Author Archives: Ray

The Roberts Lectures: Parameter Hierarchies and Comparative Syntax

Ian Roberts

CRISSP is happy to announce a CRISSP Lecture Series with Ian Roberts (University of Cambridge) on December 16-19, 2014. The title of the Lecture Series is ‘Parameter Hierarchies and Comparative Syntax’.

Abstract

This course looks at a way to break new ground in syntactic theory by reconceptualising the principles-and-parameters approach to comparative syntax, retaining its strengths and attempting to deal with its perceived weaknesses. The central idea is to organise the parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) into hierarchies, which define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories may act in concert; this creates macroparametric effects from the combined action of many microparameters. The highest position in a hierarchy defines a macroparameter, a major typological property, lower positions define successively more local properties. Parameter-setting in language acquisition starts at the highest position as this is the simplest choice; acquirers will “move down the hierarchy” when confronted with primary linguistic data (PLD) incompatible with a high setting. Hence the hierarchies simultaneously define learning paths and typological properties.

In this way, the criticism that formal comparative syntax has little to offer typological studies can potentially be answered. Lastly, a more purely theoretical component of the talk aims to show that the nature of the hierarchies is determined, not directly by UG, but by UG interacting with domain-general principles of simplicity and efficiency. The lectures will focus on the cross-linguistic analysis of null arguments, head movement and Case/agreement phenomena.

Research funded by the ERC Advanced Grant No. 269752.

More information

LNAT3 Call for Papers

CRISSP is happy to announce the the third edition of Logic Now and Then (LNAT3), which will take place on February 5-6, 2015.

The conference will be devoted to the relationship between the semantics and pragmatics of logical constants (connectives, quantifiers, modal operators). Its aim is to critically assess and contribute to semantic and pragmatic theories developed for constructions containing such operators in natural language. On the one hand, we hope to bring together cutting edge contributions to debates that are currently in full swing, but at the same time, we very much invite contributions of a more historical nature, which shed light on antecedents of current views and issues, thereby placing them in a wider diachronic perspective. In short, the semantics and pragmatics of logical constants now and then.

Invited speakers

> Read the Call for Papers

Jeroen van Craenenbroeck at ‘Variation in C’ Workshop

Jeroen van Craenenbroeck (CRISSP) and Marjo van Koppen (Universiteit Utrecht) are invited speakers at the Workshop ‘Variation in C. Macro- and Micro-comparative Approaches to Complementizers and the CP Phase’ in Venice.

They will gave a talk entitled ‘When Flanders Met Brabant: Microvariation in the Dutch C-domain’ on Wednesday 22 October 2014.

> Visit the workshop’s website

CRISSP Seminar: Jóhanna Barðdal on October 13

CRISSP is happy to announce another installment in the CRISSP Seminar series:

Lecturer: Jóhanna Barðdal (Ghent University)

Title: How to Identify Cognates in Syntax: Taking Watkins’ Legacy One Step Further

Date & time: Monday October 13, 2014, 17.00-18.30

Location: CRISSP/KULeuven HUBrussel, Stormstraat 2 (Hermes building), room 3101

Participation: free

Abstract:

As a reaction to three different proposals on how to reconstruct basic word order for Proto-Indo-European, Watkins and his contemporaries in the Seventies succeeded in aborting any attempt at reconstructing syntax for a long time to come. As a consequence, syntactic reconstruction has generally been regarded as a stranded enterprise by historical linguists for several different reasons, one of which is the alleged difficulty in identifying cognates in syntax. Later, Watkins (1995) proposed a research program aiming at reconstructing larger units of grammar, including syntactic structures, by means of identifying morphological flags that are parts of larger syntactic entities. As a response to this, we show how cognate argument structure constructions may be identified, through a) cognate lexical verbs, b) cognate case frames, c) cognate predicate structure and d) cognate case morphology. We then propose to advance Watkins’ program, by identifying cognate argument structure constructions with the aid of noncognate, but synonymous, lexical predicates. As a consequence, it will not only be possible to identify cognate argument structure constructions across a deeper time span, but also to carry out semantic reconstruction on the basis of lexical-semantic verb classes.

Dany Jaspers in Language

The article “Logico-cognitive structure in the lexicon” by Dany Jaspers (CRISSP / KU Leuven) and Pieter Seuren (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen) will appear in the influential journal Language.

Abstract

This study is a prolegomenon to a formal theory of the natural growth of conceptual and lexical fields. Negation, in the various forms in which it occurs in language, is found to be a powerful indicator. Other than in standard logic, natural language negation selects its complement within universes of discourse that are, for practical and functional reasons, restricted in various ways and to different degrees. It is hypothesized that a system of cognitive principles drives recursive processes of universe restriction, which in turn affects logical relations within the restricted universes. This approach provides a new perspective in which to view the well-known clashes between standard logic and natural logical intuitions.

Lexicalization in language, especially the morphological incorporation of negation, is limited to highly restricted universes, which explains, for example, that a dog can be said not to be a Catholic, but not to be a non-Catholic. Cognition is taken to restrict the universe of discourse to contrary pairs, splitting up one or both of the contraries into further subuniverses as a result of further cognitive activity. It is shown how a logically sound Square of Opposition, expanded to a Hexagon, (Jacoby 1950, 1960; Sesmat 1951; Blanché 1952, 1953, 1966), is generated by a hierarchy of universe restrictions, defining the notion ‘natural’ for logical systems. The logical Hexagon contains two additional vertices, one for ‘some but not all’ (the Y-type) and one for ‘either all or ‘none’ (the U-type), and incorporates both the classic Square and the Hamiltonian Triangle of Contraries. Some is thus considered semantically ambiguous, representing two distinct quantifiers.

The pragmaticist claim that the language system contains only the standard logical ‘some perhaps all’ and that the ‘some but not all’ meaning is pragmatically derived from the use of the system is rejected. Four principles are proposed according to which negation selects a complement from the subuniverses at hand. On the basis of these principles and of the logico-cognitive system proposed, the well-known non-lexicalization not only of *nall and *nand but also of many other non-logical cases found throughout the lexicons of languages is analyzed and explained.

> Read the press release (Dutch)