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Structure dependence and linear order: Clarifications and foundations
- Language
- Linguistic Society of America
- Volume 94, Number 3, September 2018
- pp. 611-628
- 10.1353/lan.2018.0037
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
According to Chomsky (2010, 2013) and Berwick and colleagues (2011), the structure-dependence principle suggests that linear order is a reflex of the sensory-motor system and plays no role in syntax and semantics. However, when these authors use the expression linear order, they seem to refer exclusively to the literal precedence/temporal relation among terminals in linguistic objects. This narrow use, which is very common within linguistics, differs from the technical use in a noninnocuous way and does not allow us to exploit the unificational force that the concept of order can have for minimalist investigations. Here I follow Fortuny and Corominas-Murtra's (2009) formal definition of the syntactic procedure, which capitalizes on the foundational set-theoretical concept of nest. I show how the structure-dependence principle can be derived from a local definition of syntactic domain while retaining the idea that central concepts of configurational and transformational syntactic theories are orders.*