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125-409: In linguistics , the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky . Following Imre Lakatos 's distinction, Chomsky presents minimalism as a program , understood as a mode of inquiry that provides a conceptual framework which guides the development of linguistic theory. As such, it

250-490: A PSG, a constituent contains at least one member, but has no upper bound. In contrast, with Merge theory, a constituent contains at most two members. Specifically, in Merge theory, each syntactic object is a constituent. X-bar theory is a template that claims that all lexical items project three levels of structure: X, X', and XP. Consequently, there is a three-way distinction between Head , Complement, and Specifier : While

375-429: A basic operation is related to the mechanism which forces movement, which is mediated by feature-checking. In its original formulation, Merge is a function that takes two objects (α and β) and merges them into an unordered set with a label, either α or β. In more recent treatments, the possibility of the derived syntactic object being un-labelled is also considered; this is called "simple Merge" (see Label section ). In

500-414: A branch of linguistics. Before the 20th century, linguists analysed language on a diachronic plane, which was historical in focus. This meant that they would compare linguistic features and try to analyse language from the point of view of how it had changed between then and later. However, with the rise of Saussurean linguistics in the 20th century, the focus shifted to a more synchronic approach, where

625-404: A certain domain. In some but not all versions of minimalism, projection of selectional features proceeds via feature-checking, as required by locality of selection: Selection as projection : As illustrated in the bare phrase structure tree for the sentence The girl ate the food ; a notable feature is the absence of distinct labels (see Labels below). Relative to Merge, the selectional features of

750-560: A comparison of different time periods in the past and present) or in a synchronic manner (by observing developments between different variations that exist within the current linguistic stage of a language). At first, historical linguistics was the cornerstone of comparative linguistics , which involves a study of the relationship between different languages. At that time, scholars of historical linguistics were only concerned with creating different categories of language families , and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages by using both

875-508: A condition on agreement. This line of inquiry was initiated in Chomsky (2000), and formulated as follows: Many recent analyses assume that Agree is a basic operation, on par with Merge and Move. This is currently a very active area of research, and there remain numerous open questions: Co-indexation as feature checking: co-indexation markers such as {k, m, o, etc.} A phase is a syntactic domain first hypothesized by Noam Chomsky in 1998. It

1000-496: A first-merge stage would show that children's initial utterances lack the recursive properties of inflectional morphology, yielding a strict Non-inflectional stage-1, consistent with an incremental Structure building model of child language . Merge takes two objects α and β and combines them, creating a binary structure. In some variants of the Minimalist Program Merge is triggered by feature checking , e.g.

1125-403: A head and what it selects: selection must be satisfied with the projection of the head. Move arises via "internal Merge". Movement as feature-checking : The original formulation of the extended projection principle states that clauses must contain a subject in the specifier position of spec TP/IP. In the tree above, there is an EPP feature. This is a strong feature which forces re-Merge—which

1250-511: A head. First-merge establishes only a set {a, b} and is not an ordered pair. In its original formulation by Chomsky in 1995 Merge was defined as inherently asymmetric; in Moro 2000 it was first proposed that Merge can generate symmetrical structures provided that they are rescued by movement and asymmetry is restored For example, an {N, N}-compound of 'boat-house' would allow the ambiguous readings of either 'a kind of house' and/or 'a kind of boat'. It

1375-500: A kind of specifier/modifier. External-merge (first-merge) establishes substantive 'base structure' inherent to the VP, yielding theta/argument structure, and may go beyond the lexical-category VP to involve the functional-category light verb vP. Internal-merge (second-merge) establishes more formal aspects related to edge-properties of scope and discourse-related material pegged to CP . In a Phase-based theory, this twin vP/CP distinction follows

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1500-515: A lexical item determine how it participates in Merge: Feature-checking : When a feature is "checked", it is removed. Locality of selection ( LOS ) is a principle that forces selectional features to participate in feature checking. LOS states that a selected element must combine with the head that selects it either as complement or specifier. Selection is local in the sense that there is a maximum distance that can occur between

1625-434: A linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of written scripts (as signs and symbols) in language. The formal study of language also led to the growth of fields like psycholinguistics , which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics , which studies language processing in the brain; biolinguistics , which studies

1750-492: A minimum the "innate" component (the genetically inherited component) of the language faculty, which has been criticized over many decades and is separate from the developmental psychology component. Intrinsic to the syntactic model (e.g. the Y/T-model) is the fact that social and other factors play no role in the computation that takes place in narrow syntax ; what Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch refer to as faculty of language in

1875-400: A more simple theory of phrase structure. Collins proposed that economy features, such as Minimality, govern derivations and lead to simpler representations. In more recent work by John Lowe and John Lundstrand, published in 2020, minimal phrase structure is formulated as an extension to bare phrase structure and X-bar theory . However it does not adopt all of the assumptions associated with

2000-410: A new category consisting of a head (H), which is the label, and an element being projected. Some ambiguities may arise if the features raising, in this case α, contain the entire head and the head is also X. Labeling algorithm ( LA ): Merge is a function that takes two objects (α and β) and merges them into an unordered set with a label (either α or β), where the label indicates the kind of phrase that

2125-416: A particular feature or usage is "good" or "bad". This is analogous to practice in other sciences: a zoologist studies the animal kingdom without making subjective judgments on whether a particular species is "better" or "worse" than another. Prescription , on the other hand, is an attempt to promote particular linguistic usages over others, often favoring a particular dialect or " acrolect ". This may have

2250-427: A particular interface, a necessary consequence of Full Interpretation. A PF object must only consist of features that are interpretable at the articulatory-perceptual (A-P) interface; likewise a LF object must consist of features that are interpretable at the conceptual-intentional (C-I) interface. The presence of an uninterpretable feature at either interface will cause the derivation to crash. Narrow syntax proceeds as

2375-399: A perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary. Minimalism further develops the notion of economy, which came to the fore in the early 1990s, though still peripheral to transformational grammar . Economy of derivation requires that movements (i.e., transformations) occur only if necessary, and specifically to satisfy to feature-checking, whereby an interpretable feature

2500-419: A second-language speaker who is attempting to acquire the language. Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken data and signed data are more fundamental than written data . This is because Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable. For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics , written language

2625-511: A set of operations—Merge, Move and Agree—carried out upon a numeration (a selection of features, words etc., from the lexicon) with the sole aim of removing all uninterpretable features before being sent via Spell-Out to the A-P and C-I interfaces. The result of these operations is a hierarchical syntactic structure that captures the relationships between the component features. The exploration of minimalist questions has led to several radical changes in

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2750-419: A view towards uncovering the biological underpinnings of language. In Generative Grammar , these underpinning are understood as including innate domain-specific grammatical knowledge. Thus, one of the central concerns of the approach is to discover what aspects of linguistic knowledge are innate and which are not. Cognitive linguistics , in contrast, rejects the notion of innate grammar, and studies how

2875-424: A word. Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form. Any particular pairing of meaning and form is a Saussurean linguistic sign . For instance, the meaning "cat" is represented worldwide with a wide variety of different sound patterns (in oral languages), movements of the hands and face (in sign languages ), and written symbols (in written languages). Linguistic patterns have proven their importance for

3000-605: Is Merge. Bare phrase structure attempts to: (i) eliminate unnecessary elements; (ii) generate simpler trees ; (ii) account for variation across languages. Bare Phrase Structure defines projection levels according to the following features: The minimalist program brings into focus four fundamental properties that govern the structure of human language : Since the publication of bare phrase structure in 1994., other linguists have continued to build on this theory. In 2002, Chris Collins continued research on Chomsky's proposal to eliminate labels, backing up Chomsky's suggestion of

3125-705: Is a domain where all derivational processes operate and where all features are checked. A phase consists of a phase head and a phase domain. Once any derivation reaches a phase and all the features are checked, the phase domain is sent to transfer and becomes invisible to further computations. The literature shows three trends relative to what is generally considered to be a phase: A simple sentence can be decomposed into two phases, CP and v P. Chomsky considers CP and v P to be strong phases because of their propositional content, as well as their interaction with movement and reconstruction. Propositional content : CP and vP are both propositional units, but for different reasons. CP

3250-462: Is a researcher within the field, or to someone who uses the tools of the discipline to describe and analyse specific languages. An early formal study of language was in India with Pāṇini , the 6th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology . Pāṇini's systematic classification of the sounds of Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes, such as nouns and verbs,

3375-430: Is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential subsets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology (the organization of phonetic sound systems), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences). Modern frameworks that deal with

3500-453: Is also called internal merge—of the DP the girl . The EPP feature in the tree above is a subscript to the T head, which indicates that T needs a subject in its specifier position. This causes the movement of <the girl> to the specifier position of T. A substantial body of literature in the minimalist tradition focuses on how a phrase receives a proper label. The debate about labeling reflects

3625-409: Is also said to necessarily lead to overgeneration. If we take a binary tree and an n {\displaystyle n} -ary tree with identical sets of leaves, then the binary tree will have a smaller number of accessible pairs of terms compared to the total n {\displaystyle n} -tuples of accessible terms in the n {\displaystyle n} -ary tree. This

3750-420: Is built via merge. But this labeling technique is too unrestricted since the input labels make incorrect predictions about which lexical categories can merge with each other. Consequently, a different mechanism is needed to generate the correct output label for each application of Merge in order to account for how lexical categories combine; this mechanism is referred to as the labeling algorithm (LA). Recently,

3875-478: Is called "external Merge". As for Move, it is defined as an instance of "internal Merge", and involves the re-merge of an already merged SO with another SO. In regards to how Move should be formulated, there continues to be active debate about this, but the differences between current proposals are relatively minute. More recent versions of minimalism recognize three operations: Merge (i.e. external Merge), Move (i.e. internal Merge), and Agree. The emergence of Agree as

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4000-430: Is called reconstruction. Evidence from reconstruction is consistent with the claim that the moved phrase stops at the left edge of CP and v P phases. Chomsky theorized that syntactic operations must obey the phase impenetrability condition (PIC) which essentially requires that movement be from the left-edge of a phase. The PIC has been variously formulated in the literature. The extended projection principle feature that

4125-496: Is characterized by a broad and diverse range of research directions. For Chomsky, there are two basic minimalist questions—What is language? and Why does it have the properties it has?—but the answers to these two questions can be framed in any theory. Minimalism is an approach developed with the goal of understanding the nature of language. It models a speaker's knowledge of language as a computational system with one basic operation, namely Merge. Merge combines expressions taken from

4250-548: Is conceptually motivated. The argument goes as follows: under the assumption that Logical Form (LF) is invariant, it must be the case that any parametric differences between languages reduce to morphological properties that are reflected at PF (Chomsky 1993:192). Two possible implementations of the PF crash theory are discussed by Chomsky: 2. Logical Form (LF) crash theory (Chomsky 1994) is empirically motivated by VP ellipsis. 3. Immediate elimination theory ((Chomsky 1995)) Initially,

4375-441: Is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it. Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy. Linguistic features may be studied through a variety of perspectives: synchronically (by describing

4500-514: Is considered a propositional unit because it is a full clause that has tense and force: example (1) shows that the complementizer that in the CP phase conditions finiteness (here past tense) and force (here, affirmative) of the subordinate clause. v P is considered a propositional unit because all the theta roles are assigned in v P: in (2) the verb ate in the v P phase assigns the Theme theta role to

4625-440: Is conventional or "coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the structural and linguistic knowledge (grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. Phonetics and phonology are branches of linguistics concerned with sounds (or

4750-463: Is either contained within Z, or is Z. Adjunction : Before the introduction of bare phrase structure, adjuncts did not alter information about bar-level, category information, or the target's (located in the adjoined structure) head . An example of adjunction using the X-bar theory notation is given below for the sentence Luna bought the purse yesterday . Observe that the adverbial modifier yesterday

4875-469: Is generally hard to find for events long ago, due to the occurrence of chance word resemblances and variations between language groups. A limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed for the functional purpose of conducting research. It is also hard to date various proto-languages. Even though several methods are available, these languages can be dated only approximately. In modern historical linguistics, we examine how languages change over time, focusing on

5000-520: Is matched with a corresponding uninterpretable feature . (See discussion of feature-checking below.) Economy of representation requires that grammatical structures exist for a purpose. The structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality. Within minimalism, economy—recast in terms of the strong minimalist thesis (SMT)—has acquired increased importance. The 2016 book entitled Why Only Us —co-authored by Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick—defines

5125-447: Is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry. The study of writing systems themselves, graphemics, is, in any case, considered

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5250-503: Is on the heads of phases triggers the intermediate movement steps to phase edges. Movement of a constituent out of a phase is (in the general case) only permitted if the constituent has first moved to the left edge of the phase (XP). The edge of a head X is defined as the residue outside of X', in either specifier of X and adjuncts to XP. English successive cyclic wh-movement obeys the PIC. Sentence (7) has two phases: v P and CP. Relative to

5375-460: Is only with second-merge that order is derived out of a set {a {a, b}} which yields the recursive properties of syntax. For example, a 'House-boat' {house {house, boat}} now reads unambiguously only as a 'kind of boat'. It is this property of recursion that allows for projection and labeling of a phrase to take place; in this case, that the Noun 'boat' is the head of the compound, and 'house' acting as

5500-538: Is part of the other it is internal Merge. As it is commonly understood, standard Merge adopts three key assumptions about the nature of syntactic structure and the faculty of language: While these three assumptions are taken for granted for the most part by those working within the broad scope of the Minimalist Program, other theories of syntax reject one or more of them. Merge is commonly seen as merging smaller constituents to greater constituents until

5625-408: Is relevant for child language acquisition, where children are observed to go through a so-called "two-word" stage. This is discussed below in the implications section.) As illustrated in the accompanying tree structure, if a new head (here γ) is merged with a previously formed syntactic object (a phrase, here {α, {α, β} }), the function has the form Merge (γ, {α, {α, β}}) → {γ, {γ, {α, {α, β}}}}. Here, γ

5750-469: Is responsible for the generation of ungrammatical sentences like "peanuts monkeys children will throw" (as opposed to "children will throw monkeys peanuts") with a ternary Merge. Despite this, there have also been empirical arguments against strictly binary Merge, such as that coming from constituency tests , and so some theories of grammar such as Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar still retain n {\displaystyle n} -ary branching in

5875-452: Is selected based on specific contexts but also, at a micro level, shapes language as text (spoken or written) down to the phonological and lexico-grammatical levels. Grammar and discourse are linked as parts of a system. A particular discourse becomes a language variety when it is used in this way for a particular purpose, and is referred to as a register . There may be certain lexical additions (new words) that are brought into play because of

6000-411: Is sister to VP and dominated by VP. Thus, the addition of the modifier does not change information about the bar-level: in this case the maximal projection VP. In the minimalist program, adjuncts are argued to exhibit a different, perhaps more simplified, structure. Chomsky (1995) proposes that adjunction forms a two-segment object/category consisting of: (i) the head of a label; (ii) a different label from

6125-1340: Is strictly binary is justified with the argument that an n {\displaystyle n} -ary Merge where n ≥ 3 {\displaystyle n\geq 3} would inevitably lead to both under and overgeneration, and as such Merge must be strictly binary. More formally, the forms of undergeneration given in Marcolli et al., (2023) are such that for any n {\displaystyle n} -ary Merge with n ≥ 3 {\displaystyle n\geq 3} , only strings of length k ( n − 1 ) + 1 {\displaystyle k(n-1)+1} for some k ≥ 1 {\displaystyle k\geq 1} can be generated (so sentences like "it rains" cannot be), and further, there are always strings of length k ( n − 1 ) + 1 {\displaystyle k(n-1)+1} that are ambiguous when parsed with binary Merge, for which an n {\displaystyle n} -ary merge with n ≥ 3 {\displaystyle n\geq 3} would not be able to account for. Further, n {\displaystyle n} -ary Merge where n ≥ 3 {\displaystyle n\geq 3}

6250-400: Is the head, so the output label of the derived syntactic object is γ. Chomsky's earlier work defines each lexical item as a syntactic object that is associated with both categorical features and selectional features. Features—more precisely formal features—participate in feature-checking, which takes as input two expressions that share the same feature, and checks them off against each other in

6375-428: Is the study of how language changes over history, particularly with regard to a specific language or a group of languages. Western trends in historical linguistics date back to roughly the late 18th century, when the discipline grew out of philology , the study of ancient texts and oral traditions. Historical linguistics emerged as one of the first few sub-disciplines in the field, and was most widely practised during

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6500-508: The Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī . Today, modern-day theories on grammar employ many of the principles that were laid down then. Before the 20th century, the term philology , first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the study of language, which was then predominantly historical in focus. Since Ferdinand de Saussure 's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis , however, this focus has shifted and

6625-432: The agent or patient . Functional linguistics , or functional grammar, is a branch of structural linguistics. In the humanistic reference, the terms structuralism and functionalism are related to their meaning in other human sciences . The difference between formal and functional structuralism lies in the way that the two approaches explain why languages have the properties they have. Functional explanation entails

6750-626: The comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction . Internal reconstruction is the method by which an element that contains a certain meaning is re-used in different contexts or environments where there is a variation in either sound or analogy. The reason for this had been to describe well-known Indo-European languages , many of which had detailed documentation and long written histories. Scholars of historical linguistics also studied Uralic languages , another European language family for which very little written material existed back then. After that, there also followed significant work on

6875-412: The knowledge engineering field especially with the ever-increasing amount of available data. Linguists focusing on structure attempt to understand the rules regarding language use that native speakers know (not always consciously). All linguistic structures can be broken down into component parts that are combined according to (sub)conscious rules, over multiple levels of analysis. For instance, consider

7000-504: The mind of the individual or the speech community. Construction grammar is a framework which applies the meme concept to the study of syntax. The generative versus evolutionary approach are sometimes called formalism and functionalism , respectively. This reference is however different from the use of the terms in human sciences . Modern linguistics is primarily descriptive . Linguists describe and explain features of language without making subjective judgments on whether

7125-599: The "duality of semantics" discussed within the Minimalist Program , and is further developed into a dual distinction regarding a probe-goal relation. As a consequence, at the "external/first-merge-only" stage, young children would show an inability to interpret readings from a given ordered pair, since they would only have access to the mental parsing of a non-recursive set. (See Roeper for a full discussion of recursion in child language acquisition). In addition to word-order violations, other more ubiquitous results of

7250-455: The "medical discourse", and so on. The lexicon is a catalogue of words and terms that are stored in a speaker's mind. The lexicon consists of words and bound morphemes , which are parts of words that can not stand alone, like affixes . In some analyses, compound words and certain classes of idiomatic expressions and other collocations are also considered to be part of the lexicon. Dictionaries represent attempts at listing, in alphabetical order,

7375-410: The "n" sound in "tenth" is made differently from the "n" sound in "ten" spoken alone. Although most speakers of English are consciously aware of the rules governing internal structure of the word pieces of "tenth", they are less often aware of the rule governing its sound structure. Linguists focused on structure find and analyze rules such as these, which govern how native speakers use language. Grammar

7500-543: The 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by William Jones sparked the rise of comparative linguistics . Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm , who wrote Deutsche Grammatik . It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt , of whom Bloomfield asserts: This study received its foundation at

7625-542: The DP the cake and the Agent theta-role to the DP Mary . Movement : CP and vP can be the focus of pseudo-cleft movement, showing that CP and v P form syntactic units: this is shown in (3) for the CP constituent that John is bringing the dessert , and in (4) for the v P constituent arrive tomorrow . Reconstruction. When a moved constituent is interpreted in its original position to satisfy binding principles, this

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7750-575: The East, but the grammarians of the classical languages did not use the same methods or reach the same conclusions as their contemporaries in the Indic world. Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosophy, not of grammatical description. The first insights into semantic theory were made by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue , where he argues that words denote concepts that are eternal and exist in

7875-601: The Human Race ). Merge (linguistics) Within the Minimalist Program, syntax is derivational, and Merge is the structure-building operation. Merge is assumed to have certain formal properties constraining syntactic structure, and is implemented with specific mechanisms. In terms of a merge-base theory of language acquisition , complements and specifiers are simply notations for first-merge (read as "complement-of" [head-complement]), and later second-merge (read as "specifier-of" [specifier-head]), with merge always forming to

8000-542: The Minimalist Program (see above). Lowe and Lundstrand argue that any successful phrase structure theory, should include the following seven features: Although Bare Phrase Structure includes many of these features, it does not include all of them, therefore other theories have attempted to incorporate all of these features in order to present a successful phrase structure theory. Chomsky (2001) distinguishes between external and internal Merge: if A and B are separate objects then we deal with external Merge; if either of them

8125-502: The Minimalist Program is Bare Phrase Structure (BPS), a theory of phrase structure (structure building operations) developed by Noam Chomsky in 1994. BPS is a representation of the structure of phrases in which syntactic units are not explicitly assigned to categories. The introduction of BPS moves the generative grammar towards dependency grammar (discussed below), which operates with significantly less structure than most phrase structure grammars . The constitutional operation of BPS

8250-671: The aim of establishing a linguistic standard , which can aid communication over large geographical areas. It may also, however, be an attempt by speakers of one language or dialect to exert influence over speakers of other languages or dialects (see Linguistic imperialism ). An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among censors , who attempt to eradicate words and structures that they consider to be destructive to society. Prescription, however, may be practised appropriately in language instruction , like in ELT , where certain fundamental grammatical rules and lexical items need to be introduced to

8375-700: The analogue to Merge is the unification operation of graph theory . In these theories, operations over attribute-value matrices ( feature structures ) are used to account for many of the same facts. Though Merge is usually assumed to be unique to language, the linguists Jonah Katz and David Pesetsky have argued that the harmonic structure of tonal music is also a result of the operation Merge. This notion of 'merge' may in fact be related to Fauconnier's 'blending' notion in cognitive linguistics . Phrase structure grammar (PSG) represents immediate constituency relations (i.e. how words group together) as well as linear precedence relations (i.e. how words are ordered). In

8500-568: The application of movement, who moves from the (lower) v P phase to the (higher) CP phase in two steps: Another example of PIC can be observed when analyzing A'-agreement in Medumba . A'-agreement is a term used for the morphological reflex of A'-movement of an XP. In Medumba, when the moved phrase reaches a phase edge, a high low tonal melody is added to the head of the complement of the phase head. Since A'-agreement in Medumba requires movement,

8625-404: The biology and evolution of language; and language acquisition , which investigates how children and adults acquire the knowledge of one or more languages. The fundamental principle of humanistic linguistics, especially rational and logical grammar , is that language is an invention created by people. A semiotic tradition of linguistic research considers language a sign system which arises from

8750-471: The computational system that underlies it—are conceptually necessary. This is sometimes framed as questions relating to perfect design (Is the design of human language perfect?) and optimal computation (Is the computational system for human language optimal?) According to Chomsky, a human natural language is not optimal when judged based on how it functions, since it often contains ambiguities, garden paths, etc. However, it may be optimal for interaction with

8875-563: The cooperation of Last Resort (LR) and the Uniformity Condition (UC) were the indicators of the structures provided by Bare Phrase which contain labels and are constructed by move, as well the impact of the Structure Preservation Hypothesis . When we consider the features of the word that provide the label when the word projects, we assume that the categorical feature of the word is always among

9000-559: The corpora of other languages, such as the Austronesian languages and the Native American language families . In historical work, the uniformitarian principle is generally the underlying working hypothesis, occasionally also clearly expressed. The principle was expressed early by William Dwight Whitney , who considered it imperative, a "must", of historical linguistics to "look to find the same principle operative also in

9125-607: The deeper aspirations of the minimalist program, which is to remove all redundant elements in favour of the simplest analysis possible. While earlier proposals focus on how to distinguish adjunction from substitution via labeling, more recent proposals attempt to eliminate labeling altogether, but they have not been universally accepted. Adjunction and substitution : Chomsky's 1995 monograph entitled The Minimalist Program outlines two methods of forming structure: adjunction and substitution. The standard properties of segments, categories, adjuncts, and specifiers are easily constructed. In

9250-462: The development of modern standard varieties of languages, and over the development of a language from its standardized form to its varieties. For instance, some scholars also tried to establish super-families , linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other language families to Nostratic . While these attempts are still not widely accepted as credible methods, they provide necessary information to establish relatedness in language change. This

9375-426: The equivalent aspects of sign languages). Phonetics is largely concerned with the physical aspects of sounds such as their articulation , acoustics, production, and perception. Phonology is concerned with the linguistic abstractions and categorizations of sounds, and it tells us what sounds are in a language, how they do and can combine into words, and explains why certain phonetic features are important to identifying

9500-430: The expertise of the community of people within a certain domain of specialization. Thus, registers and discourses distinguish themselves not only through specialized vocabulary but also, in some cases, through distinct stylistic choices. People in the medical fraternity, for example, may use some medical terminology in their communication that is specialized to the field of medicine. This is often referred to as being part of

9625-403: The features that become the label of the newly created syntactic object. In this example below, Cecchetto demonstrated how projection selects a head as the label. In this example by Cecchetto (2015), the verb "read" unambiguously labels the structure because "read" is a word, which means it is a probe by definition, in which "read" selects "the book". the bigger constituent generated by merging

9750-450: The field of philology , of which some branches are more qualitative and holistic in approach. Today, philology and linguistics are variably described as related fields, subdisciplines, or separate fields of language study but, by and large, linguistics can be seen as an umbrella term. Linguistics is also related to the philosophy of language , stylistics , rhetoric , semiotics , lexicography , and translation . Historical linguistics

9875-419: The general form of a structured tree for adjunction and substitution, α is an adjunct to X, and α is substituted into SPEC, X position. α can raise to aim for the X position, and it builds a new position that can either be adjoined to [Y-X] or is SPEC, X, in which it is termed the 'target'. At the bottom of the tree, the minimal domain includes SPEC Y and Z along with a new position formed by the raising of α which

10000-594: The greatest constituent, the sentence, is reached. This bottom-up view of structure generation is rejected by representational (non-derivational) theories (e.g. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar , Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar , Lexical Functional Grammar , most dependency grammars , etc.), and it is contrary to early work in Transformational Grammar . The phrase structure rules of context free grammar , for instance, were generating sentence structure top down. The Minimalist view that Merge

10125-644: The hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts ( On the Variety of the Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of

10250-427: The head of the label. The label L is not considered a term in the structure that is formed because it is not identical to the head S, but it is derived from it in an irrelevant way. If α adjoins to S, and S projects, then the structure that results is L = {<H(S), H(S)>,{α,S}}, where the entire structure is replaced with the head S, as well as what the structure contains. The head is what projects, so it can itself be

10375-433: The history of a language. The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within morphemes is morphophonology . Semantics and pragmatics are branches of linguistics concerned with meaning. These subfields have traditionally been divided according to aspects of meaning: "semantics" refers to grammatical and lexical meanings, while "pragmatics" is concerned with meaning in context. Within linguistics,

10500-414: The human mind creates linguistic constructions from event schemas , and the impact of cognitive constraints and biases on human language. In cognitive linguistics, language is approached via the senses . A closely related approach is evolutionary linguistics which includes the study of linguistic units as cultural replicators . It is possible to study how language replicates and adapts to

10625-461: The idea that language is a tool for communication, or that communication is the primary function of language. Linguistic forms are consequently explained by an appeal to their functional value, or usefulness. Other structuralist approaches take the perspective that form follows from the inner mechanisms of the bilateral and multilayered language system. Approaches such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar study linguistic cognition with

10750-498: The interaction of meaning and form. The organization of linguistic levels is considered computational. Linguistics is essentially seen as relating to social and cultural studies because different languages are shaped in social interaction by the speech community . Frameworks representing the humanistic view of language include structural linguistics , among others. Structural analysis means dissecting each linguistic level: phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse, to

10875-485: The label or can determine the label irrelevantly. In the new account developed in bare phrase structure, the properties of the head are no longer preserved in adjunction structures, as the attachment of an adjunct to a particular XP following adjunction is non-maximal, as shown in the figure below that illustrates adjunction in BPS. Such an account is applicable to XPs that are related to multiple adjunction. Substitution forms

11000-429: The labeling algorithm theory should be eliminated altogether and replaced by another labeling mechanism. The symmetry principle has been identified as one such mechanism, as it provides an account of labeling that assigns the correct labels even when phrases are derived through complex linguistic phenomena. Starting in the early 2000s, attention turned from feature-checking as a condition on movement to feature-checking as

11125-461: The labeling algorithm violates the tenets of the minimalist program, as it departs from conceptual necessity. Other linguistic phenomena that create instances where Chomsky's labeling algorithm cannot assign labels include predicate fronting, embedded topicalization, scrambling (free movement of constituents), stacked structures (which involve multiple specifiers). Given these criticisms of Chomsky's labeling algorithm, it has been recently argued that

11250-412: The late 19th century. Despite a shift in focus in the 20th century towards formalism and generative grammar , which studies the universal properties of language, historical research today still remains a significant field of linguistic inquiry. Subfields of the discipline include language change and grammaticalization . Historical linguistics studies language change either diachronically (through

11375-444: The lexicon in a successive fashion to generate representations that characterize I-Language , understood to be the internalized intensional knowledge state as represented in individual speakers. By hypothesis, I-language—also called universal grammar —corresponds to the initial state of the human language faculty in individual human development. Minimalism is reductive in that it aims to identify which aspects of human language—as well

11500-429: The lexicon of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included. Lexicography , closely linked with the domain of semantics, is the science of mapping the words into an encyclopedia or a dictionary. The creation and addition of new words (into the lexicon) is called coining or neologization , and the new words are called neologisms . It is often believed that a speaker's capacity for language lies in

11625-501: The narrow sense (FLN), as distinct from faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB). Thus, narrow syntax only concerns itself with interface requirements, also called legibility conditions. SMT can be restated as follows: syntax, narrowly defined, is a product of the requirements of the interfaces and nothing else. This is what is meant by "Language is an optimal solution to legibility conditions" (Chomsky 2001:96). Interface requirements force deletion of features that are uninterpretable at

11750-426: The nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning. There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals. Morphology is the study of words , including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes , which are

11875-421: The other hand, focuses on an analysis that is based on the paradigms or concepts that are embedded in a given text. In this case, words of the same type or class may be replaced in the text with each other to achieve the same conceptual understanding. The earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of

12000-486: The phrase acts as a verb. This can be represented in a typical syntax tree as follows, with the name of the derived syntactic object (SO) determined either by the lexical item (LI) itself, or by the category label of the LI: Merge can operate on already-built structures; in other words, it is a recursive operation. If Merge were not recursive, then this would predict that only two-word utterances are grammatical. (This

12125-419: The phrase. It has been noted that minimal search cannot account for the following two possibilities: In each of these cases, there is no lexical item acting as a prominent element (i.e. a head). Given this, it is not possible through minimal search to extract a label for the phrase. While Chomsky has proposed solutions for these cases, it has been argued that the fact that such cases are problematic suggests that

12250-449: The presence of agreement on the complements of phase heads shows that the wh-word moves to the edges of phases and obeys PIC. Example: The sentence (2a) has a high low tone on the verb nɔ́ʔ and tense ʤʉ̀n , therefore is grammatical. (2a) [ CP á wʉ́ Wàtɛ̀t nɔ́ɔ̀ʔ [ vP ⁿ-ʤʉ́ʉ̀n á?]] Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language . The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing

12375-478: The principles of grammar include structural and functional linguistics , and generative linguistics . Sub-fields that focus on a grammatical study of language include the following: Discourse is language as social practice (Baynham, 1995) and is a multilayered concept. As a social practice, discourse embodies different ideologies through written and spoken texts. Discourse analysis can examine or expose these ideologies. Discourse not only influences genre, which

12500-416: The quantity of words stored in the lexicon. However, this is often considered a myth by linguists. The capacity for the use of language is considered by many linguists to lie primarily in the domain of grammar, and to be linked with competence , rather than with the growth of vocabulary. Even a very small lexicon is theoretically capable of producing an infinite number of sentences. Stylistics also involves

12625-424: The relationships between dialects within a specific period. This includes studying morphological, syntactical, and phonetic shifts. Connections between dialects in the past and present are also explored. Syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences . Central concerns of syntax include word order , grammatical relations , constituency , agreement ,

12750-401: The scientific study of language, though linguistic science is sometimes used. Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field of research that combines tools from natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences , and the humanities. Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the field as being primarily scientific. The term linguist applies to someone who studies language or

12875-836: The selectional properties of the head. All other alternatives are eliminated. Merge does nothing more than combine two syntactic objects (SO’s) into a unit, but does not affect the properties of the combining elements in any way. This is called the No Tampering Condition (NTC). Therefore, if α (as a syntactic object) has some property before combining with β (which is likewise a syntactic object) it will still have this property after it has combined with β. This allows Merge to account for further merging, which enables structures with movement dependencies (such as wh-movement) to occur. All grammatical dependencies are established under Merge: this means that if α and β are grammatically linked, α and β must have merged. A major development of

13000-749: The smallest units in a language with some independent meaning . Morphemes include roots that can exist as words by themselves, but also categories such as affixes that can only appear as part of a larger word. For example, in English the root catch and the suffix -ing are both morphemes; catch may appear as its own word, or it may be combined with -ing to form the new word catching . Morphology also analyzes how words behave as parts of speech , and how they may be inflected to express grammatical categories including number , tense , and aspect . Concepts such as productivity are concerned with how speakers create words in specific contexts, which evolves over

13125-404: The smallest units. These are collected into inventories (e.g. phoneme, morpheme, lexical classes, phrase types) to study their interconnectedness within a hierarchy of structures and layers. Functional analysis adds to structural analysis the assignment of semantic and other functional roles that each unit may have. For example, a noun phrase may function as the subject or object of the sentence; or

13250-571: The strong minimalist thesis as follows: The optimal situation would be that UG reduces to the simplest computational principles which operate in accord with conditions of computational efficiency. This conjecture is ... called the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT). Under the strong minimalist thesis, language is a product of inherited traits as developmentally enhanced through intersubjective communication and social exposure to individual languages (amongst other things). This reduces to

13375-488: The structure of a language at a specific point in time) or diachronically (through the historical development of a language over a period of time), in monolinguals or in multilinguals , among children or among adults, in terms of how it is being learnt or how it was acquired, as abstract objects or as cognitive structures, through written texts or through oral elicitation, and finally through mechanical data collection or through practical fieldwork. Linguistics emerged from

13500-696: The structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages ), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics (including traditional descriptive linguistics)

13625-445: The structure of the word "tenth" on two different levels of analysis. On the level of internal word structure (known as morphology), the word "tenth" is made up of one linguistic form indicating a number and another form indicating ordinality. The rule governing the combination of these forms ensures that the ordinality marker "th" follows the number "ten." On the level of sound structure (known as phonology), structural analysis shows that

13750-471: The study of language in canonical works of literature, popular fiction, news, advertisements, and other forms of communication in popular culture as well. It is usually seen as a variation in communication that changes from speaker to speaker and community to community. In short, Stylistics is the interpretation of text. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida , for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that written language be studied as

13875-531: The study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. It involves the study and interpretation of texts for aspects of their linguistic and tonal style. Stylistic analysis entails the analysis of description of particular dialects and registers used by speech communities. Stylistic features include rhetoric , diction, stress, satire, irony , dialogue, and other forms of phonetic variations. Stylistic analysis can also include

14000-436: The study was geared towards analysis and comparison between different language variations, which existed at the same given point of time. At another level, the syntagmatic plane of linguistic analysis entails the comparison between the way words are sequenced, within the syntax of a sentence. For example, the article "the" is followed by a noun, because of the syntagmatic relation between the words. The paradigmatic plane, on

14125-586: The subfield of formal semantics studies the denotations of sentences and how they are composed from the meanings of their constituent expressions. Formal semantics draws heavily on philosophy of language and uses formal tools from logic and computer science . On the other hand, cognitive semantics explains linguistic meaning via aspects of general cognition, drawing on ideas from cognitive science such as prototype theory . Pragmatics focuses on phenomena such as speech acts , implicature , and talk in interaction . Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that

14250-402: The suitability of a labeling algorithm has been questioned, as syntacticians have identified a number of limitations associated with what Chomsky has proposed. It has been argued that two kinds of phrases pose a problem. The labeling algorithm proposes that labelling occurs via minimal search, a process where a single lexical item within a phrasal structure acts as a head and provides the label for

14375-637: The syntax. Merge merges two constituents in such a manner that these constituents become sister constituents and are daughters of the newly created mother constituent. This understanding of how structure is generated is constituency-based (as opposed to dependency-based). Dependency grammars (e.g. Meaning-Text Theory , Functional Generative Description , Word grammar ) disagree with this aspect of Merge, since they take syntactic structure to be dependency-based. In other approaches to generative syntax , such as Head-driven phrase structure grammar , Lexical functional grammar and other types of unification grammar,

14500-411: The systems that are internal to the mind. Such questions are informed by a set of background assumptions, some of which date back to the earliest stages of generative grammar: Minimalism develops the idea that human language ability is optimal in its design and exquisite in its organization, and that its inner workings conform to a very simple computation. On this view, universal grammar instantiates

14625-449: The technical apparatus of transformational generative grammatical theory. Some of the most important are: Early versions of minimalism posits two basic operations: Merge and Move . Earlier theories of grammar—as well as early minimalist analyses—treat phrasal and movement dependencies differently than current minimalist analyses. In the latter, Merge and Move are different outputs of a single operation. Merge of two syntactic objects (SOs)

14750-482: The term philology is now generally used for the "study of a language's grammar, history, and literary tradition", especially in the United States (where philology has never been very popularly considered as the "science of language"). Although the term linguist in the sense of "a student of language" dates from 1641, the term linguistics is first attested in 1847. It is now the usual term in English for

14875-537: The verb eat selects the noun cheesecake because the verb has an uninterpretable N-feature [uN] ("u" stands for "uninterpretable"), which must be checked (or deleted) due to full interpretation . By saying that this verb has a nominal uninterpretable feature, we rule out such ungrammatical constructions as *eat beautiful (the verb selects an adjective). Schematically it can be illustrated as: There are three different accounts of how strong features force movement: 1. Phonetic Form (PF) crash theory (Chomsky 1993)

15000-403: The version of Merge which generates a label, the label identifies the properties of the phrase. Merge will always occur between two syntactic objects: a head and a non-head. For example, Merge can combine the two lexical items drink and water to generate drink water . In the Minimalist Program, the phrase is identified with a label . In the case of drink water , the label is drink since

15125-420: The very outset of that [language] history." The above approach of comparativism in linguistics is now, however, only a small part of the much broader discipline called historical linguistics. The comparative study of specific Indo-European languages is considered a highly specialized field today, while comparative research is carried out over the subsequent internal developments in a language: in particular, over

15250-563: The word in its original meaning as " téchnē grammatikḗ " ( Τέχνη Γραμματική ), the "art of writing", which is also the title of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine school by Dionysius Thrax . Throughout the Middle Ages , the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, the study of ancient languages and texts, practised by such educators as Roger Ascham , Wolfgang Ratke , and John Amos Comenius . In

15375-430: The word with the syntactic objects receives the label of the word itself, which allow us to label the tree as demonstrated. In this tree, the verb "read" is the head selecting the DP "the book", which makes the constituent a VP. Merge operates blindly, projecting labels in all possible combinations. The subcategorization features of the head act as a filter by admitting only labelled projections that are consistent with

15500-596: The world of ideas. This work is the first to use the word etymology to describe the history of a word's meaning. Around 280 BC, one of Alexander the Great 's successors founded a university (see Musaeum ) in Alexandria , where a school of philologists studied the ancient texts in Greek, and taught Greek to speakers of other languages. While this school was the first to use the word "grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used

15625-516: Was the first known instance of its kind. In the Middle East, Sibawayh , a Persian, made a detailed description of Arabic in AD 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fii an-naħw ( الكتاب في النحو , The Book on Grammar ), the first known author to distinguish between sounds and phonemes (sounds as units of a linguistic system) . Western interest in the study of languages began somewhat later than in

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