Structural analogy and universal grammar
- ms. — published as: Anderson, John M. 2006. Structural analogy and universal grammar. Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo and Patrick Honeybone, eds. 2006. Linguistic knowledge: perspectives from phonology and from syntax. (Lingua 116.5 special issue). 601-633.
- This paper is concerned with the structural analogy assumption (SAA), the assumption that the same structural properties recur on the different grammatical planes, where a plane is characterised by its distinctive alphabet of basic elements. The discussion adopts the traditional biplanar assumption. Part of the interest of the SAA involves instances of failure of the prediction to be fulfilled: the SAA retains its interest only if such failures can be shown to be systematically related to independently established differences between the planes concerned. Similar considerations hold within planes, and prompt the question: to what extent do different structural properties, including in this instance parts of the alphabet, recur in domains which can be differentiated on other grounds? X-bar theory (Jackendoff 1977, etc.), for instance, is in the first instance a manifestation of intra-planar application of a particular analogy: if its implementation in different (nominal, verbal, adjectival, …) domains is imperfectly parallel, this raises interesting questions concerning what other differences there are between these categorially identified domains, differences which may explain discrepancies – and (at least in part) save the analogy. Some intra-planar manifestations of the SAA have also been applied trans-planarly, as with the constructional relation of dependency in Notional Grammar and Dependency Phonology or with the ‘transfer’ of X-bar and the government relation to phonology. Against this background the paper considers (a) some proposed analogies and (b) some failures of analogy, with a view to trying to illustrate its fruitfulness for our understanding of linguistic structure.
- 21 pages, 284kb
Autor:
Anderson, John M.
Jahr:
2 002
Bereich:
DP
Papers PDF:
