LINGUIST List 31.2203
Tue Jul 07 2020
Review: Linguistic Theories: Landau (2019)
Editor for this issue: Jeremy Coburn <jecoburnlinguistlist.org>
Date: 15-Apr-2020
From: Dennis Ott <dennis.ott
post.harvard.edu>
Subject: Control in Generative Grammar
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AUTHOR: Idan Landau
TITLE: Control in Generative Grammar
SUBTITLE: A Research Companion
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2019
REVIEWER: Dennis Ott, University of Ottawa
SUMMARY
The book under review here is the 2019 paperback edition of Idan Landau’s “research companion” to the phenomenon of control, first published in 2013. As far as this reviewer was able to determine, the book has not been revised or updated; the pagination is perfectly identical to the original hardback issue.
CHAPTER 1 provides a historical and analytical introduction to the phenomenon of control, beginning with Rosenbaum’s (1967) Equi-NP deletion rule and the criticism it met with. While Equi’s downfall initially sparked an analysis of control complements as bare VPs (an idea that has its roots in Chomsky 1955), its core idea of a null subject in controlled complement clauses was eventually revived by the introduction of PRO (“a curious twist of irony,” as Landau notes). The review of these developments is followed by a summary of major interpretive and structural raising/control asymmetries, drawing in part on cross-linguistic evidence. Finally, the chapter introduces what Landau calls the ‘OC signature,’ a criterion by which he distinguishes obligatory control (OC) from non-obligatory control (NOC): in OC the controller and the control clause must be co-dependents of the matrix verb, and PRO is interpreted as a bound variable. Landau argues that this signature characterizes all control into complement clauses; apparent cases of NOC complements are argued to be either nominalized clauses or else misanalyzed instances of OC. What determines the OC/NOC status of a given control clause is its position (complement vs. non-complement), its category (clausal vs. nominal), and finiteness properties.
CHAPTER 2 presents a typology of control theories. Instead of presenting one after the other, Landau groups approaches anachronistically by their conceptual orientation. He begins by discussing predication-based theories that take control infinitivals to be predicates to which the controller is applied (e.g. Chierchia 1984). He then turns to approaches that attempt to assimilate (N)OC to binding (e.g. Borer 1989), such that PRO is analyzed as an anaphoric pronoun of sorts, as well as treatments within lexicalist frameworks (e.g. Bresnan 1982). The chapter closes with discussions of the Movement Theory of Control (MTC; Hornstein 1999 et seq.), which attempts to reduce control to A-movement, and Landau’s (2000 et seq.) own Agree-based theory of control. Landau discusses the pros and cons of each approach in some detail, and in addition provides key references as well as suggestions for further reading.
CHAPTER 3, spanning a mere nine pages, surveys empirical arguments for the existence of PRO. Landau approaches the issue from a theory-neutral perspective, considering empirical arguments for the existence of phonetically null but syntactically real subjects in control clauses in abstraction from questions of implementation. He discusses two types of arguments, direct and indirect. The indirect arguments show that control clauses are indeed clausal-propositional objects, which in turn requires the presence of a subject; relevant cues are furnished (in some languages) by overt indicators of clause-hood such as complementizers and finiteness, coordination of control clauses and indisputably clausal categories, and the availability of subclausal VP-ellipsis. The direct arguments rely on evidence from secondary predicates, floating quantifiers, agreement and case concord, binding locality, partial control with collective predicates and singular controllers, copy and backward control (where the controlled subject surfaces overtly), and the inability of PRO to appear as an expletive subject (which derives from interpretive properties of PRO, which however can only be stated once its existence is granted). The facts Landau reviews as direct arguments could not be readily captured or even stated by a subject-less analysis of control clauses or by analyzing the controlled subject as a mere implicit (semantic) argument. On the other hand, they are readily explained once the existence of controlled null subjects is acknowledged (regardless of their ultimate analysis).
CHAPTER 4 is devoted to the distribution of PRO: under what conditions is PRO licensed in a given clause, and in what positions can it occur in those environments that license it? Landau discusses three traditional ‘textbook generalizations’ about PRO’s distribution and shows that all of them are mistaken, or at least dubious: contrary to popular belief and revealed by cross-linguistic investigations, there is control into finite clauses (in Hebrew and Balkan languages, among others), and PRO is case-marked; PRO can be overtly realized; and it is at best unclear that its confinement to subject position is absolute. From this vantage point Landau proceeds to review mainstays of classical control theory, such as Chomsky’s (1981) PRO Theorem and later approaches based on a special ‘null case’ for PRO, which invariably fail to account for control into finite clauses and the fact, revealed by case concord in Icelandic and other languages, that PRO is in fact regularly case-marked. Building on his own previous work (Landau 2004), Landau argues that OC is best understood as an elsewhere configuration that obtains when semantic tense or morphological inflection or both are absent from a non-deficient complement clause. Finally, Landau discusses potential cases of control of non-subjects (Tagalog ‘actor control’) and overtly realized controllees (including in ‘backward’ and ‘copy’ control constructions), which again defy traditional assumptions.
CHAPTER 5 explores in greater depths the different manifestations of OC. At over 90 pages, the chapter is the most substantial of the entire book, reflecting the enormous attention OC has received in the literature vis-à-vis other types of control. Landau begins the chapter with a thorough discussion of semantic and syntactic theories of controller choice and the problems they face. These include the notorious issue of “control shift,” showing that controller choice is not entirely fixed for at least some verbs: compare object control in “Susie persuaded the teacher [(PRO) to leave early]” to subject control in “Susie persuaded the teacher [(PRO) to be allowed to leave early]” (unavailable in “Susie forced the teacher [(PRO) to be allowed to leave early]”). The problem is compounded by the fact that there is ample cross-linguistic variation, leading Landau to surmise that control in those languages that permit control shift rather liberally is “constrained by pragmatics more than syntax” (p. 137). Consequently, syntactocentric descendants of Rosenbaum’s (1967) Minimal-distance Principle fare poorly, by design as it were, when it comes to accommodating such facts. The chapter is completed by detailed discussions of partial, split and implicit control, the PRO-gate phenomenon, and control in the nominal domain (which Landau shows exists minimally in deverbal nominalizations), all of which raise non-trivial problems for extant approaches to control of any ilk.
CHAPTER 6, the shortest chapter of the book at barely over eight pages, is a brief discussion of adjunct control, which Landau argues is a heterogeneous phenomenon. The chapter focuses chiefly on adjuncts that permit OC (such as result clauses: “Mary grew up [(PRO) to be a famous actress”), although some questionable cases are included as well; discussion of NOC into adjuncts is deferred to Chapter 7. Landau rather explicitly sides with predicational theories of PRO to model adjunct OC, such that “Mary slipped in unnoticed” (no control) and “Mary slipped in [without (PRO) being noticed]” are essentially treated analogously.
CHAPTER 7 turns to NOC, as found primarily in subject and clause-initial adjunct clauses. Landau takes the position that OC and NOC are fundamentally different phenomena: only OC is a grammatical dependency proper, whereas NOC aligns with discursive relations, especially logophoricity and topicality. In NOC, the controller need not be a co-dependent of the control clause (indeed, it need not c-command PRO); PRO can be interpreted as a free rather than bound variable; and PRO is necessarily interpreted as referring to a human entity. The discussion departs from Grinder’s (1970) original study, which paved the way for a logophoricity-based approach to NOC (although this was neither intended nor anticipated by Grinder). Landau himself advocates this general view of NOC, noting the failure of purely structural analyses, such as the MTC (or modified versions thereof). NOC PRO, he argues (building on observations dating back to Kuno 1975), is best understood as a logophoric pronoun whose antecedent is determined by discourse-pragmatic factors.
CHAPTER 8 concludes the book with a few final remarks, highlighting in particular the heterogeneous picture of control phenomena that emerged throughout the book (shifting the initial conception of control as a unitary phenomenon to that of an “aggregate concept”). Overall, Landau views the evolution and concomitant fragmentation of control theory as a sign of progress, reflecting advances in related domains.
EVALUATION
As per its official subtitle, this book (henceforth CiGG) is a “research companion” to the intricate phenomenon of control, which has been at the forefront of linguistic theorizing within the generative paradigm for some 50 years. A thorough overview of a domain with this long and complex a trajectory requires exceptional command of a vast amount of literature, conceptual interrelations, and empirical facts. It is hard to imagine a better candidate than Idan Landau, aptly declared the “Master of Control” in Sabine Iatridou’s book blurb, to tackle such an ambitious project, and the result is nothing short of impressive.
As mentioned at the outset, the 2019 paperback version of CiGG is a verbatim re-issue of the 2013 hardcover edition. This is remarkable insofar as that the text has not been updated to include references to Landau’s most recent, “two-tiered” treatment of control (Landau 2015), which supersedes his own former Agree-based approach. In its preface, Landau dedicates that book “to all those who spend years and decades working on the same topic and never stop marveling at the most elementary puzzles that lured them in the first place.” The dedication accurately captures the spirit that pervades the pages of the book under review, which explores the analytical dimensions of a class of phenomena tied together by the presence of a referentially deficient logical null subject in a way that vividly reflects the decades Landau has spent grappling with this problem.
CiGG is not a mere summary of the existing literature on control, nor is it a typological survey (which, fortunately, is available elsewhere: Stiebels 2007); rather, it is an assessement of the theoretical state of the art. As such, CiGG does not shy away from evaluation and critique; but Landau’s relentless exposing of (sometimes fatal) flaws is almost always based on problematic facts and predictions rather than theoretical predilections and, commendably, does not exclude his own extensive oeuvre from its scope. It will not come as a surprise to the reader familiar with Landau’s work that the MTC, for instance, does not emerge from the discussion as a viable option, but the adjudication is on the whole fair and balanced, and specific strenghts of the approach are duly highlighted. While much of the discussion is grounded in relatively well-known and prominently-discussed facts, it includes a number of novel observations and references various works that have all but vanished into oblivion; the discussion of NOC in chapter 7, in particular, is in part original, owing to the sparsity of research in this area.
CiGG is clearly directed at advanced researchers, and Landau at various points sacrifices paedagogical simplification and streamlining to empirical thoroughness and analytical depth. This is not a book that goes out of its way to be reader-friendly; for instance, “further reading” subsections appear interspersed throughout the longer chapters, but unfortunately they are mere lists of references with little guiding commentary. In the book’s conclusion, Landau reiterates that various “difficult questions” remain unresolved; it would have been beneficial to explicitly summarize at least the most central ones, as a sort of roadmap for future research.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of CiGG is its rather imbalanced organization: some very short chapters, including two at less than ten pages, stand beside overly lengthy ones; the extensive discussion of OC in Chapters 4 and 5, in particular, feels like a monograph within the book. While these massive discrepancies are largely motivated by the uneven attention different aspects of control have received in the literature, one cannot help but feel that the organization of the book is gratuitously counterintuitive. The detailed discussion in Chapters 4 and 5 paints an empirical picture of mind-boggling complexity, with challenges for every single extant approach to OC that ultimately calls into question the very existence of a cross-linguistically unitary phenomenon. The chapter’s excessive length reflects the relevance Landau attaches to the phenomena discussed (partial, split, and implicit control, etc.), which have traditionally been sidelined in discussions of control, but the result is very dense and overall somewhat tedious. Given the book’s intended audience, I suspect that many readers would have prefered a more succinct presentation of key points, supplemented with references, to this slightly overeager review of a large amount of facts and works.
None of the above criticisms diminish the immense value of this book in its capacity as a research companion. Landau masterfully traces the evolution of control theory from its necessarily primitive beginnings to the subsequent developments that led to its gradual decomposition into a family of rather disparate phenomena. Rather then feeling frustrated by this differentiation, readers of CiGG are led to comprehend it as a success story, in which “the novel theoretical notions recruited to shed light on the phenomena were several degrees of order more fundamental and general than the superficial labels with which the inquiry had begun” (p. 257)
A dense, technical and thoroughly argued book, CiGG will be highly useful to researchers and advanced graduate students that need to get up to speed on the details of control; whatever their specific objectives, they can be certain to find what they are looking for. (Instructors of graduate classes on control should compare the book to Davies & Dubinsky 2004, which adopts a more exegetic, coursebook-type perspective.) Given that the phenomenon of control is inextricably linked to a host of equally prominent phenomena, CiGG should thus appeal to a wide range of researchers in formal syntax and semantics. If Landau’s exceptional achievement inspires future research companions of comparable depth on other topics aiming to tread in its footsteps, as I expect it to do, its service to the field will be even greater.
REFERENCES
Borer, H. 1989. Anaphoric AGR. In The Null Subject Parameter, O. Jaeggli and K. J. Safir (eds.), 69–109. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Bresnan, J. 1982. Control and Complementation. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 343–434.
Chierchia, G. 1984. Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Infinitives and Gerunds. PhD dissertation, UMass Amherst.
Chomsky, N. 1955. The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. Mimeograph, Harvard/MIT.
Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Davies, W. D. and S. Dubinsky. 2004. The Grammar of Raising and Control: A Course in Syntactic Argumentation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Grinder, J. T. 1970. Super Equi-NP Deletion. In Papers from the 6th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 297–317. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Hornstein, N. 1999. Movement and Control. Linguistic Inquiry 30, 69–96.
Kuno, S. 1975. Super Equi-NP Deletion is a Pseudo-Transformation. In Proceedings of NELS 5, 29–44. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications.
Landau, I. 2000. Elements of Control: Structure and Meaning in Infinitival Constructions. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Landau, I. 2004. The Scale of Finiteness and the Calculus of Control. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22, 811–877.
Landau, I. 2015. A Two-tiered Theory of Control. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rosenbaum, P. 1967. The Grammar of English Predicate Complement Constructions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stiebels, B. 2007. Towards a Typology of Complement Control. In Studies in Complement Control: ZAS Working Papers in Linguistics 47, B. Stiebels (ed.), 1–80.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dennis Ott is associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His research focuses on the formal principles behind the syntax of natural languages, and how the mental grammar defined by these principles interfaces with systems of interpretation and articulation. Specific interests include A'-movement, ellipsis, head movement, locality and connectivity effects, and the interaction of grammar and pragmatics.
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