linguistlist.org>
Editor for this issue: Andrew Carnie <carnielinguistlist.org>
linguistlist.org
mbm1.scu.edu.tw>[Editor's note: This is part one of a two part review. The second part appears in the next issue of LINGUIST] Beerman, Dorothee, David LeBlanc, & Henk van Riemsdijk, eds. (1997) Rightward Movement (Linguistik aktuell 17) Amsterdam: Benjamins. 406 pp. This is a proceedings volume collecting together papers presented in Oct. 1995 at the Tilburg Conference on Rightward Movement. The editors mention two or three papers that were presented at the conference but were not including in this proceedings volume. I say `two or three' because, although they mention three authors (Kayne, Koike, and Truckenbrodt), Koike actually has a paper in this volume; i do not know why his name is included in the list of authors whose papers were not included. At the back of the book, a complete list of addresses (snail- and e-mail) of the contributors is included. The Editors' Preface (with van Riemsdijk named as principal author) provides a very nice summary of the relevant issues and their background in the literature. Special note is taken of repercussions of recent work in Minimalist Program (e.g., Kayne 1994) for the whole notion of `rightward movement' (hereafter RM). This reviewer would note in particular that, although it is commonly supposed that, as stated in the preface, `In a minimalist approach, movement is exclusively triggered by checking .... Given this new line of thinking, Rightward Movement simply cannot be triggered, hence it cannot exist', some of the contributors -- e.g., Alphonce & Davis, Buring & Hartmann -- demonstrate that it is in fact possible to develop hypotheses within the Minimalist framework that would enable triggering of such movement. Of the 14 papers in the collection, it is hardly surprising that 7 deal with `extraposition' (defined in various ways), and four of those are concerned primarily with one aspect or other of extraposition in German. I will discuss these extraposition papers as a group before considering the others. Josef Bayer's paper `CP-Extraposition as Argument Shift' (pp. 37-58) begins with a very nice, neat summary of problems with classical extraposition account (via RM) for postverbal CPs in V-final languages (focussing particularly on Bengali, Hindi, and German), noting that these problems disappear under a Kayne-type analysis. However, he goes on to note definite empirical problems with a Kayne- type analysis. He then proposes an analysis according to which a complement is right-adjoined to the maximal projection of its governing head (in this case VP), leaving behind a trace as sole sister of that head (V). If that trace is then deleted and the tree is pruned, the V ends up with a complement to its right which it can theta-mark. Alternatively, Bayer suggests, at least some `extraposed' CPs may be base-generated to the right, co-indexed with a (dummy/deletable) pronominal, by inheritance from which they are licensed. Bayer notes that this would help account for the fact that in some OV languages (e.g., Bengali), certain classes of CPs are *always* `extraposed'. If we assume that directionality is relevant to selection, then the resulting VP constitutes a barrier to a CP on the `non-canonical' side of the head, which would account for the scope effects Bayer notes earlier as being problematic for both the traditional account and the Kayne-type account. In `Rightward Scrambling' (pp. 186-214), Anoop Mahajan argues on the basis of various relations sensitive to c-command that postverbal nominal arguments in Hindi are merely constituents left behind while everything else has moved leftwards. This analysis supersedes the RM analysis he proposed in an unpublished paper ten years ago and is deliberately consistent with an analysis based on Kayne's Linear Correspondence Axiom (hereafter LCA). This reviewer notes that many of Mahajan's arguments necessarily presuppose certain possibly dubious tacit assumptions, e.g., that RM must necessarily involve adjunction specifically to IP (contrary to the approach proposed in, e.g., Muller's, Wiltschko's, and Rochemont & Culicover's papers). For instance, the string in Mahajan's (33), which he marks (???) could be generated -- and its unacceptability accounted for -- by right-adjunction of the direct object to VP rather than IP. Nowhere does Mahajan actually address what in this reviewer's opinion is the most basic issue with questions like this: Is there or is there not any evidence of a *gap* corresponding to the postverbal material? Michael S. Rochemont & Peter W. Culicover in `Deriving Dependent Right Adjuncts in English' (pp. 279-300) discuss various constructions in English, all of which might be included under a rather broadly-defined concept of `extraposition'. Distinguishing between the extraposition of relative clauses on the one hand and Heavy-NP Shift and Presentational-There Insertion on the other, they argue that Relative-Clause Extraposition is best treated as (1) base- generated and (2) right-adjunction to the governing category (VP, IP, or CP) of the antecedent to the extraposed RC. They make an effort to conjure up plausible analyses of RC-Extraposition involving Kayne- style leftward-movement but note that none of the possibilities they consider are quite satisfactory. Even the `best' option, involving movement of both the RC and its antecedent to distinct Spec positions, fails to provide any motivation for either the posited movement or the highly ramified structure such an analysis requires. Expanding on earlier work of their own (Rochemont & Culicover 1990), Rochemont & Culicover argue that Heavy-NP Shift and Presentational- There Insertion are best treated as instances of movement to a right- adjoined A'-position. They demonstrate that, quite apart from the problems discussed in Rochemont & Culicover 1990, any attempt to analyze such constructions by means of exclusively leftward movement involves the extremely unattractive movement of what is not, in fact, by any stretch of the imagination a recognizable constituent. In the end, they acknowledge that there are some empirical problems shared by both the rightward-movement account they apparently prefer and the `movement to high specifier' account that would be more consistent with a Kayne-type approach, but that the latter raises some provoking theoretical problems that are absent from their rightward-movement account. They conclude by saying that `the question whether rightward movement exists or not ... is not an empirical one.' Daniel Buring & Katharina Hartmann's paper `The Kayne Mutiny' (pp. 59-80) presents an excellent argument for the empirical bankruptcy of the Kayne Antisymmetry hypothesis. Making crucial use of reconstruction at LF and of Binding-Theoretic statements referring to (undeleted) traces, B&H's argument is built upon the prediction that, if extraposition is a consequence of RM, it ought to be possible for a proper binding relation *not* to exist between an NP and a CP later in the sentence -- if the NP happens to be in a hierarchically lower position, from which neither it nor any of its daughters is able to c-command the CP (such a lack of binding relation is a priori impossible in a Kayne analysis, according to which any NP to the left of a CP must ipso facto c-command it). They then demonstrate that such binding failures are in fact attested, and are indeed not all that difficult to come up with in a language like German. (At the end of section 2, they acknowledge some confusing results with regard to coreference options, concluding that these `require further investigation'.) They further demonstrate (section 3) that the Kayne analysis actually does serious violence to many standard assumptions about movement, including (similarly to Rochemont & Culicover) issues of what qualifies as a (movable) constituent and under what circumstances a constituent may be `stranded'. (It's from this surreptitiously iconoclastic character of Kayne's hypothesis that they get their clever title.) And they demonstrate that verb- topicalization ought to be impossible in a Kayne analysis, although of course it's quite common in German. In order to account for the complications with regard to island- constraint violations, etc. that have presented problems for earlier versions of a RM-analysis of extraposition in German and similar languages, B&H propose (p. 72) a generalization according to which finite clauses may never be governed by either V or I. This provides an actual motivation for CP-Extraposition, since presumably in its DS position a complement clause is governed by the matrix verb, and in order to escape that government must be right-adjoined to some higher phrasal node, presumably IP. This is in direct conflict with Bayer's analysis, according to which the extraposed CP ends up being governed by the matrix verb as a result of the deletion of its own trace and tree-pruning; which analysis is to be preferred ought to be an empirical problem. Hubert Haider's paper `Extraposition' (115-152) argues on the basis of the extraposition of comparatives and the c-command relations essential thereto in English and German (mostly German) that extraposed constituents remain embedded in their DS mothers. Haider further argues that extraposed relative and argument clauses must also be VP-internal, since although they aren't subject to the same c-command relations themselves, they always come *before* extraposed comparatives which are. Broadening his scope in Section 2 to other examples of German extraposition, Haider demonstrates that they can't result from movement and must therefore be base-generated. But, on the basis of scope, c-command, and absence of island-effects, he also argues against an analysis in terms of base-generated adjunction. Haider agrees with Kayne in assuming exclusive Leftward Movement; however, he allows for either head-initial or head-final base structures, and invokes head movement while Kayne invokes phrasal movement. Haider presents several predictions that Kayne's LCA theory would have for a language such as German, which he then demonstrates are all falsified by the actual data: (1) Phrases to the left of the verb should be in Spec-positions, and should therefore be islands (2) VP-adverbials and predicates should end up in postverbal position, since there's nothing to trigger their movement (3) VP- topicalization ought to involve the movement of a functional projection containing a trace of the finite verb. In `Extraposition as Remnant Movement' (p. 215-246), Gereon Muller offers a very neat analysis of extraposition in German as right- adjunction to a variety of phrasal nodes, including CP as well as VP or IP, thereby accounting for various otherwise problematic details with regard to island effects in both leftward- and rightward-moved constituents. The paper includes a very interesting and useful comparative discussion of the adequacy of a variety of different proposed constraints for excluding unacceptable strings while allowing acceptable ones. Martina Wiltschko's paper, `Extraposition, Identification and Precedence' (pp. 358-396), a summary of her 1995 Wien dissertation, discusses extraposition in German, focussing on the relation of *Identification* between the `identifyee', the (pro)nominal element (NP or DP) in the canonical position within the clause and the `identifier', the extraposed constituent. Both identifyee and identifier provide linguistically necessary information: The identifyee occupies a canonical (theta-)position, therefore satisfying syntactic requirements, while the identifier provides necessary semantic content to licence the identifyee's definiteness. Given that the identifyee *introduces* a discourse referent, it must (on the basis of Heim's (1980) Novelty Condition) precede the identifier. Wiltschko also argues for a Locality Constraint on Identification, according to which the identifier must c-command the identifyee, without any intervening XP; thus, the identifier must be right-adjoined to the minimal maximal projection dominating the identifyee. In Wiltschko's view, these two constraints together account for the fact that identifiers are always extraposed. She acknowledges that this analysis apply only to *restrictive relative clauses*, not to other types of modifiers. Attractive as the paper is in many ways, it suffers somewhat from the necessary exclusion of many supporting arguments, for which the interested reader is referred to the full-length dissertation. Two of the papers are concerned primarily with parsing theory and the development of adequate parsing technology. Both of these papers, coming from different points of view, argue for a data-driven, bottom-up parsing strategy as against a hypothesis-driven top-down strategy. In `On Movement and One-Pass No Backtrack Parsing' (pp. 301-330), Chris Sijtsma recognizes that `natural' (i.e., single-pass, no backtracking, faithful to derivation) bottom-up parsers are less restrictive than natural top-down parsers, which of course from the point of view of strict generative theory is a point against them, but assumes that there is enough variation among actual languages that a bottom-up parsing strategy is to be preferred. This reviewer finds such a conclusion attractive, but worries that Sijtsma has provided so little in the way of empirical demonstration to back it up; indeed, for such a mathematically-oriented paper (at least relative to this reviewer's experience), there is extremely little in the way of solid argument presented; most of the time, Sijtsma merely asserts that the proof of any given theorem is either self-evident or readily derivable; in a few cases, he refers to demonstrations elsewhere in the literature. Another issue both of these papers consider very seriously, without, however, either of them coming up with a very satisfactory solution, is the proper size of the look- ahead window for an adequate parser. Sijtsma asserts (pp. 305-6) that any grammar with a look-ahead window greater than 1 is functionally equivalent to a grammar that looks ahead just one symbol, but then goes on to say, `In practice we still need ... parsers that look ahead more than one symbol.' In subsequent discussion it becomes clear that he is unclear just how large a look- ahead window is empirically adequate. Likewise, Alphonce & Davis, while currently working with a look-ahead window of `at most two chunks' (p. 25), are clearly dissatisfied with this characterization. It is clear that this issue needs more thought, if not further research, devoted to it. A fundamental claim of the paper by Carl Alphonce & Henry Davis, `Motivating Non-directional Movement' (pp. 7-36), is that Linear Precedence constraints, indeed LP phenomena of any kind, have no relevance for syntax at all; essentially, they claim that, from the point of view of all syntactic levels including LF, constituents are organized hierarchically in terms of dominance relations but not linearly in terms of precedence relations. In Alphonce & Davis' view, all precedence relations are imposed at PF, making them essentially matters of performance rather than competence. In the opinion of this reviewer, this is a very interesting and possibly attractive idea. Unfortunately, contrary to the promise contained in the abstract, this claim is not so much argued for as assumed within the paper. Nor is it made clear -- to this reviewer, anyway -- that it is explicitly argued for anywhere else, unlike the skipped arguments behind Wiltschko's paper and the citations given in Sijtsma's paper. Alphonce & Davis merely demonstrate that it is possible to develop an analytic approach -- more precisely, a parsing program -- that has no need for any kind of explicit syntactic constraints, at any level (whether UG or language-particular), making reference to linear order. At the end of their abstract, Alphonce & Davis claim that they are motivated by a conviction that `it is a priori desirable to eliminate as much redundancy as possible between different components of the system.... if some phenomena has [sic] an independent processing explanation we hold that syntactic theory should not have to offer any explanation for it.' This approach is all very well in a purely formal mathematical system, but it is fairly common knowledge that redundancy is in fact a sine qua non of biological systems (cf. e.g. Gould 1993) and of natural-linguistic systems as well (cf. e.g. Hock 1986, ch. 9 & 12; this fact is also acknowledged by Chris Sijtsma in his paper, p. 314). The mere fact that one can develop a parsing program that has no need to appeal to syntactic LP constraints, therefore, in no way demonstrates that such constraints have no place in human natural-language competence. Much of Sijtsma's paper is devoted to developing points (regarding, e.g., the proper type(s) and subcategorization frame(s) of PPs) that are clearly relevant to his primary concern, which is developing an adequate automated parsing grammar, but are tangential to the focus of the collection. In arguing, contrary to Kayne, that UG does not stipulate one universal tree-structure for all languages, Sijtsma gets a fair amount of mileage out of replacing the assumption that node-labels are atomic with the assumption that they are merely shorthand for feature-bundles. Though he doesn't mention this, this replacement has actually been implicit in X-Bar Theory ever since the early 70's. With regard to directionality of movement, Sijtsma argues that rightward movement must be allowed by UG, with this caveat: In deriving SS from DS, leftward movement is unrestricted but rightward movement of modifiers (which don't leave obvious gaps) should not exceed the look-ahead buffer; on the other hand, in deriving LF from SS rightward movement is unrestricted but leftward [Editor's note: This review is continued in the next issue of LINGUIST] - Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC (886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 fcosw5Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue