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Morphological Agreement in Minimalist Grammars

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Formal Grammar (FG 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10686))

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Abstract

Minimalist Grammars provide a useful tool for modeling natural language syntax by defining grammar fragments in a very precise way. As a formalization of the Minimalist Program, they can accommodate linguistic analyses from the field of generative syntax. However, they have no machinery for encoding agreement; while morphology can be simulated by multiplying lexical items, there is no systematic way to state generalizations and implement actual proposals. This paper extends Minimalist Grammars with morphological features and operations on them. As a proof of concept, I show how Icelandic dative intervention can be encoded in the modified formalism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the sake of exposition, I assume that case assignment reduces to agreement and that structural case is explicitly assigned by finite verbs. Neither is free of controversy.

  2. 2.

    Angle brackets are used to denote tuples. For any n-tuple or sequence, for \(1\le i\le n\), T[i] denotes the ith component of T. The (finite) product of sets \(A_1,A_2,...,A_n\) \(A_1\times A_2\times ...\times A_n = \{\langle a_1,a_2,...,a_n\rangle \ |\ a_1\in A_1,a_2\in A_2,...,a_n\in A_n\}\). Similarly, their concatenation \(A_1A_2...A_n = \{a_1a_2...a_n\ |\ a_1\in A_1,a_2\in A_2,...,a_n\in A_n\}\).

  3. 3.

    The SMC (Shortest Move Constraint): is a special case of the requirement that at any given step in the derivation the derived structure contain only finitely many subtrees (chains) which are syntactically active (i.e. have unchecked features).

  4. 4.

    A lexical item may transmit different values of the same morphological feature via different channels. Moreover, these values need not be a subset of values in the item’s own bundle. Keeping the content of emitting channels unconstrained is useful: for example, a preposition is allowed to transmit lexical case to its complement without morphologically manifesting it itself.

  5. 5.

    If movement is viewed as copying, it is not immediately clear why this should be the case. A system where moving subtrees retain their relation to the original position would be interesting to explore but falls outside the scope of this paper.

  6. 6.

    For space reasons, DPs and small clauses are treated as atomic units. They can be decomposed to model internal agreement in detail. In particular, it is possible to embed DPs within another functional projection, connecting intervention and case (cf. [14], i.a.); this would allow the verb to assign dative to its argument and manipulate the agreement properties of its outer layer at the same time.

  7. 7.

    These items support partial derivations up to T, where morphological dependencies are resolved. Assuming that expletives are merged above TP and move to the specifier of CP [3], the following addition enables full CP derivations of (1)–(3):

    figure q

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Acknowledgments

My thanks to Karlos Arregi and Greg Kobele for their advice regarding both the linguistic and the formal aspects of this paper, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Chicago, Chicago, USA

    Marina Ermolaeva

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  1. Marina Ermolaeva
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Correspondence to Marina Ermolaeva .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRISA, University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France

    Annie Foret

  2. Department of Philosophy, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Reinhard Muskens

  3. LORIA/Inria Nancy, Villers-les-Nancy, France

    Sylvain Pogodalla

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Ermolaeva, M. (2018). Morphological Agreement in Minimalist Grammars. In: Foret, A., Muskens, R., Pogodalla, S. (eds) Formal Grammar . FG 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10686. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56343-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56343-4_2

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