Diagnosing syntax ed. by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Norbert Corver (review)

This is a book about an aspect of the methodology of syntactic research, namely the use of diagnostics to establish a particular analysis or derivation, as when the linear order of a verb preceding a sentence adverb is taken as a diagnostic of verb movement.

This is an unusual topic for a book. Over the years, a methodology has evolved for syntactic research that is taught in university courses and is practiced all the time by everyone involved in syntactic research. It is described in textbooks, although hardly ever as a topic as such. Instead, the methods used in syntactic analysis and theory are taught by demonstration. One reason why methodology is not taught as a topic as such in textbooks is that the typical textbook teaches the substance of syntax as well as the methods for investigating it, the substance being the ‘facts’, the observations and generalizations that the theory tries to explain. It is convenient, and probably pedagogically sound, to teach the facts and the methods for describing and explaining them together.

Diagnosing syntax does that as well, to some extent. Some chapters remain purely pedagogical, reviewing and discussing the diagnostics that have been employed in the literature for a particular analysis or derivation. Other chapters supplement the review with new diagnostics, or new arguments, for a particular analysis or derivation or theoretical stance. In some chapters it is less obvious how they relate to the diagnosis theme; they present a set of arguments for a particular idea without special reference to the notion of diagnosis as such. But as noted in the introductory chapter, there is no clear borderline between argument and diagnostic. The relation between the two concepts is cleverly captured by David Pesetsky, one of the contributors, as being a matter of confidence. When we are confident enough that an argument is sound, it may be promoted to a diagnostic. Most of the chapters in Diagnosing syntax do, indeed, review and discuss arguments that have been tried and tested over the years, to the point where many of us are quite happy to refer to them as diagnostics.

Diagnosing syntax is not a textbook. It is aimed at students or scholars who already have a solid enough background in syntax. The editors have made a great effort, though, to produce a coherent volume that really addresses the issue of diagnosis in syntax. The book consists of five parts on head movement, phrasal movement, agreement, anaphora, and ellipsis, plus an introduction by the editors. Each part consists of a set of chapters, by different authors, discussing issues in relation to the topic of the section, followed by a conclusions chapter written by one of the authors, or cowritten by two authors, of the individual chapters. Most of the conclusions chapters include comments on the preceding chapters, presenting a synthesis where this seems reasonable, and noting controversial issues that remain unresolved. In one or two of the sections the conclusions chapter could have been more useful as an introduction to the section.

The book starts out with an introduction by the editors, Lisa Cheng and Norbert Corver, presenting and discussing the topic of the book, and in particular the concept of diagnosis as it is used, or ought to be used, in syntactic research. The first chapter in the section on head movement is by Christer Platzack, who reviews the properties that are taken to be characteristic of head movement as opposed to phrasal movement and goes on to argue, on the basis of evidence from various languages, that head movement is a PF operation. In the next chapter Heidi Harley discusses the role of head movement in the derivation of affixation, comparing it with alternative theoretical devices. The assumption that there is head movement in the syntax, not just the PF component, is crucial in this chapter.

The book is not all pure syntactic argumentation. Every section contains at least one chapter discussing the...