A corpus-based approach. Linguistics in the Netherlands 20, ed. Cornips, Leonie and Fikkert, Paula, 155–166.Google Scholar
Sells, Peter. 1985. Restrictive and non-restrictive modification. CSU Report No. 85-28:1–33.Google Scholar
Skrabalova, Hana. 2003. La syntaxe de la coordination [Conj DP Conj DP]: Comparaison entre le français, le tchèque et l’anglais. Paper read at the Workshop on coordination, Université Paris 7.Google Scholar
Stoltenburg, Benjamin. 2003. Parenthesen im gesprochenen Deutsch. InLiSt — Interaction and Linguistic Structures 34:1–40.Google Scholar
Sturm, Arie N. 1986. Primaire syntactische structuren in het Nederlands. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Velde, John R. te. 1997. Deriving conjoined XPs: A minimal deletion approach. In German: Syntactic problems — Problematic syntax, ed. Abraham, Werner and van Gelderen, Elly, 231–259. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Vries, Gertrud de. 1987. De representatie van coördinatie. Tilburg Studies in Language and Literature 7: Grammaticaliteiten, ed. Corver, Norbert and Koster, Jan, 331–377.Google Scholar
Vries, Gertrud de. 1992. On coordination and ellipsis. Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Tilburg.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 1999. Het schemergebied tussen pronomina en anaforen. Nederlandse Taalkunde 4:125–160.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2002. The syntax of relativization. Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2005a. Coordination and syntactic hierarchy. Studia Linguistica 59:83–105.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2005b. Merge: Properties and boundary conditions. Linguistics in the Netherlands 22, ed. Doetjes, Jenny and van de Weijer, Jeroen, 219–230.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2005c. Internal and external remerge: On movement, multidominance, and the linearization of syntactic objects. Ms., University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2006a. The syntax of appositive relativization: On specifying coordination, false free relatives and promotion. Linguistic Inquiry 37:229–270.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2006b. Reported direct speech in Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 23, ed. van de Weijer, Jeroen and Los, Bettelou, 212–223.Google Scholar
Vries, Mark de. 2007. Invisible constituents? Parenthesis as B-merged adverbial phrases. In Parentheticals, ed. Dehé, Nicole and Kavalova, Yordanka, 203–234. Amsterdam: John Bemjamins.Google Scholar
Wilder, Chris. 1997. Some properties of ellipsis in coordination. In Studies on universal grammar and typological variation, ed. Alexiadou, Artemis and Hall, T. Alan, 59–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1978. Across-the-Board rule application. Linguistic Inquiry 9:31–43.Google Scholar
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1999. C-commanderen en de configurationele matrix. TABU 29:185–190.Google Scholar
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 2004. Een dynamische structuur van de Nederlandse zin. Part 1 and 2. TABU 33:55–71 and 151-172.Google Scholar
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 2006. Local Agreement. In Agreement Systems, ed. Boeckx, Cedric, 317–339. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar