Invited Lecture 1

Grammars as Parsers: Making Syntax Dynamic (1)
Grammars as Parsers: Japanese - The Challenge of Word-Order Variation

Ruth Kempson (Kingfs College London)

In this talk I introduce the application of concepts of Dynamic Syntax to Japanese, in particular arguing that all forms of scrambling are to be analysed in terms of general properties of tree-growth. Given that syntax in Dynamic Syntax is defined as the incremental and monotonic process of building up tree representations of content, the primary concept is structural underspecification plus update (= growth of information), replacing all concepts of movement. Two mechanisms are central:

  1. nodes in a tree can be introduced as initially unfixed but updated later in the construction process;
  2. case information (subject, object etc) is defined as a constraint mechanism for fixing structural relations in a tree.

Given the tree logic in which Dynamic Syntax is founded, there is a restriction to only one unfixed node at a time, and the major focus of this talk is to introduce this constraint and consider its repercussions for scrambling.

First, I show how the construal of a simple clause in Japanese involves successively building an unfixed node, decorating it with an expression, and fixing its tree relation (in any order of arguments = Local Scrambling), a sequence of actions that preserves this constraint. The system is similar to the parsing mechanism of Miyamoto 2002, here defined as the grammar.

I then distinguish 3 different forms of structural underspecification (i) for building local structure (for local scrambling sequences), (ii) for building nonlocal structure (for long-distance scrambling sequences), (iii) for building unrestricted structure (for relative clause construal), with echoes of the Binding Principles (Chomsky 1981). I illustrate Long-Distance Scrambling with a front-placed dative NP removed from the position it needs for interpretation, showing how this NP gets its unfixed position updated during the process of interpreting the string. This process of building nonlocally an unfixed node is predicted to feed into the process for building local argument nodes. The effect is that more than one NP argument can be front-placed at a remove from the position needed for interpretation, and, as I shall show, we immediately predict Multiple Long-Distance Scrambling, while nevertheless sustaining the only-one-unfixed-node constraint. The locality restriction associated with such paired argument expressions is an immediate consequence of the analysis. We also correctly predict that whatever restrictions there are on local scrambling sequences should carry over to such paired expressions in multiple long-distance scrambling. The result is a simple explanation of what is puzzling in other frameworks, confirming the advantage of Dynamic Syntax as a grammar formalism.