41. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft

Universität Bremen, 06. – 08. März 2019

Arbeitsgruppen

Arbeitsgruppen-Beschreibungen als PDF

AG 8: Who cares? Contrast and opposition in „free“ phenomena

Arbeitsgruppen-Koordination

Volker Struckmeier (Universität Bochum)
volker.struckmeier@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

Eingeladene Referenten:

Beschreibung:

Syntactic theories have taken different routes to the question of optionality. With move-alpha, movement, e.g., was free (everybody move anywhere!). In early minimalism, movement was feature-driven (check to feed your Greed!), and given internal/external merge, it may be free again (depending on your definitions). Similarly, the output of movement operations can be handled in the mapping to PF through the deletion of the copies created by movement, making the pertinent word order options "free", at least from the point of view of syntax (/semantics). Thus, theories differ with regard to the question, which operations are "free" – and "free" for which component(s) of the grammar.

Empirically, we find that some phenomena seem to display "optional" variations – which grammars then have to be equipped to handle. Verb-second languages, e.g., allow more or less any constituent to occupy the pre-verbal position, resulting in an optionality as to which element of the clause is fronted. But if movement is feature-driven, either some interpretative impact has to be connected to this movement (singling out a particular XP for every case) or the set of XPs that have the potential to be fronted need to receive a treatment that makes them all equally likely for fronting, depending on theoretical implementations. As another example, consider scrambling. Whereas scrambling was treated as "free", possibly up until Lenerz 1977, it was later considered free but coupled to semantic effects (Frey 1993). In yet other treatments, scrambling is analyzed as triggered by information structural properties (Frey 2004) – and thus not optional at all. Still other analyses deny that scrambling involves triggered movements (Fanselow 2006) or else propose different solutions for triggers and moved materials (Struckmeier 2017).

Our questions include but (are not restricted to) ones like:

  • Do truly "'free" oppositions exist at all in syntax and morphology, or are they "optical illusions", observer effects, or theory-induced artifacts?
  • When we talk about ''free'' and optional phenomena, which language subsystems do indeed regard them as ''free''? (Can phenomena be truly "free" across all subsystems?)
  • Do seemingly ''unrestricted'' formal contrasts reflect underlying functional oppositions?
  • Do performance restrictions or pragmatic principles bar "true" optionality from ever arising (in all cases)?
  • Are there formal oppositions hitherto regarded as ''free'' that in fact involve subtle functional contrasts and should thus be taken off the list of "optional" phenomena after all?