Professor Hagit Borer on comparative syntax, the morphosyntax interface and language acquisition
Conversation with Professor Hagit Borer
Event: Oxford University Linguistic Society, Trinity Term 2021 available on YouTube
Speaker: Professor Hagit Borer, Queen Mary University of London
Focus Areas: Comparative syntax, morphosyntax, language acquisition
1. The Lexicon and Syntax: Historical Overview
Emergence of Lexical Theory:
In generative grammar, the lexicon was not fully developed at the start (mid-1960s).
Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) emphasized the lexicon as a central repository of word-specific information.
Lexicon as Mini-Syntax:
Words like kick carry not only pronunciation and meaning but also syntactic instructions (theta roles, argument positions).
Lexical entries can encode the relationship between words, e.g., destroy → destruction, walk → walker.
Historically, the lexicon contained all exceptions, while syntax was intended to be blind to item-specific information.
Lexical vs. Syntactic Rules:
Example: Adjectival passive requires lexical rules for argument mapping.
Verbal passive, being more regular, can be handled by general syntactic rules.
Over time, linguists sought cleaner models, pushing more properties into syntax while limiting the lexicon to exceptions.
2. Distributed Morphology Perspective
Split Lexical Representations:
Formal Features: The “atoms” of syntax are features (functional terminals) rather than full words.
Conceptual Meaning: Lexical meaning (semantics of nouns, verbs, etc.) is accessed separately and often mapped to phonology later.
This approach separates syntax-driven grammar from conceptual content, allowing flexible mapping.
Endoskeletal vs. Exoskeletal Theories:
Endoskeletal: Syntax is built around lexical items (words provide the core structure).
Exoskeletal: Syntax provides the overarching structure; words are slotted into pre-existing syntactic frames.
Example: Siren as a noun or denominal verb – syntax determines the sentence structure, not the lexical meaning alone.
3. Functional Vocabulary and Parameters
Functional Features Drive Variation:
Language differences are attributed to small variations in functional items (e.g., case assigners, auxiliaries).
This challenges the traditional Principles & Parameters model of large-scale parameter settings.
Example: English allows certain infinitival constructions due to properties of functional vocabulary.
Feature Inventory Challenges:
Minimalism relies heavily on features, but there is no consensus on the exact inventory or how features translate into syntactic structure.
The success of theories like Nanosyntax depends on feature assumptions, making cross-framework comparisons difficult.
4. Language Acquisition Implications
Children’s Knowledge:
Children do not start from zero; they possess a pre-existing inventory of functional features.
Language learning is about populating functional structure, not building it incrementally.
Superset-to-Subset Learning:
Children initially consider a wide range of possibilities and narrow them down based on input.
Example: English past tense – children recognize irregular forms (dive → dove) and regularize defaults (walk → walked), guided by functional expectations.
Role of Phonology:
Functional elements often exist unpronounced in child input.
Children selectively pronounce items necessary for communication while maintaining the underlying structure.
5. Compositionality and Meaning
Non-Compositional Word Meaning:
Words can carry idiosyncratic meanings, but sentence meaning emerges from syntax.
Example: Jabberwocky demonstrates that grammatical structure alone can convey syntactic meaning without full lexical content.
Two Kinds of Meaning:
Formal Semantic Meaning: Derived from syntax, independent of individual words.
Conceptual Meaning: Associated with lexical items and mediated through phonology.
6. Summary: Morphosyntax Interface
Lexical items contain semantic and syntactic features, but these can be abstracted away in computation.
Functional vocabulary is central to cross-linguistic variation.
Syntax and lexicon are interdependent but separable, with syntax handling generalizations and lexicon handling exceptions.
Language acquisition relies on pre-existing features, allowing children to efficiently map input to grammatical structures.
