Norbert Hornstein

• University of Maryland, College Park

This paper discusses the main minimalist theory within the Minimalist Program, something I dub the (Weak) Merge Hypothesis (MH). (1) The (Weak) Merge Hypothesis (MH): Merge is a central G operation. I suggest that we extend (1) by adding to it a general principle that I dub the Fundamental Principle of Grammar (FPG). (2) The Fundamental Principle o...

This chapter is a full-throated argument that the Minimalist Program has been tremendously successful in answering the questions it has posed. Perceptions to the contrary rest on misunderstanding what these questions are. Once clearly identified, the chapter outlines the central minimalist thesis, the Merge Hypothesis, and outlines the reasons for...

Cambridge Core - Cognition - Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences - edited by Ángel J. Gallego

The Minimalist Program (MP) has been around for about 25 years, and anecdotal evidence suggests that conventional wisdom thinks it a failure. This review argues that MP has been a tremendous success and has more than met the very high goals it had set for itself. This does not imply that there is not more to be done. There is, a lot more. But the p...

This completely new edition of The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky surveys Chomsky's contributions to the science of language, to socioeconomic-political analysis and criticism, and to the study of the human mind. The first section focuses on the aims of Chomsky's recent 'biological-minimalist' turn in the science of language, and shows how Chomsky'...

In this chapter we argue that modern syntactic theories are well-suited to provide a cognitive theory of the structure-building computations that neural systems must perform to process language. Therefore, a plausible research program for cognitive neuroscience would be to search for a theory of: (i) how (populations of) neurons could perform these...

argues that D of an external argument in Spec TP is in principle as close to C as T is. Assuming that “inversion depends upon locality independent of category,” T and D should therefore compete with each other as candidates for raising to C in English questions, yet only T so raises. Chomsky takes this to indicate that the external argument is in i...

The volume is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Noam Chomsky's groundbreaking Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.

Ndayiragije (2012) and Wood (2012) present arguments against the movement theory of control (MTC) based on data from Kirundi and Icelandic, respectively. We show that these data are easily accounted for by current formulations of the MTC.

It is a truism that conceptual understanding of a hypothesis is required for its empirical investigation. However, the concept of recursion as articulated in the context of linguistic analysis has been perennially confused. Nowhere has this been more evident than in attempts to critique and extend Hauseretal's. (2002) articulation. These authors pu...

This paper discusses control within minimalism, focusing on general properties that any minimalist theory of control should have. Contrasting the Movement Theory of Control and PRO-based approaches to control, we argue that the MTC fares much better than its competitors in that it not only covers more empirical ground, but does so by relying on key...

The Minimalist Program is just that, a “program”. It is a challenge for syntacticians to reexamine the constructs of their models and ask what is minimally needed in order to accomplish the essential task of syntax – interfacing between form and meaning. This volume pushes Minimalism to its empirical and theoretical limits, and brings together some...

Bošković (2005, 2008) outlines a phase-based analysis of adjunct extraction in determinerless languages like Serbo-Croatian (SC). The analysis is modeled on recent phase-based analyses of P(reposition)-stranding (see Abels 2003, 2012) wherein the richness of the functional structure of the PP determines whether extraction is possible. This squib id...

Two empirical domains in Brazilian Portuguese have recently been claimed by Modesto (2010) to be problematic for the movement theory of control. We employ experimental-syntax methods and find that more rigorous methodology reveals a more robust set of results that undermines both lines of argumentation. The first argument concerns agreement with ep...

This article presents a Whig history of Minimalism, suggesting that it is the natural next step in the generative program initiated in the mid 1950s. The program so conceived has two prongs: (i) unifying the disparate modules by demonstrating that they are generated by the same basic operations and respect the same general conditions and (ii) asses...

The question raised in this chapter is why string-vacuous movement is insensitive to locality effects. It argues that, although such movement creates a normal chain, it is the bottom copy that is pronounced due to the fact that overt movement must have a PF effect. Since such locality effects, as caused by the Right Roof Constraint (RRC) and island...

This volume brings together cutting-edge experimental research from leaders in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics to explore the nature of a phenomenon that has long been central to syntactic theory - 'island effects'. The chapters in this volume draw upon recent methodological advances in experimental methods in syntax, also known as...

The nature of island constraints continues to be an important question in linguistic theory and psycholinguistic investigation. In particular, the degree to which parsing considerations or constraints on grammatical representations best account for the existence of island constraints remains under debate. We believe that this framing of the issues...

One of the most pervasive properties of human language is the existence of dependencies: necessary relationships that hold between two elements in a sentence. The primary objects of study in this volume are long-distance “fillergap” dependencies – a special subset of dependencies that are not constrained by standard measures of length such as numbe...

Until recently, mainstream minimalist theorizing has treated construal as a interface process rather than as a part of core grammar. Recently, a number of authors have resisted this categorization and have tried to reduce binding and control relations to those established by movement, agreement, or some combination of the two. This article compares...

Palmarini have recently argued that the theory of natural selection (NS) fails to explain how evolution occurs (Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini 2010; F&PP). Their argument is not with the fact of evolution but with the common claim that NS provides a causal mechanism for this fact. Their claim has been greeted with considerable skepticism, if not outri...

In English, Ā-movement operations that move elements to the left are able to strand prepositions—(1)—but those that move elements to the right—(3b)—cannot, as observed by Ross (1967). 1. a. Who1 did you look at t1? b. It was Mary1 that I looked at t1. 2. a. John saw [the man who lived next door] in the living room yesterday. b. John saw t1 in the...

The Movement Theory of Control (MTC) makes one major claim: that control relations in sentences like 'John wants to leave' are grammatically mediated by movement. This goes against the traditional view that such sentences involve not movement, but binding, and analogizes control to raising, albeit with one important distinction: whereas the target...

This article discusses the challenges that Bobaljik and Landau (2009) pose to Boeckx and Hornstein's (2006) movement-based analysis of control in Icelandic. We show in detail that contrary to what Bobaljik and Landau claim, the movement theory of control (with a modification to accommodate quirky Case, a specialty of Icelandic) makes the right empi...

In this programmatic paper, we articulate a minimalist conception of linguistic composition, syntactic and semantic, with the aim of identifying fundamental operations invoked by the human faculty of language (HFL). On this view, all complex expressions are formed via the operation COMBINE(A, B). But this operation is not primitive: COMBINE(A, B) =...

This chapter focuses on linguistic universals embodied in Universal Grammar (UG), a characterization of the innate properties of the language faculty. Approaching language universals from a minimalist perspective, it begins by contrasting I-universals (innate properties of UG) with E-universals (universals in the Greenbergian tradition). It argues...

This article addresses the syntax of the notorious tough(-movement) con-struction (TC) in English. TCs exhibit a range of apparently contradictory empirical properties suggesting that their derivation involves the application of both A-movement and A -movement operations. Given that within previ-ous Principles and Parameters models TCs have remaine...

This paper discusses reflexive and control constructions in San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (Lee 2003) and Hmong (Mortensen 2003), where instead of a reflexive in the former and a null category in the latter, one may find a copy of the antecedent. The paper argues that these constructions provide compelling evidence for a movement analysis of control (H...

This paper discusses perception and causative verbs in English and European Portuguese within Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) Agree framework and provides an answer for the old riddle of why these verbs appear to select for different infinitival complements in their active and passive forms. Assuming that infinitival clauses are Case-bearing projections (Ra...

Essays by leading theoretical linguists—including Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Richard Kayne, Howard Lasnik, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Edwin Williams—reflect on Jean-Roger Vergnaud's influence in the field and discuss current theoretical issues Jean-Roger Vergnaud's work on the foundational issues in linguistics has...

The primary aim in this paper is to propose a phrase structure for adjunction that is compatible with the precepts of Bare Phrase Structure (BPS). Current accounts are at odds with the central vision of BPS and current practice leans more to descriptive eclecticism than to theoretical insight. A diagnosis for this conceptual disarray is suggested h...

In this compelling volume, ten distinguished thinkers -- William G. Lycan, Galen Strawson, Jeffrey Poland, Georges Rey, Frances Egan, Paul Horwich, Peter Ludlow, Paul Pietroski, Alison Gopnik, and Ruth Millikan -- address a variety of conceptual issues raised in Noam Chomsky's work. Distinguished list of critics: William G. Lycan, Galen Strawson, J...

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Human language seems to have arisen roughly within the last 50-100,000 years. In evolutionary terms, this is the mere blink of an eye. If this is correct, then much of what we consider distinctive to language must in fact involve operations available in pre-linguistic cognitive domains. In this book Norbert Hornstein, one of the most influential li...

This paper discusses reflexive and control constructions in languages like San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (Lee, 2003) and Hmong (Mortensen, 2003), where instead of a reflexive in the former and a null category in the latter, one may find a copy of the antecedent. The paper argues that these constructions provide compelling evidence for a movement analy...

This article examines a pervasive argument against a movement approach to control based on Icelandic concord facts. We show that the argument does not undermine the movement approach when the facts are considered in their entirety. The facts divide into two basic groups: instances of quirky Case assignment and instances of structural Case sharing....

  Control has played an important role in theoretical debates within the Minimalist Program. This is so because control implicates notions such as module, θ-role, the Last Resort nature of syntactic operations, movement, binding, chains, Case, complementation, and more. Hornstein (1999) has controversially claimed that control is a subspecies of mo...

This paper discusses perception and causative verbs in English and European Portuguese within Chomsky's (2000, 2001) Agree framework and provides an answer for the old riddle of why these verbs appear to select for different infinitival complements in their active and passive forms. Assuming that infinitival clauses are Case-bearing projections (Ra...

  This paper provides a minimalist analysis of the binominal each phenomenon. The analysis incorporates key ideas behind Safir and Stowell's (1988) seminal paper but avoids the complications that this approach entails. Our proposal provides one more empirical argument for movement into θ-position, sideward movement, the primacy of movement over bin...

Here's one way this chapter could go. After defining the terms “innate” and “idea,” we say whether Chomsky thinks any ideas are innate - and if so, which ones. Unfortunately, we don't have any theoretically interesting definitions to offer; and, so far as we know, Chomsky has never said that any ideas are innate. Since saying that would make for a...

Minimalist models of grammar are developed logically in this volume and the ways in which they contrast with GB analysis are clearly explained. Spanning a decade of minimalist thinking, the textbook will enable students to better understand the questions and problems that minimalism invites, and to master the techniques of minimalist analysis. Over...

We examine the three categories of empirical argument that Landau (2003) puts forward against a movement theory of control (MTC): overgeneration cases, alleged arguments in favor of an MTC, and raising/control contrasts. We show that the problems cited either have plausible alternative analyses that leave the MTC unscathed or, in fact, are not near...

residue of overt A-movement. In what follows, we adopt the idea that OC PRO is identical to NP-t, in that both are formed by movement. 1.2 PRO in Subjects Hornstein (1999,2000) contrasts OC PRO with Non-OC PRO. He suggests that the latter is identical to small pro, (a null pronoun) and that it appears in configurations where movement is prohibited....

In this reply we examine Culicover and Jackendoff's (2001) arguments against syntactic treatments of control, and against Hornstein 1999 in particular. We focus on three of their core arguments: (a) the syntactocentric view of control; (b) the control pattern found with promise; and (c) the violability of the Minimal Distance Principle. In all case...

A line of thought within the Minimalist Program proceeds as follows: the objects interpreted at the interface determine the units of syntactic manipulation. This paper argues that chains are not proper units for determining relative quantifier scope and so should not be thought of as proper syntactic objects. This conclusion is buttressed by the cl...

t formal models that are consonant with the same set of data. Some of these models are more appealing than others; coming up with one model that covers the data does not in itself constitute proof that that particular model is the one that is innate and should be adopted. Indeed, an appeal to innateness has an insidious consequence: it essentially...

Assuming that parasitic gaps (PGs) and across-the-board (ATB) gaps are derived through sideward movement (Nunes 1995, 2001 and Hornstein 2001), this paper aims at explaining why ATB constructions are in general more permissive than PG constructions (Postal 1993). We argue that sideward movement is licensed only by Last Resort in PG constructions, b...

This article investigates the interaction between resumption and movement. Lebanese Arabic distinguishes between true resumption, where a pronoun or an epithet phrase is related to an ĀĀ -antecedent via Bind, and apparent resumption, where the pronoun or the epithet phrase is related to its ĀĀ -antecedent via Move. Only apparent resumption displays...

1 Introduction Studies of left dislocation constructions in a number of languages seem to put a lot of emphasis on the evaluation of the nature of this phenomenon: movement or base-generation. With this paper I will undoubtedly add to these studies. By comparing two varieties of left dislocation in German, I propose a movement approach for one type...

This paper provides a new minimalist analysis of existential constructions that reconciles two salient properties: (i) the fact that the local relation between there and its associate mimics the locality involved in movement relations and (ii) the fact that the associate is interpreted where it sits. Assuming that A-chains can only have one visible...

Since the earliest days of generative grammar, control has been distinguished from raising: the latter the product of movement operations, the former the result of construal processes relating a PRO to an antecedent. This article argues that obligatory control structures are also formed by movement. Minimalism makes this approach viable by removing...

Essays present explicit syntactic analyses that adhere to programmatic minimalist guidelines. The essays in this book present explicit syntactic analyses that adhere to programmatic minimalist guidelines. Thus they show how the guiding ideas of minimalism can shape the construction of a new, more explanatory theory of the syntactic component of the...

Acknowledgments. List of Abbreviations. 1. An Introduction. 2. Motivating LF. 3. More on LF. 4. Some Minimalist Background. 5. Antecedent Contained Deletion. 6. Linking, Binding and Weak Cross Over. 7. Superiority Effects. 8. Quantifier Scope. 9. Revisiting the Minimalist Program. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Il est generalement admis que le sens d'une phrase est fonction du sens de ses parties. L'A. montre qu'il existe des raisons empiriques pour choisir parmi des primitives semantiques concurrentes en repondant a la question: Etant donne le contenu d'une theorie grammaticale, existe-t-il une raison pour prendre la verite comme primitive semantique

Work on the movement of phrasal categories has been a central element of syntactic theorising almost since the earliest work on generative grammar. However, work on the movement of lexical elements, heads, has flourished only in recent years, stimulated originally by Chomsky's Empty Category Principle, and later by the work of Travis, Baker and Pol...

Modern Greekidhios has different properties depending on its grammatical function. Non-Subjectidhios must have a binder but it does not seem to obey the locality restrictions characteristic of anaphors (Iatridou 1986). Furthermore, it cannot occur in embedded questions or relative clauses thought it can be found in noun complement constructions and...

How do humans acquire, at a very early age and from fragmentary and haphazard data, the complex patterns of their native language? This is the logical problem of language acquisition, and it is the question that directs the search for an innate universal grammar. As Time Goes By extends the search by proposing a theory of natural-language tense tha...

In this paper, we investigate the behavior of bound pronouns (i.e. pronouns linked to quantificational noun phrases) in English, Chinese and Japanese. It is commonly assumed that these elements obey two distinct requirements. The first requires these pronouns to be in the scope of the quantificational NP they are coindexed with. The second states t...

PRO raises three basic questions for the theory of grammar: (1)(a) Where can PRO appear? (b) How is PRO interpreted? (c) How is PRO to be distinguished from the other empty categories (ec) viz. NP-t(race) and WH-t(race).

GB phrase markers are populated with empty categories that are hard to detect using current psycholinguistic techniques. What implications does this have for a grammatical theory that postulates them? How might these psycholinguistic facts be accommodated? Some modest proposals are offered for further consideration.

The comprehensive theory of predication developed by Williams (1980, 1982, 1983) subsumes a wide range of phenomena, but contains some internal problems. An alternative account is presented here which does not postulate a distinct level of Predicate Structure, but assumes that PRO may be governed. This entails new analyses of small clauses and cont...

This paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we offer a retooling of some traditional concepts, namely icons and symbols, which allows us to describe an evolutionary continuum of communication systems. The second section consists of an argument from theoretical biology. In it we explore the advantages and disadvantages of phenoty...