As a notion in linguisticPart I

The History of the Phrase

The PhraseToday phrases are an essential and

undeniable truthHornstein, Nunes and Grohmann:

F4: Words are composed into units with hierarchical structure i.e. phrases.

Given this, they should have been discovered a long time ago

So when did linguists start referring to phrases?

Brief Overview of the History of LinguisticsThe history of linguistic investigation goes

back more than 2500 years:Before 600 BCE Indian linguistics

only ‘discovered’ in Europe many centuries laterSocrates (469-399 BCE),

one of the first to write on Greek linguisticsonly through secondary sources (e.g. Plato 428-348)

Study of Latin, Arabic and Hebrew after Greek

Other European languages only in late Middle Ages

Indian LinguisticsStarted as a way of preserving an

understanding and correct pronunciation of Vedic SanskritChanged over the centuries (as languages

do)Was the language of the scriptures and of

religious ritualsWanted to maintaine an understanding and

correct pronunciation of Vedic for religious purposes

So they started to write grammars

PaniniOne of the most important of the Indian

LinguistsNot because he was one of the earliest

His grammar was written sometime between 500 and 300 BCE

But because it is the most extensiveContains nearly 4000 rules

And because of it’s remarkable advanced natureIt contained notions not found in western linguistics until

the 20th centuryThe phonemeNull phonemesFormal rulesRule ordering

The Nature of SanskritSanskrit was a highly inflecting language

A lot of Case and agreement morphologyWord order was much freer than in

languages like EnglishRaamah pustakam pathati

Ram books readsRaamah pathati pustakamPustakam Raamah pathatiPustakam pathati RaamahPathati Raamah pustakamPathati pustakam Raamah

What did Panini say? Not surprising that most of the grammar is

about phonology and morphologyHad very little to say about syntax

Phrase Structure Rules?According to Kiparsky Panini’s grammar contained

rules like:A AA /C _ D

‘A’ becomes ‘AA’ in the context of a preceding ‘C’ and a following ‘D’

This looks very similar to a phrase structure rule:S NP VP

‘S’ is made up of an ‘NP’ followed by a ‘VP’But

This is not Panini’s representation of this rule – it’s Kiparsky’s

It isn’t a phrase structure rule, but a morphological oneIt is a reduplication rule

A is reduplicated (AA) in a certain context

Why Panini didn’t discover the phraseAlthough very advanced, it understandably

concentrated on the most obvious aspectsMorphology – because there are many forms of

many wordsPhonlogy – because the written system had a

phonetic base (unlike Chinese)Because of the free word order, syntax was not

so obviousBecause Indian grammarians studied no other

languagesdidn’t compare Sanskrit to other systems and so

couldn’t notice patterns in syntactic phenomena

GreekAncient Greek was a written language over 1400

BCEMycenaeans - Linear B

Based on the Minoan syllabic systemWasn’t ideal for Greek and we still can’t work out how this

early version of Greek soundedThe first written system was forgotten until about

900 BCEThen a new written system was developed

Based on Phoenician scriptPhonetic representation – more suited to Greek

pronunciationDeveloped over the yearsNow is the basis of most European written systems

We can therefore assume that the Greeks were interested in their language (at least phonetic aspects of it) from about this time

Greek Language PhilosophersSocrates (469-399 BCE)

No written records of anything that Socrates saidWe have the reports of other Greek philosophers

(e.g. Plato)Unclear whether these accurately portray Socrates' ideas

or whether they portray Plato’s ideas

Plato (428-348) also had things of his own to say about language

Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) furthered these ideasThe Stoics (310 – 50 BCE) probably gave the

most thorough treatment

What the Greeks had to sayGreek linguistics was bound up in Greek

philosophyMathematics; Physics; Astronomy; Biology; Ethics;Logic (study of ‘valid arguments’); Rhetoric (the

study of persuasive speaking); Epistemology (the study of understanding)

E.g. whether words derive in nature or are man made?the nature of objects themselves are the origin of

wordsman gave names to objects randomly

Obviously these sorts of questions are not likely to reveal much about syntactic structure

Specific Greek Ideas on LanguagePhonetics, but only to the extent that it involved

the written systemNo written system is purely phonetic and so what they

had to say on the subject was not particularly interesting

Semantics, but more as a part of logicDistinguished subject and predicate from a semantic

point of view, but didn’t realise that this had any realisation in the sentence

Plato was first to split sentence into two major elements: onoma (noun) subjectrhema (verb) predicate

Words, not phrases identified morphologically

They were interested in words and their ontologyled to questions of categories

Specific Greek Ideas on LanguageThey were interested in sentences and

their functionsdeclaratives, interrogatives, imperatives

Not so much in their formsThey were interested in morphology

created paradigms of all the different forms of types of word

And terms for these forms

The Nature of GreekIt is not surprising that the Greeks were not

so interested in syntaxGreek, like Sanskrit, was highly inflectional

and had free word orderThe obvious aspects of the language were

morphological and not syntacticStudied just one language (Greek)Their philosophical interests lead them in a

different direction

On SubordinationPlato identified two basic elements (words)

of the sentenceGreeks also knew other words were

subordinate to theseIs this the beginning of the phrase?Today subordination = something is part of

somethingGreek notion more like ranks in the Army

Captains are subordinate to GeneralsDoesn’t mean that captains are part of generalsHierarchy – but not constituent structure

DependencyX is subordinate to Y = X depends on Y

Dependency marked morphologically (i.e. By agreement)Not semantically – meaning was the domain of logic,

not linguisticsFree word order meant that there was no

compulsion to see this relationship in terms of phrase structure

LatinThe Romans impressed by Greek intellectualism

encouraged the Greeks to continue their studiesStudy of Latin very much influence by Greek

linguisticsMost attempted to make what the Greeks said fit

LatinLatin similar to GreekBut not the same as Greek

categories and terms did not fit perfectly

This dependency on Greek linguistics meant that the Romans did not produce much innovation

PriscianPriscian (500 CE): one of the most influential

grammars of Latin basis of the study of Latin even after the fall of the

empireAlmost entirely based on Thrax’s (170 – 90 BCE)

Greek grammarThrax’s grammar did not even mention syntaxPriscian had 2 volumes on it

Nothing of interest in these chapterscontained rather dubious philosophical arguments

o Latin is basically S V because existence precedes actionsHe did mention the notion of a subordinate clause

But again, the use of subordination was that of the Greeks rather than the modern linguistic one

The Middle AgesThe middle ages starts with the fall of the

Roman Empire and ends with the start of the Renaissance

From a linguistic point of view we can split it into two partsScholasticism

Not particularly interesting – mostly based on Priscian grammar

Speculative GrammarMore innovative – the start of the study of other

languages

ScolasticismThe main idea to bring all knowledge under

one (Christian) frameworkIt strongly rejected ‘pagan’ Greek learningLatin became a lingua franca

Most linguistic work = producing Lain grammars for teaching

Ironically this maintained Greek influencebased on Priscian grammar, which itself was

based on Thrax

Speculative GrammarInterests in other languages than Latin

started to gather strengthThrough influence of Arabic linguistics from

Moors in Spain(influenced by Aristotelian ideas)

Through influence of Hebrew linguistics from Biblical studies

Perhaps because of this, more emphasis was put on syntax

Speculative grammarians first to unify syntactic and semantic notions of subject and predicate

Thomas of Erfurt (1310)Socrates albus currit benne

Socrates white runs well“white Socrates runs well”

‘albus’ is dependent on ‘Socrates’ and ‘benne’ is dependent on ‘currit’

Does this mean subject made up of ‘Socrates albus’ and a predicate made up of ‘currit benne’?i.e. phrase structure analysis?

But he took the meaning of dependency to be the traditional one“one part of a construction stands to another either

as depending on it or satisfying its dependency”

Thomas of Erfurt (1310)Also took Greek idea that dependency is based on

morphologyverb agrees with subject, so verb is dependent on

subjectTherefore the subject is the main element of the

sentenceSocrates

albus currit benne

Very different analysis to modern phrase structure based one

There is no evidence here of the notion of a phrase

The Renaissance (starting 14th C)The Renaissance was both forward and

backward lookingRevived interest in classical studies (Greek)Rejected current wisdom

Rise of the idea of nation more emphasis placed on national languages and less on the lingua franca

Surprisingly not much innovative thinking from a linguistic point of viewMost attempted to force the analysis of national

languages into the framework of Priscian who had already tried to force the analysis of Latin into the

framework of Thrax!

Port Royal GrammariansOne group of Renaissance linguists did have some

interesting ideas about syntaxConnect syntax to meaning unfortunately

rather than the traditional (Greek) view that morphology was its basis

the start of the ‘notional definition’ of categories (a noun is a name, etc.)

More interestingly, developed a new view of subordinationSubordination is a superficial representation of

independent constructs:The invisible God created the visible world God is invisible. God created the world. The world is visible.

This view necessarily precludes the idea of phrases the complex sentence is not made up of connected

elements, but of independent simple ideas.

Comparative LinguisticsDuring the Renaissance more languages than

ever before came to be studiedBut not much thought about possible

connections between languagesAssumed system devised by the Greeks was

applicable to other languages, it was Not assumed that other languages had

developed from GreekThere had been several theories, from Biblical

sources, that held that European languages all descended from a single parent language

Scythian HypothesisAccording to the Bible, God made everyone

speak different languages after the tower of Babel incident

But, then the flood killed everyone, except for Noah and his family

Legend has it that Noah’s son, Japheth, was the father of Europe he spoke a language from which all European

languages have descendedThis language, apparently, was called

Scythian (Goropoius 1569)Scythian died out a long time ago

Confirming the Scythian HypothesisOnce enough attention had been turned to

European languages, it started to be noted that there were similarities between them

Furthermore, regularities in the differences between languages could be noted

These mainly concerned the forms of words:Latin English

piscesfishpede footpater fatherpinna featherpugnam fight

So it seemed that the Scythian Hypothesis could be correct. Throughout the 17th century it gained popularity

Indian linguistics comes to EuropeThe Indian linguistic tradition had been known about

in Europe since the 1500sWalter (1733) added Sanskrit to Scythian family

real interest in the Indian tradition startedComparative Linguistics virtually swept all other

linguistic interests awayThe notion of the Indo European language family

really took offOn a scientific basis more than a religious one

It had been thought that Hungarian was not an Indo European language since the early 18th Century, 1770 Sajnovics - Hungarian and Lapp are related and 1799 Gyármathi - Hungarian and Finnish are from the

same family

NeogrammariansTowards the end of the 1800s a group of

particularly aggressive young linguists in Germany dominated linguistics

They criticised previous comparative linguistics for being too wishy-washy

Believed that sound laws should be inviolablelaws that govern how languages change over

time and hence can be related to common ancestors

if there were exceptions to these laws, they cannot have been stated right

Why Comparative Linguistics did not discover the phraseThe main focus of the comparativists was on the

lexiconeasy to collect and compare vocabularies of languages

to discover similarities and patterns in differencesnot easy to do the same with syntactic phenomena

Some languages have free word order, others have more fixed orders

Some languages have basic SVO organisation, others VSO or SOV

These things don’t seem to have much of a connectionTherefore, not much attention was paid to syntactic

phenomena, no surprise that no new discoveries were made in the

area for the nearly 200 years that comparative linguistics dominated the study of language

European StructuralistsThe dominance of comparative linguistics

was finally broken Ferdinand de Saussure’s ‘A course in

general linguistics’ published 1916 three year after his death

This ushered in a period known as StructuralismA hopeful title, from our perspective

What Structuralists BelieveThe elements that make up a language

form a system which can only be understood in terms of each otherThe elements are signs

An arbitrary link between form and meaningThe meaning of the signs is dependent on

the meaning of other signs in the systemThe 8.25 to Paris

Did the Structuralists discover phrase structure?Unfortunately not

Like the comparativists, the structuralists were concerned more with wordsTheir pronunciation (the Prague school)Their meaning

Saussure had virtually nothing to say about syntax as we conceive of it today

ConclusionFrom the beginnings of the study of language

Prior to 600 BCETo the Structuralist period in Europe

Until after the 2nd World WarNo one came up with the notion of a phraseReasons

The languages which were studied initially did not make syntactic discoveries easy

The later study of other languages were concerned with applying old ideas to new situations, rather than being innovative

The interests of the times (philosophical issues, language families, languages as systems) were more easily satisfied through looking at words

As a notion in linguisticsPart II

The History of the Phrase

Linguistics in the USA before 19th CSpecifically American linguistics is a relatively new

thingPreviously American linguists were doing European

linguistics (especially Indo-European based Comparative linguistics)

America has a wealth of its own languages (Amerindian)But until the late 1800s there was little intellectual

interest in these culturesAmericans were interested in expanding their own European

based culture and the native populations were a hindranceThe European attitude towards native peoples of the Americas

had been one of cultural imperialism from the startSo linguistic efforts were always geared to teaching the

natives European languages rather than learning theirs

Boas: the father of American linguisticsFranz Boas (1858-1942) was a German

anthropologistHe started as a physicist and geographer

became deeply interested in Amerindian culture on an expedition to Canada

Moved to America in 1887He saw the study of Amerindian cultures and

languages as urgent as they were fast disappearingmany had already died out

Devised ‘field methods’ to train linguistic students so they could rapidly form grammatical descriptions without having to learn the language

Discovery ProceduresBoas’ discovery procedures were a set of tools

linguists could apply to discover the grammar of a language

The best known of these are based on the notion of distributionThe minimal pair test

If two sounds appearing in the same context produce different words then they are distinct sounds (= phonemes) [khæt] – [phæt] [kh] and [ph] are distinctive [phæt] – *[pæt][ph] and [p] are not

In cases where sounds are in complementary distribution, they are non-distinctive [spæt] – *[sphæt]

This is different to the case where a sound is not part of a language *[Xæt], *[sXæt],

Boas’ Philosophical AssumptionsBoas was a believer in cultural relativity

Against the idea that cultures pass through stages of development with Western culture as the highest

Cultures cannot be evaluated against one another as higher or lower

Cultures develop their own ideas from which they view the world and thus cannot be compared on any external measure

To understand a culture you need to study it from its own position

Linguistic RelativityHumboldt (1767-1835)

Inner form of a languageLanguages don’t necessarily differ in the concepts they can

expressThey differ in how they combine concepts in order to view

the worldBoas combined Humboldt’s inner form with

cultural relativity in ‘linguistic relativity’The belief that we cannot make generalisations

about a language based on what we learn of another languageGoes against European linguistic tradition since the Greeks

Linguists must study a language in its own termsHence discovery procedures

Implies that languages can vary without limitSupported by the fact that Amerindian languages seemed

very different from European langauges

Boas ReprieveLinguistic Relativity

Languages can only be studied in their own terms

Discovery ProceduresThere are methods we can apply to discover

the units that languages make use ofHowever, Boas did not discover the phrase

BloomfieldLeonard Bloomfield (1988-1949) was the founder

of American StructuralismBut he wasn’t always a structuralistHe trained in Germany under the NeogrammariansHe became very impressed by the Wilhelm Wundt

(1832-1920)Wundt is said to be the father of experimental

psychologyHis aim was to make psychology scientificHe used introspection

Bloomfield wanted to make Linguistics more scientific

Bloomfield and BoasBloomfield was also influenced by Boas

Particularly in terms of linguistic relativity and the use of discovery procedures

Bloomfield 1914His influences from Boas and Wundt were

brought together in his short book An Introduction to the Study of Language (1914)This became a popular course book for

linguistics in AmericaIt contained chapters on all aspects of

linguistics, including syntaxIt contained the word ‘phrase’ twice

Both times referring to what we would call an idiom

Clearly at this time he did not know about phrases

Bloomfield and StructuralismIn the1910s, Wundt became heavily

criticised for his methodsIntrospection was not really scientific

Bloomfield needed something else to base his linguistic science on

In 1923 he published a seemingly positive review of Saussure’s workThis book still had no mention of the phrase

But even then, it was apparent that he had replaced Wundt with Behaviourism

BehaviourismBehaviourist Psychology took an extreme

empiricist stanceTo account for human behaviour all one needed was

to directly connectThe environment (stimuli)The subsequent behaviour (response)

There is no need to refer to unobservable things like ‘mind’

Behaviourism in Linguistics is a bit trickyThere is plenty of stuff that we cannot directly

observeBloomfield thought it was possible

If every abstract level was ultimately based on what is observable – sound

Phonetics phonology morphology syntax

Bloomfield’s LinguisticsIn 1933 Bloomfield rewrote his earlier textbook in

a much enlarged version LanguageIn this book the chapter on Syntax concerns itself

with constituent structureThe term phrase is used to mean a constituent

Therefore we know that the notion of the phrase was introduced at some point between 1914 and 1933, probably in the 1920s

The origins are a combination of:Bloomfield’s empiricismHis application of discovery procedures

Phone phoneme morpheme word phrase sentence

Bloomfield on PhrasesThe chapter on syntax is not very long It is rather superficial

Containing a few not very detailed examples Poor John

And no attempt at representationSome discussion of the notion ‘head’ of phrase

Head is defined distributionally A head is a word which has the same distribution as the phrase

Endocentric phrases have heads Poor John John

Exocentric phrases don’t have heads In the park; if John ran away

But the man doesn’t have a head by this definition the man has the same distribution as poor John, so they are of

the same category So the head does not determine the category of the phrase –

unlike current view

Open, closed and partially closed phrasesAn open phrase is something that can be added

to and still be the same type of phrase:students – interesting students – these interesting

studentsA closed phrase cannot be added to without

changing into another phrasethese interesting students – * polite these

interesting students – saw these interesting studentsA partially closed phrase can be added to, but not

by everything that could be added to an open phraseblack dogs – big black dogs – the big black dogsbig dogs – * black big dogs

This is not very illuminatingJust gives names to phenomena without explaining it

Neo-BloomfieldiansAfter Bloomfield’s death (1949) his

students carried on his workZellig Harris (1909-1992), Charles Hockett

(1916-2000)Hockett gave more detail to the Immediate

Constituent AnalysisHarris formalised the system to a greater

extent

HockettHockett’s A Course in Modern Linguistics

(1958) contains 3 detailed chapters on the Immediate Constituent (IC) analysis

It is interesting to go into detail about these ideas as they show that Hockett’s view of the phrase is not the same as today’s

Like Bloomfield, he used distributional devices to define syntactic notions such as ‘head’With the same problems

He did try to represent structureThough he said this was not important in itself –

just useful for linguists

Chinese Box representationHockett represented structure like this

This representation allows things that is not allowed in current phrase structure diagrams (trees)

Disappearance of elementsMarkers – add no meaning

Discontinuous ConstituentsConstituents split by material which is

not part of them

The Start of Modern PhrasesChomsky (1928- ) was a student of Harris

during the 1950s1957 Syntactic Structures

A small book for computer science studentsContained his own version of the Structuralist

IC analysisPhrase Structure Grammar

This was a ‘straw man’Designed to show what Chomsky thought was wrong

with the IC analysis

Phrase Structure GrammarMade up of rewrite rules, e.g.

S NP VPVP V NP

These produce phrase structures, represenatable as a tree

This is now how we conceive of a phrasePhrases have positions inside other structuresPhrases have structures of their own

How do phrases differ from ICsIt is impossible to have discontinuous

constituents in a phrase structure grammarRewrite rules concern mothers, daughters

and sistersS NP VP

S is the mother of NP and VPNP and VP are daughters of SNP and VP are sisters

Mothers and daughters stand in a dominance relation

Sisters stand in a precedence relation

Discontinuous constituents and crossing branchesA structure with discontinuous constituents

must contain crossing branches

This involves a precedence relation between Aux and NPThese are not sistersNP is the great aunt of AuxPhrase structure rules do not refer to

grandmothers, aunts, great aunts, etc. and so cannot produce these structures

Why is there a difference?The structuralists did not adopt a restrictive

theory of phrasesThe Chinese box representation placed very few

limitations on what could be representedEven if there were things that were difficult to

represent, this would not have matteredRepresentations were not important – only tools for the

convenience of the linguistChomsky’s PSGs are restrictive theories of

phrase structureThere are clearly things that they cannot do

(restricted)The representations come directly from the theory

(rules) and so are important for making the restrictions obvious

Was Chomsky right to criticise ICs?PSGs were a straw man – meant to be knocked

downPSG and IC analysis were clearly not exactly the

sameBut the structuralists had no theory

So they were immune from criticismBut at the same time, they made no real claims

In order to see the problems with the IC analysis, Chomsky was forced to invent the theory

One of his points was that the lack of formal theories of language is one of the weaknesses of linguistic investigation since the classical periodWith the exception of Panini

ConclusionThe notion of a phrase first came into being in the 1920s

If the history of the study of Language were put into 1 hour, the phrase would have been discovered less than 15 seconds ago

It probably developed out of two ideasRadical empiricismDiscovery procedures

Everything must be based on what is observable and can be discovered by observing the distribution of elements at various linguistic levels

Bloomfield didn’t really develop the notion much beyond the basics

Hockett went into more detail and tried to represent itChomsky introduced the current view in the 1950s

Differs from the original view Based on phrase structure rules More restrictive

As a notion in linguisticsPart III

The History of the Phrase

Are phrases a linguistic fact?Today, most syntacticians assume the existence

of the phraseA lot of them think of this as unquestionable

It has been demonstrated beyond doubtIt is so obvious

But in empirical science, nothing should be beyond doubtAll facts are theory dependentProof is impossible

In order to see how viable the assumption of phrases is we must review evidence for and against them

Evidence for the existence of phrasesThere are three types of argument that

have been put forward to support the assumption of the phraseArguments that descriptions based on non-

(phrase)structural grounds are inadequateTheoretical arguments that phrases are

necessaryEmpirical evidence for the existence of

phrases

Arguments against non-phrase based descriptionsChomsky (1957) demonstrated that a grammar

that did not assume phrases could not account for syntactic phenomena

Finite State GrammarRepresents a network of ‘states’ connected to each

otherThe grammar travels from one state to another as it

parses a sentenceThe sentence is grammatical if the grammar enters

the final state at the same time as parsing the last word of the sentence

Two things allow the grammar to move from one state to anotherConditions on the stateThe word of the sentence currently being parsed

An example of a FSG

SI is the initial state, SF is the final stateFrom SI the grammar can move to S1 or S2

If the first word is a determiner, it moves to S1If the first word is a proper noun, it moves to S2

From S1, it can move to S1 (if the next word is an adjective = recursion) or S2 (if it is a noun)

From S2 it can move to SF if the next word is a verb

Sentences this FSG can parseJohn leftThe boy leftThe old man leftThe old confused man leftEtc.

What a FSG can’t doEmbedding

Sentences can be part of sentencesThe man [who John met] left

Two ways to account for thisAfter the noun we add a further set of states

which allows another sentence to be parsedWe allow the network to recurs back to the

initial state

Including sentence networks inside sentence networks

But this reduplicates exactly the same network

There can be an infinite number of embedded sentence, so the grammar would have to be infinitely big

Recursing to SI

This uses the same network again, so it is better than the other idea

But it won’t work as the final state will be arrived at too soonThe man who John met (end of sentence)How can we get the final verb?

Conclusion on Finite State GrammarsThis is just one problem faced by a Finite

State GrammarThere are many othersThey are not adequate models for parsing

human languages

Arguments for the necessity of phrasesChomsky has argued that phrases are necessary

because all syntactic processes are dependent on phrase structure

E.g. Auxiliary inversionThe man is being watched is the man being watchedTake the first auxiliary and move it in front of the subjectBut

The man who is tall is being watched * is the man who tall is being watched

The reason this doesn’t work is that the auxiliary that moves must be the one of the main clause, not any embedded clause

Thus the process is sensitive to the structure of the sentence

Empirical Arguments for PhrasesBoas’ discovery procedures are still in common

use as a way to determine phrase structure (distribution tests, pronominalisation test, coordination test, etc)

The tests may be turned round and used as evidence for the existence of phrasesIf there were no phrases, why do the tests work?

John ran up the hill John ran up a bill John ran there * John ran thereUp the hill, John ran * Up a bill, John ran John ran up the hill and * John ran up a

bill anddown the road up a debt

How good are these arguments?FSGs are in adequate for modelling human

languageBut FSGs are not the only non-phrase based grammar

Other models do not suffer the same problems

Structure based processesIt is clear that syntactic phenomena are limited by

something that is not simply linearBut that doesn’t mean they must be limited by phrase

structureEmpirical evidence

Certainly shows somethingBut if it can be accounted for without phrases, it isn’t

an argument for phrases

Against the phraseThe phrase developed out of 2 structuralist ideas

Radical empiricismDiscovery procedures

Chomsky has been severely critical the American Structuralist movementThe empiricist stance is not scientific

Behaviourism involves after the fact explanations How do we know what any instance of human behaviour

is a response to – given a situation, a person in principle might say anything

It cannot account for certain facts How can children learn language

There is no reason to believe that there should be discovery proceduresThere are no discovery procedures employed in any other

scienceWe get our data from wherever we can get it

The big questionIf Chomsky is dismissive of empiricism and

discovery procedures, why did he accept phrase structure which followed from these?

Non-structure based theoriesDependency Grammar

Similar to traditional view of subordinationUsually semantically based, not morphological

Always one word which is not dependentAll other words are dependent

Not very good at accounting forword orderIn principle any word order

would be possibleNo reason why branches shouldn’t cross

Absolute vs. Relative linearityA FSG organises sentences in an absolute linear

wayThere is a first position followed by a second

position, etc.But linear order can be relative

A is in front of BC is in front of B C D A B or C A D B or A C D B, etcD follows C

As there are a choice of possible orders, we need some way to choose which one of them is the best

Optimality Theory is a way to determine the best of a set of alternatives

Optimality TheoryWe start with an inputWe generate a number of possible candidate

expressionsWe evaluated the candidates against set

conditionsConstraints

Constraints areConflicting (nothing can satisfy them all)Ranked (in the case of conflict the higher ranked

one is adhered to)The candidate which best satisfies the set of

constraints is optimal (grammatical)

How it works

Does this answer criticisms?Embedding

Assuming that the input is a dependency arrangementOrdering of words done with respect to dependent

wordsThe man who John met leftLeft – manMan – theMan – metMet – John, who

The same conditions will be relevant for both the main clause and the embedded one, so there is no redundancy

All words will find there position in the sentence with respect to the words they are dependent on

Structure dependency of linguistic processesAgain, the dependency relations in the

input are enough to determine the relevant information without phrasesThe man who is tall is being watched

Is – tall...Tall – man...Man – watched...Is – watched this is the auxiliary that

inverts

Empirical evidencePhrases

Have distributionCan be pronominalisedCan be coordinated

Distribution Words are ordered with respect to the

words the are dependent on the dependent word will appear wherever the

superordinate word appears:The man likes Mary

Man is subject – in front of verbDeterminer is in front of noun

Mary likes the manMan is object – behind verbDeterminer is in front of noun

Thus they will behave like a unit even if the grammar does not define them as suchThe phrase is an epiphenomenon

PronominalisationPronouns stand instead of nouns

They are positioned by the same constraints (as subjects, etc.)

Pronouns cannot be modified, nouns canTherefore nouns can have more

dependentsThe pronoun seems to replace more than

the nounPhrases are epiphenomena

CoordinationWords of the same type can be coordinatedSome of these words will have dependentsThese dependents will be positioned with

respect to themThe coordinated words will be positioned

with respect to the coordinationJohn and the tall woman

And – John, womanWoman – the, tall

This gives the appearance that what is being coordinated is bigger than wordsPhrases are epiphenomena

Which is better:a theory with phrases or without?Too soon to decideBut the issue is in danger of not being

addressedToo many linguists have dismissed

phraseless theoriesThey are not being investigated

So we are not discovering what they are capable of

ConclusionThe phrase is a relatively modern notion

First introduced in the 1920s and developed in the 1950s

Since its introduction syntacticians have enthusiastically embraced itTo the detriment of the opposite assumption

Real linguistic theory started after the 1950sSo phraseless theories have not really been

exploredThough the assumption that sentences are organised

without phrases is a much older ideaUntil such investigation takes place, we will

never really know whether phrases are a necessary part of human languages