Deriving the directionality parameter in OT-LFG
Yukiko Morimoto
Stanford University
ABSTRACT Recent work in Optimality Theoretic Syntax (e.g. Grimshaw 1997, Sells 2001) successfully models positioning of syntactic elements that target a privileged position in a clause, such as topics, sentential adverbs, operators, and subject, by extending the mechanism of Generalized Alignment (McCarthy and Prince 1993) to the domain of clausal syntax. By allowing only left-alignment, Sells' (2001) work takes a pioneering step towards recasting Kayne's (1994) insightful observation that phrase structure is fundamentally antisymmetric: there is a universal preference for the left-edge of the clause, so that the structure is predominantly right-branching. Kayne's proposal about the antisymmetry of syntax essentially represents a derivational view of universal markedness. Unmarked structure is taken to be an absolute universal; symmetric properties of language (e.g. order of head and complement) are derived from an unmarked, antisymmetric structure (e.g. left-specifier, head-initial structure, left-adjunction) by movement. Building on earlier work, the present work further develops a non-derivational theory of phrase structure. An additional formal mechanism 'abutment' (alignment of opposite edges) enables us to produce symmetry without movement. By a principled interaction of abutment and independently motivated constraints on head-positioning and clausal skeleton, we can effectively derive directionality parameters without losing Kayne's insight about the antisymmetry of phrase structure. . Back to Abstracts index |