English 302 Modern English Grammar

(Note: These lectures include the 'Four-Sentences'). The chapters contained in this e-book derive from a series of accumulative course lectures given across several semesters to my graduate students of theoretical syntax, as well as to my many undergraduate students of child language acquisition, both at California State University Northridge, as well as Cal State Long Beach where I have lectured as an adjunct professor over the past twenty years. I’d like to thank all my students over the years that have helped shape these lectures. Our collective class discussions have better sharpened my own understanding of these issues. If these lectures in linguistics have improved at all since their first incarnation, it is only because they have benefited from the many discussions, multifaceted argumentation, and the steadfast persistence on seeking-out diverting points of departure on given topics—all respectively instigated by you, my students, over those years. The lectures are immensely Chomskyan in spirit, recursive-syntactic in nature, and are tethered to a framework which takes as the null hypothesis the notion that language is an innate, pre-determined biological system—a system which by definition is multi-complex, human-specific, and analogous to a philosophy highly commensurate of Descartes’ great proverbial adage which announces the calling for a ‘ghost-in-the-machine’. And for those today who wish-way Descartes’ Mind-body dualism as no longer tenable, Chomsky turns the table and suggests that all we have achieved thus far is exorcise the machine (via Newtonian mechanics), we have left the ghost intact. Hence, while philosophical dualism may be no longer tenable, it is not for the typical reasons assigned to the break. Rather, dispensing with a duality, all we are left with is the singular haunting ghost. (Chomsky 2002, p.53). <> Joseph Galasso is on the Linguistics Faculty at California State University, Northridge (and is an adjunct professor of linguistics at California State University, Long Beach). His main research involves issues surrounding early child language development. He is interested in pursuing certain ‘Minimalist Program’ assumptions (Chomsky 1995) which ask how such assumptions might explain observed early stages of morphosyntactic development in Children. His 2016 monograph is entitled ‘From Merge to Move: A minimalist perspective on the design of language and its role in early child syntax’. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, 59. His last monograph in the same theoretical series is entitled ‘Recursive Syntax’ LINCOM, 61.

This paper 'Exegeses & Syntheses of the Program' ('ESP-paper') attempts to broadly sketch out the leading tenants of Chomsky's 1995 Minimalist Program (MP). The paper comes to consider the progression of 'Merge to Move', beginning with the principles of locality which operate over an array of Binding constraints, taking as the first instance Combine members (a, b) (an external merge), and then on to establishing an unordered Set {a, b}, and then to a local Move operation (internal merge) which establishes an ordered Pair <a, <a, b>>. From these sequences of external to internal merge-operations, an array of syntactic phenomena come into view, each of which enters some form of an explanatory equation, as argued for by minimalist pursuits. Other topics include Merge over Move, Phase-base theory, Light verb constructs, VP-shells, Principles of economy of movement, and Reasons for movement. The ESP paper was written as a graduate-student guide to issues surrounding MP.

In this first brief note (one of five), I'd like to reflect on how the Dual Mechanism Model (DMM), as compared to a Single Mechanism Model (SMM), might inform our more narrow discussion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (discussed in Note 4), as well as inform our larger-scope discussions surrounding the 'nature of language & design' more generally. The description of our methods here will be based on the following dichotomies: [1] DMM vs. SMM (i) Whereas an SMM is solely reliant on brute-force associations which are inherently tethered to overt Learning-a frequency endeavor [+Freq], where frequency of item-based learning belongs on the vertical mode of processing (to be presented and discussed below). Such item-based learning could be thought of as 'structure-independent' since its focus is solely on the isolated item in question and not on the context of overall structure surrounding the item. (ii) Whereas a DMM is abstract and rule-based which is inherently tethered to tacit, covert Acquisition-a [-Freq] endeavor which doesn't rely on a one-one association of item, but rather can be both (i) item-based and (ii) categorical in nature, where structure-dependency is observant of category over item. Hence a DMM mode-a mode which is both 'item-based' when called upon (e.g. such as lexical learning, irregular formation over rule-based regulars, etc.) and 'categorical-based' when called upon to engage in the manipulation of symbols-is in a unique position to deliver the kind of 'learning curve' which is consistent with what we find of native language acquisition (to be presented and discussed below).

In this first brief note (one of five), I'd like to reflect on how the Dual Mechanism Model (DMM), as compared to a Single Mechanism Model (SMM), might inform our more narrow discussion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (discussed in Note 4), as well as inform our larger-scope discussions surrounding the 'nature of language & design' more generally. The description of our methods here will be based on the following dichotomies: [1] DMM vs. SMM (i) Whereas an SMM is solely reliant on brute-force associations which are inherently tethered to overt Learning-a frequency endeavor [+Freq], where frequency of item-based learning belongs on the vertical mode of processing (to be presented and discussed below). Such item-based learning could be thought of as 'structure-independent' since its focus is solely on the isolated item in question and not on the context of overall structure surrounding the item. (ii) Whereas a DMM is abstract and rule-based which is inherently tethered to tacit, covert Acquisition-a [-Freq] endeavor which doesn't rely on a one-one association of item, but rather can be both (i) item-based and (ii) categorical in nature, where structure-dependency is observant of category over item. Hence a DMM mode-a mode which is both 'item-based' when called upon (e.g. such as lexical learning, irregular formation over rule-based regulars, etc.) and 'categorical-based' when called upon to engage in the manipulation of symbols-is in a unique position to deliver the kind of 'learning curve' which is consistent with what we find of native language acquisition (to be presented and discussed below).

linguistlist.org

The study of syntactic development in children, for all intents and purposes, is reducible to a single-minded inquiry into how the very young child (implicitly) knows to distinguish between lexical stems and functional affixes. Hence, the overriding question burning in the minds of most developmental linguists is morpho-phonological in nature. For instance, it would seem that the child must at least know (a priori) the stem before she can then engage in a dual-track process by which ambient separation of the morpho-phonological distinction attributive to past tense is carried out, say, between the paradigmatic representation of the English word play vs. play-ed /ple-d/ (a dual processing which provokes separation of the /play/-stem and the /d/-affix). Otherwise, it could be conceivable for the young child that the pair play-played would represent altogether two different lexical stems, and, stored as such, reflect two distinct though relatively similar semantic notions (a single processing): perhaps not unlike what we do find regarding derived words where an otherwise 'two-morpheme' analysis of [teach]-{er} is processed (tagged, stored and retrieved) as a 'single-morpheme' stem [teacher], similar to how the word [brother] is stored. A two-point conclusion is reached in this paper: (i) that children have instant access to and make tacit use of innate syntactic knowledge, allowing them instinctively to know to separate stem from affix-leading to a Gradual Development Hypothesis which shows developmental asymmetry between the acquisition of lexical vs. functional categories (Radford 1990)-and (ii) that such prima facie knowledge naturally arises from The Dual Mechanism Model, a processing model that offers the best of both worlds in that it can account for both how the child comes to 'know' lexical stems in the first place, and subsequently, how such stems come to be distinguished and project morpho-phonological material leading to stem vs. affix separation.

Palacký University Olomouc. ISBN 978-80-244-5128-2. , 2017

Abstract: a textbook used for a postgraduate (M.A.) course. It provides Syllabi for the Lectures, Examples and Exercises. It is the first part of the four volume (four semester) English Grammar course which consists of a) English Morphology - undergraduate b) English Morphosyntax - undergraduate c) English Syntax 1 - undergraduate d) English Syntax 2 - postgraduate

The nature of syntactic trees The natural design of language provides for a universal architecture identical to what we find in the 'Fibonacci sequence'. Such an inherent order to delimit prescribed binary branching of syntactic structure to move in certain ways surely captures our collective imagination, whether or not one ascribes to universalism. 'Top-down' building: merge + move (0) 0

Understanding Morphology (2nd ed). (Haspelmath, M. and Sims, A.) (Hodder Education, ISBN-9780340950012)