Representation Theory (review)

This provocative and original book covers much interesting territory. Our allotted space requires us (sadly) to restrict our attention to two themes that representation theory (RT) explores: shape conservation and embedding.

Shape conservation. RT divides syntax into multiple levels of representation which map to each other according to global principles, some of which may conflict. Many theories share the view of syntax as a set of interrelated levels: witness lexical functional grammar, which maps f-structure and c-structure (with some optimality-theoretic variants); government and binding theory, which maps d-structure and s-structure; Ray Jackendoff’s recent theories, which map syntax, semantics, and phonology onto one another with global matching principles; and minimalism, which maps syntax to both PF (phonetic form) and LF (logical form) through a locally deterministic set of operations on lexical items. These views assume that each level of representation has different principles and constitutes a distinct ‘sublanguage’ that codes specific kinds of information. RT differs from these in a few important respects: There are seven levels (theta structure, case structure, predicate structure, surface structure, quantifier structure, focus structure, and accent structure), and in principle ‘the limiting case is an RT with exactly the same number of levels as there are functional elements in the structure of the clause in the corresponding Checking Theory’ (58). The levels are not related to one another by transformations of movement but rather by mapping principles, whose central principle is shape conservation. Global shape conservation requires that two levels within a representation relation maximally correspond, modulo the introduction of functional material. Thus, the grammar privileges mappings that conserve the linear and hierarchical relations between 1 and 2, and hence, exceptional case-marking constructions 3 and 4 constitute a bracketing paradox.

(1) Theta structure: [Agent [Predicate Theme]]

(2) Case structure: [Nominative [Case-Assigner Accusative]]

(3) Theta structure: [believe [Mary to be alive]]

(4) Case structure: [believe Mary [to be alive]]

Shape conservation is global in nature. One instance can be seen in Anders Holmberg’s (1985, 1999) generalization, where the order of phrases within the verb phrase (including verb, one or more objects, and particles) must be preserved if scrambled or head-moved within the middle-field. For RT, Holmberg’s generalization results from a single principle of shape conservation rather than as the conspiracy of different independent movements as occurs with localist theories such as minimalism. In the latter, when more than one dependency occurs for a single lexical item, the transformation is modeled as movement subject to principles of locality or relativized minimality. In RT, only wh-movement is so analyzed (though at certain points, e.g. p. 31, English topicalization is suggested to be as well). All other apparent cases of displacement (e.g. heavy NP shift, topicalization, scrambling, passivization, raising, object-shift) result from a mismapping between two independently generated levels of representation, not transformationally. RT has no movement for passives: Case and theta structures simply happen to be nonisomorphic. One reason for this is that surface structure must map faithfully onto both topic structure and case structure, creating a conflict resolved by ranking. Shape conservation is thus a violable principle. Crosslinguistic variation results from different ranking of relative representational faithfulness: for example, English surface order allows ambiguous quantifier scope, but disallows scrambling because for s-structure to map case structure is more important than for s-structure to map quantifier structure. German has the reverse ranking.

Though the global formulation of shape conservation captures generalizations about ‘conspiracies’ of independent movements that preserve linear order, we believe (pace Edwin Williams) that a principle like shape conservation need not imply a new architecture, one that employs RT-like sublanguages (1). For example, Fox and Pesetsky (2003) propose a derivational mechanism of phrase structure building, with intermediate levels of representation (‘phases’) that require consistent linear orderings across the derivation. Here, intermediate levels of representation are governed by a consistency principle and do not assume autonomous sublanguages at each stage.

Consider one particularly interesting effect of RT’s...