tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7690685905207226001.post5019460690765184489..comments2023-06-15T05:25:55.046-04:00Comments on Ordinary Working Grammarian: The Beginning of Syntax (Version 3)Chris Collinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17999530032394474839noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7690685905207226001.post-21386968997665018632020-05-15T13:32:01.132-04:002020-05-15T13:32:01.132-04:00Reply by Omer Preminger:
I agree with much of wh...Reply by Omer Preminger: <br /><br />I agree with much of what you write here. I'd like to point out something that I think is often lost in this shuffle, though:<br /><br />When it comes to what you call the "core syntactic mechanisms of minimalist syntax" (e.g. phases, Transfer, etc.), there is often an implicit assumption that the function relating these mechanisms to our assumptions will be a relatively "smooth" one. The belief seems to be that even if we don't have all the mid-level generalizations perfectly right yet, the step of reasoning from these tentative mid-level generalizations to abstract computational principles (of the kind Chomsky has been preoccupied with in the last 25-30 years) is a safe one, because minor perturbations in the mid-level generalizations (e.g. as the result of further discoveries) will result in only minor perturbations in the abstract computational principles proposed to underlie these generalizations. Minimalists seem to think that the answers to "Why is language like this?" will not skew wildly as the result of minor changes to what we think language is like.<br /><br />Personally, I've never understood what justifies this belief. Consider the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT), for example – the claim that beyond its recursive combinatorial property (viz. Merge), syntax has no sui generis properties, only the requirements imposed by Interface Conditions (and third-factor considerations pertaining to efficient computation in general). Most careful work on the syntax of phi-feature agreement now assumes, whether tacitly or explicitly, a model incompatible with the SMT: the reason probes probe cannot, it turns out, be reduced to the assumption that if they didn't probe, something would go amiss with respect to Interface Conditions. Examples include: Bejar's (2003) Cyclic Agree proposal (where any representational lacunae not fixed upon the first cycle of probing could be remedied on the second cycle, leaving no Interface-based reason for the first cycle not to be purely optional), my own 2014 work (using omnivorous agreement to show that even single-cycle probing cannot be driven by, e.g., "uninterpretability" of features), and Deal's (2015) Interaction & Satisfaction framework (same, but stronger).<br /><br />This upends minimalists' understanding of syntax as "Merge plus interface conditions." So it sure looks to me like the abstract function relating our generalizations to the explanations thereof may be more like y=1/x circa zero (minor changes in x skew y wildly) than it is like y=1/x when x approaches infinity (minor changes in x skew y almost not at all).<br />Chris Collinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17999530032394474839noreply@blogger.com