Research in Syntax

Activities
Staff members
PhD students
External collaborators
Selected publications

Activities

The Syntax group consists of researchers working in the field of generative grammar. Richard Hudson's work is in dependency grammar, while that of Annabel Cormack, Ad Neeleman, Neil Smith and Hans van de Koot is in the general framework of the minimalist program. Michael Brody's work is in elegant syntax, a framework not unrelated to but different in various ways from this program. PhD students are integrated within the research group and participate in regular meetings of the Minimalist Reading Group and the Word Grammar Discussion Group.

Michael Brody's work over the last 6 years has focused on the framework of elegant syntax where "perfection" is taken to be equivalent to theoretical elegance. No imperfections are countenanced and/or rationalized as forced by external systems or by any other consideration. While imperfections are not unexpected, they are taken to be just that: problems or mysteries for future research to resolve. Currently the main subtheories of elegant syntax include mirror theory (a theory of syntactic representations), bare checking theory, and the distributed theory of chains. The approach dispenses with economy conditions and with the widely assumed architectural representational-derivational duplications.

Over the last ten years Annabel Cormack and Neil Smith have been developing a radically revised theory of the human language faculty. Their point of departure is a version of Chomsky's 'Minimalist Programme', but with a number of modifications. First, they have elaborated detailed proposals on the correct allocation of responsibilities as between syntax, semantics and pragmatics - an area that Chomsky himself largely ignores. For instance, they claim (Cormack & Smith, 2000b) to have demonstrated that fronting constructions, such as Nothing must the baby eat, rely for their correct interpretation not on the semantics of a specific syntactic Focusing head, but on the pragmatically driven exploitation of semantic structure.

Second, they have suggested several basic revisions to the technical machinery of the theory. In standard Minimalism there are two operations - Merge and Move - which jointly account for the possible syntactic configurations displayed by natural languages. In contradistinction to this, they have argued that the 'displacement' property of language (whereby constituents are interpreted in a place other than where they are heard, such as Fred was elected) does not require the traditional appeal to 'movement'. An alternative treatment of this phenomenon, exploiting a blend of Minimalism and Combinatorial Categorial Grammar, also leads them to propose that Merge is mediated by 'combinators' which are present in the syntax.

Most radically (see Cormack 1999), they do away with the notion 'Specifier' (a cover term for an unnatural class of entities, including 'subject' and some modifiers, but additionally operating as a landing site for moved phrases). They do this by using two-place operators in syntax as well as in semantics, and insisting that all merge is licensed by selection. They have already published about a dozen articles, and have long-term plans to complete a monograph.

Richard Hudson is still (after more than 20 years) developing the theory called Word Grammar. This includes a non-Chomskyan theory of syntax whose main pillars are dependency structure and multiple default inheritance, and which has been applied in some detail to English. He teaches undergraduates how to apply this grammar to free texts so that they can analyse almost all the words in any text, and many of them have applied the same theory on a small scale to other languages. However the theory goes well beyond syntax to embrace morphology, lexical relationships, lexical and compositional semantics and sociolinguistic patterns. According to WG, language is a network, a sub-network of the total cognitive network whose boundaries are neither clear nor important.

Ad Neeleman’s research has focused mainly on the way in which grammatical relations such as ‘subject of’ and ‘object of’ are structurally encoded. The general claim, worked out in some detail in Complex Predicates and in Flexible Syntax, a monograph with Fred Weerman (Utrecht University), is that there is a range of possible configurations in which grammatical relations can be established. The choice between these is a matter of interface conditions. Current work deals partly with the formal properties of syntax that make it flexible (in cooperation with Hans van de Koot, see below), and partly with the way the syntax interacts with syntax-external systems (in cooperation with Peter Ackema (Utrecht University)).

Peter Ackema & Ad Neeleman argue that a number of apparently syntactic phenomena should in fact be explained through the interaction between two competing structure-generating systems (syntax and morphology) and their mapping to phonology. The account offers new insights into the nature and effects of affixation and addresses paradoxes involving particle verbs, phrases embedded in words and context-sensitive spell-out rules. Some of this work is based on Optimality Theory as developed by Alan Prince (Rutgers University) and Paul Smolensky (Johns Hopkins).

Hans van de Koot has worked on the grammar-parser relation and the computational complexity of natural language recognition problems. His recent work has been concerned with the question whether the properties of grammatical dependencies, such as movement, can be derived from more primitive properties of natural language syntax. This line of work has led to collaboration with Ad Neeleman on a project which is entirely devoted to this question (see below).

Ad Neeleman and Hans van de Koot have developed a radical version of bare phrase structure, which derives fundamental properties of grammatical dependencies from a small set of syntactic primitives. The basic problem they address is that standard views of grammatical dependencies are incompatible with inclusiveness (the idea that properties of non-terminal nodes are fully recoverable from the structure they dominate). Decomposing grammatical dependencies into a copy operation and an operation of function satisfaction reconciles their existence with inclusiveness and explains shared properties, such as c-command. The approach has recently been extended to a bare phrase structure analysis of resultatives.


Staff members


PhD students


External collaborators


Selected publications

Several of the publications below and many others may be downloaded from the web pages of the relevant staff members. We also have a searchable database of staff publications.

Ackema, Peter, and Ad Neeleman (2000) M-Selection and Phrasal Affixation. In C. Iten and A. Neeleman (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12, pp. 307-342.

Ackema, Peter and Ad Neeleman (2001). 'Competition between Syntax and Morphology'. In J. Grimshaw, G. Legendre and S. Vikner (eds.) Optimality-Theoretic Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. pp. 29-60.

Brody, M. (1995). Lexico-Logical Form, a Radically Minimalist Theory. MIT Press.

Brody, M. (1997). 'Towards Perfect Chains'. In L. Haegeman (ed) Elements of Syntax. Kluwer.

Brody, M. (1998). 'Projection and Phrase Structure'. Linguistic Inquiry 29.3, 367-398.

Brody, M. (1998). 'The Minimalist Program and a Perfect Syntax'. Mind and Language, 205-214.

Brody, M. (1999). 'Word Order, Restructuring and Mirror Theory'. In Peter Svenonius (ed) The Derivation of VO and OV. John Benjamins, pp. 27-43.

Brody, M. (1999). 'Relating Syntactic Elements'. Syntax 2, 210-226.

Brody, M. (2000). 'Mirror Theory: Syntactic Representation in Perfect Syntax'. Linguistic Inquiry 31.1, pp. 29-56.

Brody, M. (2000). 'On the Status of Derivations and Representations'. UCL Working Papers. To appear in Samuel Epstein and Daniel Seely (eds) Derivational Explanation. Blackwell.

Brody, M. (2001). 'One More Time'. Syntax 4, pp. 126-138.

Cormack, A. (1989/1998) Definitions: Implications for Syntax, Semantics and the Language of Thought. New York, Garland.

Cormack, A. (1999) 'Without specifiers'. In D. Adger, S. Pintzuk, B. Plunkett & G. Tsoulas (eds) Specifiers: Minimalist Approaches. Oxford, OUP, pp. 46-68.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (1996) 'Checking theory: features, functional heads and checking-parameters'. In P. Backley and J. Harris (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 8, pp. 243-281.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (1997) 'Checking features and split signs'. In P. Backley and J. Harris (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9, pp. 223-252.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (1998) 'Negation, polarity and V positions in English'. In J. Harris and C. Iten (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 10, pp. 285-322.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (1999a) 'Why are depictives different from resultatives?' In C. Iten and A. Neeleman (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 11:251-284.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (1999b) 'Where is a sign merged?' Glot International 4,6: 21.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (2000a) 'Head movement and negation in English'. Transactions of the Philological Society 98, pp. 49-85.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (2000b) 'Fronting: The syntax and pragmatics of 'focus' and 'topic''. In C. Iten and A. Neeleman (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12, pp. 387-416.

Cormack, A. and N. Smith (in press) 'Modals and negation in English'. In S. Barbiers & F. Beukema (eds) Modality in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.

Doetjes, Jenny, Ad Neeleman and Hans van de Koot (1999). Degree Expressions. Ms. UCL.

Hudson, R. (1997) 'The rise of auxiliary DO: Verb-non-raising or category-strengthening?', Transactions of the Philological Society 95, 41-72.

Hudson, R. (1998) English Grammar. London: Routledge.

Hudson, R. (1999) 'Teaching grammar is dead - NOT!' In Rebecca Wheeler (ed) Language Alive in the Classroom. Westport: Greenwood, pp. 101-112.

Hudson, R. (1999) 'Subject-verb agreement in English'. English Language and Linguistics 3, pp. 173-207.

Hudson, R. (2000) '*I amn't'. Language 76, pp. 297-323.

Hudson, R. (2000) 'Grammar Without Functional Categories'. In Robert Borsley (ed) The Nature and Function of Syntactic Categories. New York: Academic Press, pp. 7-35.

Hudson, R. (2000) 'Gerunds and multiple default inheritance'. In C. Iten and A. Neeleman (eds) UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12, pp. 303-335.

Hudson, R. (2000) 'Language as a cognitive network'. In H.G. Simonsen and R.T. Endresen (eds) A Cognitive Approach to the Verb. Morphological and Constructional Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hudson, R. (2000) 'Discontinuity'. Traitement Automatique des Langues, pp. 15-56.

Neeleman, Ad and Fred Weerman (1998). Flexible Syntax; A Theory of Case and Arguments. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Kluwer, Dordrecht.

Neeleman, Ad and Hans van de Koot (1999) The Configurational Matrix. Ms. UCL. To appear in Linguistic Inquiry.

Neeleman, Ad and Hans van de Koot (2001) Bare Resultatives (draft version). Ms. UCL.

Neeleman, Ad and Hans van de Koot (2001).Syntactic Haplology. Ms. UCL. (draft version)

Smith, N. (1999) $. Glot International. 4,7: 7.

Smith, N. and A. Cormack (2000) 'Aspects of the Grammar-Pragmatics Interface: Indeterminacy, Iconicity and Interpretation'. Paper presented at the Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, April, 2000 (to appear in the Proceedings).

Van de Koot, Hans (1995). 'The Computational Complexity of Natural Language Recognition'. Lingua 97, pp. 37-80.