Talk:Locality (linguistics)

RM Dechaine (talk) 05:31, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

1980-1989
Nishigauchi, T. (1984). Control and the Thematic Domain. Linguistic Inquiry,60.(2)215-250

In this article Nishigauchi builds off principles laid out by Chomsky to propose a revised principle of locality. Through an analysis of control relations governing PRO Nishigauchi shows that locality is based on the assignment of thematic roles within the thematic domain in cases where this is possible, and by pragmatic distictions when it is not. This article is important because it relates the syntactic notion of locality to the semantic notions that it relates to. This allows us to bring a more comprehensive account of the importance of locality in different fields of linguistics. One problem with this article is that it is fairly dated, and part of the argument is made using a syntactic framework that was not as developed as the ones that are being used today.

Aoun, J., Hornstein, N., Lightfoot, D., Weinberg, A. (1987). Two Types of Locality. Linguistic Inquiry,18,(4)537-577

Aoun, Hornstein, Lightfoot and Weinberg argue that locality conditions apply separately to the phonetic form and logical form. Their analysis of empty elements and anaphors leads them to conclude that government by a lexical head of e happens at the level of the PF, while local binding of anaphors occurs at the level of the PF. This article shows how locality has been used in the development of the theories and frameworks we are currently using. Because this article is written using a framework that we have not been introduced to it was hard to fully understand. Because this paper is only based on English language data there is probably some bias in the analysis.

--Cedricha (talk) 03:49, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

1970-1979
Chomsky, N. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. Retrieved from http://babel.ucsc.edu/~hank/mrg.readings/Chomsky1970_Nominalization.pdf

Chomsky (1970) discusses how nouns derived from verbs are captured in the grammar. He also discusses the selectional properties for lexical categories, known as phrase structure rules. By doing so, he introduces the idea of X-bar theory. In this theory, he specifies that a lexical head projects to a phrasal node such that there is a local relationship between the two. This structural unit can be selected as a complement by a sister node. These relationships (or selections) are local in the underlying grammar. Therefore, this book is of great significance to the topic of locality because X-bar theory seems to be a very important development in the realm of locality of selection. Locality helps to explain the relationships and movement that we see in X-bar theory. Since Chomsky’s examples are all from English data, he may be criticized for overgeneralizing and showing a lack of evidence for his claims. He also uses only lexical categories as opposed to the functional categories we work with today. This difference in presentation makes it difficult to fully comprehend his arguments. I like the English examples Chomsky uses because they are simple sentences that can be compared with ungrammatical counterparts. These examples make his arguments easier to understand, however he uses a lot of terminology that I’ve never heard before.

Koster, J. (1978). Locality principles in syntax. Foris, Dordrecht.

Koster (1978) uses a framework of generative grammar to focus mainly on principles of binding theory and locality principles including the Minimum Distance Principle. He discusses what locality of selection is and how it can be used to describe binding principles and the well-formedness of syntactic structures. He also relates the locality principle to one overarching coindex principle that can be used to explain the relationship between a noun phrase and it’s antecedent. The book is written from the authors point of view with insight from both Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik. The book only uses examples from English and Dutch. Therefore, the author could use more evidence to back up the claims he makes regarding binding and locality principles. He also presents a lot of terminology that is difficult to understand. I find this book very theoretical and slightly difficult to follow. However, it is comprised of only 4 chapters and an entire chapter is dedicated to locality. The author also uses N instead of DP when referencing the coindex rule. Therefore, the presentation of topics is a challenge to comprehend.

Jessicabarclay (talk) 02:37, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Stephedwood (talk) 18:23, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

1990-1999
Roberts, I. (1997). Restructuring, head movement, and locality. Linguistic Inquiry, 28(3), 423-460.

Roberts (1997) looks at the restructuring of complex verbs in Italian, arguing that locality incorporates into how complex heads appear in Italian. Along with extended projection principle, verb restructuring, “clitic voices” (Sportiche, 1992), Italian allows for a long movement of clitics, showing the locality of NP movement of PRO (Roberts, 1997). This article is significant as it uses EPP and movement to examine locality. Furthermore, this article examines not only Italian, but also French and English, allowing a broad overview of locality within multiple languages. The article is written from a first person point of view, using “I approach”, with some objective writing throughout. This article uses examples in all languages, however lacks trees. This makes it difficult to visualize the principles he is discussing. I found this article to be very informative and well-written, other than the lack of trees.

Manzini, M., (1994). Locality, Minimalism, and Parasitic Gaps. Linguistic Inquiry, 25(3), 481-508

Manzini (1994) argues that locality can only occur in minimal domains (ie. that it cannot skip a domain )(485), and that Chomsky’s theory at time at which this paper was written on locality, is unable to account for parasitic gaps (490). She instead argues that the principles of locality theory that account for subject and adjunct islands are also able to account for parasitic gaps, as long as they are modified to account for a “forking dependency” (494). This article holds significance in that although we are given many examples of how locality surfaces in simple, grammatical sentences, we must also be able to consider locality in more complex sentences. The examination of locality in subject and adjunct islands, as well s what Manzini calls “parasitic gaps” does just that. The paper is written from a first person point of view, utilizing “I” and “me” throughout. I believe Manzini failing to give examples using real sentences rather than just letters in her tress makes it harder to understand what is occurring and made her writing dense. The article is well-written, but uses very scientific language, making it hard to follow at times.

2010-2014
--Oyeung (talk) 20:30, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Carstens, V., & Diercks, M. (2013). Agreeing How?: Implications for theories of agreement and locality. Linguistic Inquiry, 44(2), 179-237. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1449083950?accountid=14656.

Carstens and Diercks discuss the properties of agreement for the wh-expression “how” in the Luyia language Lubukusu and Lusaamia. They demonstrate that agreement with the subject is “independent of the relation that yields agreement on the verb” (180). This leads them to conclude that ‘how’ is a vP adjunct (181). This article can be useful for giving examples of locality used in different languages. Giving insight on a language other than English may be beneficial for the project. The article is written with the perspective of the Minimalist theoretical framework of Chomsky in mind (181). There may be a bias that develops since the authors assume and follow the same ideas as Chomsky. Using a different type of theory may contribute to different results. I think this article is well written with clear illustrations of trees, however, it is written with an assumption that the reader has a good syntax background.

Rizzi, L. (2013). Locality. LINGUA, 130, 169-186. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2012.12.002. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384112002768.

Rizzi discusses the effects of locality in different types of environments. The “two major concepts of locality” (169), impenetrability and intervention locality, are also introduced in this article. Further discussion about hierarchy leads Rizzi to believe that hierarchy affects “linguistic computations” more than “linear properties” (169). Rizzi includes good examples and explanation of movement which can be used as a guideline for examples used in our project. This article can also be used as a starting point for information about impenetrability and intervention locality. The article is written in a perspective where there is an awareness of different theories that can be used to account for movement. No bias seems to be evident in the work. I think this article is detailed and contains good English examples of movement, however, it is written with an assumption that the reader has good syntactic knowledge.


 * Locality is a concept that most any theory of syntax is going to have something to say about. The two sources listed are couched in the MP. The MP's account of discontinuities should of course be covered, but so should other frameworks. How do the HPSG people address locality? How do the LFG people address locality? How do the DG people address locality? The content of the article here is going to overlap to a large extent with the content of the Wikipedia article on discontinuities. Some sources addressing the concept of locality (i.e. discontinuities, long distance dependencies, displacement, etc.) can be found in this other article.


 * The danger here is that what ends up appearing is a narrow account of how discontinuities are understood in the GB/MP tradition. That tradition can be really difficult to understand for the average reader. A greater approach that mentions varying accounts to the concept of locality is going to be of interest to a much larger audience. --Tjo3ya (talk) 00:55, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

2000-2009
Miyagawa, S., & Arikawa, K. (2007). Locality in syntax and floating numeral quantifiers. Linguistic inquiry, 38(4), 645-670.

Using a first person point of view, Miyagawa and Arikawa (2007) discuss the idea that a floating quantifier has syntactic locality along with its associated noun phrase. (645) From this idea, they were able to provide insights about the VP internal subject position, intermediate traces, and NP traces (645) The researchers examined Japanese with the research question of “does the floating numerical quantifier in Japanese follow syntactic locality rules?.They found that yes, the numerical quantifier in Japanese follows syntactic locality rules even if it is disconnected from its associated noun phrase. For the purpose of our Wikipedia project, this article is useful because the results suggest that other languages should be reexamined for whether or not they include locality of a floating quantifier. A possible shortcoming of this article is that it did not examine the association of other phrases such as Verb phrases. I found this article to provide useful information about locality in terms of noun phrases, however I also found it challenging to follow at times.

Lee‐Schoenfeld, V. (2008). Binding, phases, and locality. Syntax, 11(3), 281-298.

Using a first person point of view (with a slightly objective stance) Schoenfeld (2008) proposes the idea of movement and anaphoric relations being governed by locality. Schoenfeld examines the following to see how locality effects syntax and what the measures of syntactic locality are: infinitive constructions, german possessor dative construction, binding and the conditions under which reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns may occur (281). Her results propose a characterization of ‘‘phase’’ and how this “phase” unifies binding and possessor raising which is governed by the same locality constraints. This is said to make sense of these phenomena as diagnostics for clausal and phrasal complexity. For the purpose of our Wikipedia assignment, this article will help us understand how movement affects the locality of syntax and under which conditions movements can occur while still maintaining locality. I found this article to be relatively easy to understand and follow as it was very well written. Tdpoulin (talk) 18:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Section on Koster
I need to fix the sources on the Koster section, along with add more examples of different opacity factors and explain some concepts more clearly.

Thanks, --Jessicabarclay (talk) 15:02, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Section on Early Chomsky
I will add images later on! Tdpoulin (talk) 04:34, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review
This is a very good start to the article. I feel like you have done a lot of quality research, and have a clear layout and flow in the article’s structure. However, I do think that this article would benefit from having clearer definitions and explanations. For example, you mention gerundive nominals, yet you do not define, provide a proper link to, or offer any explanation as to what they are. Just on the basis that this is an encyclopedia article, it should cater to the lowest common denominator and provide more information as opposed to less. I also think that you would benefit from not using a “He said, she said” approach. I felt that a lot of the article was just a compilation of “he stated that… and he further posited that…” Whereas it is important to know the major players and their contributions to the field, I think that you shouldn’t use such narrative terms so frequently, and stick to simply summarizing the evidence in your own words. Otherwise, it feels as if you are copying everything out of the textbook. I did like that you have so many examples, this helps to clearly illustrate your points, and helped me better understand the topics you were discussing. All in all, excellent start. JuliannaIvanyi (talk) 19:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

As Juliana said above, I think that this is a great start to your article! I like how you have so many examples and from different researchers, and once you've added in the explanations to them I think that they will be really helpful to the reader in understanding the concepts you are talking about. Just a couple formatting things that I noticed: I don't think you need to capitalize the words in links to other Wikipedia pages (for example, in the Intervention Locality section "Syntactic movement" doesn't need to be capitalized), as it interrupts the flow of the sentence. Also, I noticed that the format of the examples changes from section to section. For example, in the Co-indexing WH- and NP elements section the examples are in boxes, but in the following section they are in tables. Other than those two things, it is structured well and is a great start! Nyashby (talk) 19:54, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Good work so far, Group A2! I very much agree with what Julianna and Natasha have stated above. Specifically, I think your article would benefit from more explanation of terms and examples. Like Julianna stated, your article should be written for a target audience with little to no linguistic and locality knowledge. For example, in you opening sentence, "locality refers to the proximity of elements of a linguistic structure"; it may be beneficial to define what "elements" and "linguistic structure" mean. For someone with absolutely no linguistic knowledge, your opening definition should we a gentle introduction to the topic. Similarly, in your opening paragraph, you state that locality is present in movement, selection, and binding. Rather than provide external links to other Wikipedia sites that explain these concepts, I think it would be of benefit to quickly explain and define these terms on your page. That way, your reader does not need to switch back and forth between pages. Lastly, I like how your article gives examples from many linguistic theorists and researchers. I think by narrating the history, a reader has a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Perhaps it's possible to have a general section at the beginning of your theory section that explains how each researcher has contributed to the larger topic of locality? That way, your reader can fully understand how all the researchers worked together. Overall, I like the clear and easy to follow structure and layout. Good work! Mjung11 (talk) 02:47, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

The formant in the description of Locality (first paragraph that you see on the page) is quite strange. Perhaps it should be put together instead of apart. Also, because you do mention them, perhaps there should be a subsection about Locality of movement, selection, and binding, with a bit of explanation/description about each one. Also, the subsections are named after the creators, but perhaps they should be named after the theory itself? For example, instead of naming the section "Chomsky", to name it "Lexicalist Hypothesis" instead and adding "Chomsky" in brackets? There is also some terms that may need defining, or perhaps a link. Such as A-movement, head movement, etc. Mulch-referencing is also unnecessary.For example, reference [13].

In summary, the article would benefit from some more information, such as definitions, and perhaps a bit of organization. Otherwise, well done! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcjjfu52 (talk • contribs) 09:14, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

To do for Milestone #4
Hey guys! Here are a few things I think we should try to accomplish for milestone #4 - consistency with capitalization and formatting of tables, theories, etc. - introduction section - more for background section what else do you guys think we should do?

Stephedwood (talk) 04:13, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey Team, OK, so Orinna, Jess and I met this morning and we decided on the following format for the page: 1) Introduction - Keep this how it is but add subheadings of a small introduction of what each theorist has to say about locality. General and straight to the point. 2) Introduce specific sentence types i.e. "Wh-movement" or "ambiguous" and then have further subheadings where we discuss what the theorists would say about it. 3) Summary table on how theorists do/ do not account for locality (according to the sentences we have posted) I changed the introduction. I deleted everything but the first sentence because we are taking a different approach now! (Thank you Steph for writing in the first place)

Tdpoulin (talk)

Hi! An option for a wh-movement sentence we could use How do you think [he behaved __]? *How do you wonder [who behaved__]

--Oyeung (talk) 16:58, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Here is a link on how to cite websites in Wiki: (we should use this for help when we can't find a DOI for our articles) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources/Example_style#Websites

Tdpoulin (talk) 17:07, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions: Hi team. I added the core locality principles in the background but we need to expand on each principle. For example, Koster and Rizzi expand on the minimal distance principle. Chomsky's A over A principle (1964), Subjacency (1973), and Koster's Bounding Conditions (1978 & 1987) expand on minimal domain principles. Koster's theory is construction-independent while Chomsky's principles are construction dependent: ie: 1 construction for Principle A and 1 for Subjacency. Koster links these two under one construction.

--Jessicabarclay (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I added 4 more headings for what Jess just discussed above. We need to find a/b pair examples for each (aside from ambiguity because the 2 different meanings will be seen in the trees) and add trees/ descriptions for the data. Tdpoulin (talk) 17:50, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Background section: Maybe we should re-word "researchers who have lead the field." This may sound like we have a biased approach?

--Oyeung (talk) 21:40, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Steph, I think we should move what you say about Chomsky in your section.. ie. to the current chomsky section. Let me know what you think Tdpoulin (talk) 04:35, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If we do, then the Kayne stuff needs to happen after it. We can't really explain Kayne's revisions without the background info on it first 174.7.97.66 (talk) 05:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Oops, above comment is mine! Forgot to log in before I typed it. Orinna, I agree about what you said about the researchers. Taylor, if you insert the grey area into a table, we can place the picture right next to it, so it is easy to reference it to it's appropriate supporting material Stephedwood (talk) 07:30, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

TO DO TOMORROW
Steph- citations

Orinna- formatting

Taylor- trees, phenomena section Jess- trees

Cedric- explanations for locality of movement

everyone- trees for own sections

Stephedwood (talk) 05:28, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Milestone #4
According to the suggestions made from other students in the class, we made the following adjustments to our page:
 * 1) We made the formatting more consistent by reducing the number of headings we had.
 * 2) We added concrete examples to account for the more obscure data.
 * 3) Our sections have been switched around so that they are in chronological order.

Overall, what our peers were criticizing no longer applies as we have changed the direction of how we are approaching the creation of this article. We are having difficulties deciding on what content is or is not necessary to include. We feel that the length and complexity of this topic is becoming a bit unmanageable and would really appreciate advice on how to make it more "straight to the point". Tdpoulin (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

We also made the following changes: --Oyeung (talk) 21:41, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Formatting of all the examples and links are more consistent.
 * 2) We added the headings: Locality of movement, selection, and binding.
 * 3) We changed the headings to include the person, year and hypothesis name.
 * 4) We have improved upon the references page, making it easier to follow

CITATION PAGES FOR

rizzi #12

Revisions based on peer review
Based on our peer reviews, we have made several changes to improve the quality and thoroughness of this page. Specific changes have been made in regards to formatting, clarity, examples, definitions and citations.

With regards to formatting, we received feedback suggesting that our page was disorganized with inconsistent formats of examples and links. Therefore, we edited all of the examples and links to reflect a consistent form throughout the article. We also reduced the numbers of headings throughout the article to provide a clearer table of contents. In addition, we formatted the headings to reflect the major theorists, their theories, and the year their theory was introduced. By including more information in our headings, we have been able to organize the sections in chronological order. We also received comments suggesting that our page does not contain clear definitions of terms or examples. To account for this, we have removed several terms and examples that may have been confusing or misleading to the reader. One such example is the table of gerundive nominals for which we did not provide a clear definition for. We have provided additional examples and information to help explain the concepts throughout our page. Much of these examples have surfaced in the form of syntax trees, but we have also added more text to explain concepts more explicitly. Specific changes can be seen in each theorists subsection.

We have also incorporated the suggestion to include subsections on Locality of Movement, Locality of Selection and Binding. Each section has been explicitly defined and presented with examples. We hope that these sections will successfully expand on the information that we discuss in the beginning of our article. One comment suggested that our page contains too many narratives of the major players in the field. This is inevitably something that we may not be able to avoid since we are attempting to provide first hand accounts from these crucial theorists. One change that we have made to make the page less segmented is to tie most of the sections back to Chomsky. We hope that this will make our page flow more smoothly.

Finally, several comments were made regarding the consistency of our citations. To improve the consistency of our citations, each link was checked and edited as necessary. Multiple citations of the same sources were combined in the final reference section to reduce the list of sources. This organization improves the legibility of the reference section.

Overall, based on the comments from our peers, we have taken a slightly different approach to this topic to ensure more clarity and organization. We have made explicit changes to account for their comments and feel that our article has improved in quality. We do however find that the complexity of this topic makes it difficult to define terms in a straightforward fashion that would be understood by a reader with no prior knowledge. --Jessicabarclay (talk) 21:21, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Heading style
Some feedback on a minor point of house style: according to the Manual of Style (see MOS:HEAD), Wikipedia normally uses sentence case, not title case, for headings. I have not changed them because there may be a case for treating some terms as proper names, and that may be best decided by the author rather than a copy editor. However, Wikipedia does not usually capitalize "special terms". It is also usual to omit "the" and redundant references to the article topic in headings, though there are probably exceptions. See also Manual of Style/Capital letters, etc. Some things like this may get changed by bots or gnomes.--Boson (talk) 22:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Things to do

 * make all formatting the same
 * finish table comparing theorists
 * make sure references all the same
 * make sure enough citations throughout article
 * page numbers for every citation
 * fix pictures

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephedwood (talk • contribs) 03:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

--Oyeung (talk) 05:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * example 9= what type of sentence?
 * subject condition + left branch constraint needed to be added under movement

My suspicions confirned
My suspicion has been confirmed here. We have a long article on locality that addresses the concept without including alternative views. No mention here of how locality is addressed in HPSG, LFG, DG, etc. We now have a situation where it appears as though a particular linguist (RM Dechain) has engaged squads of undergraduates to inundate Wikipedia with one particular view of syntax. This is not good. --Tjo3ya (talk) 20:46, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * As the article now stands, it is inaccessible to most readers. Only those with extensive exposure to and knowledge of Chomskyan syntax and its historical development have a chance of getting anything out of this article. Furthermore, the article is too focused on personalities (e.g. Kayne, Rizzi, Chomsky, etc.), so it can be construed as biased toward one particular understanding of locality. I am going to do some editing. In particular, I am going to reduce the length of the article drastically, removing much of the material that is inaccessible to a general audience. Before I begin, though, I will wait to see if anyone wants to respond here.


 * I have just reduced the length of the article drastically. But the main problem with what is still there is the same. One particular approach to locality is presented in the article, to the exclusion of all other approaches. The article remains largely inaccessible to a general audience. I will probably make further cuts to the article, and I may add some content in the interest of a more balanced article that is accessible to a wide audience. --Tjo3ya (talk) 01:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Continuing Problems here
The problem I noted many years ago are continuing with this article. Another round of undergraduates is adding inaccessible content that is particular to one narrow understanding of locality. --Tjo3ya (talk) 09:10, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

What is going on with these minimal pairs and acceptability judgments? Why is Sportiche, Koopman, Stabler (2013) cited so heavily and disproportionately?
I think there are serious problems with this article with respect to both the pedagogy and the laser-focus on Government and Binding. I am really baffled by some of the minimal pairs and acceptability judgments, and I can't see how they would solidify or motivate the analyses proposed, particularly for laymen readers.

(9) a. [DP What and [rice]i did you eat [DP e]i? b. *[DP What]i did you eat [DP ei and [rice]]?

"What and rice did you eat __?" (9a) is truly horrible in my idiolect, and I don't think it's a leap of faith to imagine that this judgment holds for the vast majority of English speakers. Furthermore, this sentence does not even appear on page 267 in the textbook cited (Sportiche, Koopman, Stabler 2013), while 9b does. Did 9a appear in an earlier/draft version or was it constructed ad hoc by the editors? Regardless, I think this example really ought to be scrapped entirely.

(8) a. [DP Who]i did that Bill threw out the cheese annoy [DP e]i? b. *[DP What]i did that Bill threw out [DP e]i annoy you?

Again, (8a) sounds pretty horrible to me. I don't know where this pair is coming from either. I can't find it in the text.

(2) a. Mary revealed [DP John]i to [DP himself]i. b. *Mary revealed [DP himself]i to [DP John]i.

This pair does appear in the text, but is quite an odd one. 2a is syntactically "acceptable" but semantically odd unless embedded in an appropriate context where Mary is John's psychiatrist or something of the sort.

"My therapist revealed me to myself." Ok. But "#Mary revealed me to myself" sounds pretty weird with no context. Acceptability judgments are influenced by all sorts of things beyond syntactic structure, and these factors really ought to be controlled for when motivating a particular syntactic analysis to a naive audience on the basis of such minimal pairs.

(5) a. *[DP She]i said that [DP Lucy]i took the car

I bring up this example because this acceptability judgment seems to be correct (in a vacuum) but fails to hold in the right context, namely one in which "She" is a woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder, and "Lucy" is the woman's alter ego. If contextual enrichment reverses the judgment for a string with isomorphic structure, it's not clear how there can be a purely syntactic constraint operative. (Similar to how in 2a, context vastly improves my own judgment. The practice of constructing disembodied, decontextualized sentences that would likely never be uttered in natural discourse settings on an ad hoc basis to justify a particular analysis, without controlling for non-syntactic factors, is regrettably common in syntactic theorizing.)

(11) a. You are eating [DP [DP whose] cake]. b. *[DP Whose]i are you eating [DP [DP ei] cake]?

This pair is puzzling because it seems to be demonstrating a derivation rather than a grammatical/ungrammatical pair. (11a) looks like a declarative statement, and indeed the article treats it as such, but "You are eating whose cake." just isn't grammatical. It's unclear why the article claims the opposite and includes a tree for (11a). I think this example pretty clearly got misinterpreted, which is understandable because the authors do not give a clear, explicit account of what's happening here, instead referring to this pair as a purported example of the left-branch constraint and the necessity of pied-piping.

b) [DP Time_agent, can elapse] elapsed.

Is this a typo? Time is not a semantic agent and the verb 'elapse' surely does not select for an agent.

As for the section on island (wh-movement) violations, my broad concern relates back to the aforementioned problem of analyses being motivated on the basis of a few disembodied minimal pairs. It is relatively uncontroversial to theory-neutral observers that there are well-known counterexamples to essentially every proposed syntactic island constraint. Ross' landmark dissertation even acknowledged apparent counterexamples to the CNPC such as "Reports which the government prescribes the height of the lettering on the covers of __ are invariably boring." Please refer to https://hpsg.hu-berlin.de/Projects/HPSG-handbook/PDFs/islands.pdf and sources therein for an exhaustive selection of relevant counterexamples. Casting island constraints in purely syntactic terms is really not defensible in light of these data, though it is admittedly common practice.

I want to also express more general concerns with the article and the fact that Sportiche, Koopman, Stabler (2013) is essentially the only text cited. At the beginning of the text they write "To Noam with gratitude beyond words, whose influence is found on every page, and whose charismatic ideas have made intellectual life exciting, Chomsky-style." None of us is truly neutral with respect to our theoretical commitments, but this is a little concerning given that this text truly forms the backbone of the article. The article dives into an enormous amount of Government and Binding theory-internal discussion that is simply not accessible to the average reader. It reads less as a neutral overview of issues in locality and more of an exposition of GB's abstract theoretical and architectural postulates. Concepts like deep structure, functional categories, subjacency/bounding nodes are alluded to informally but not explained. (You would be hard-pressed to find linguists endorsing the notion of bounding nodes today; "phases" are the modern analogue)

It's not my aim to unfairly trash this article, but it has serious problems -- transparently ungrammatical sentences are presented as grammatical, odd examples are used, some advanced concepts are gestured towards but not explained, there are numbering issues (9a and 9b are repeated in the CSC and CNPC sections), there are inconsistencies in the trees (a few trees have VP as the topmost node, most have TP/CP), etc.

Cptrw (talk) 08:04, 2 May 2021 (UTC)