Generative grammar

El Mouatamid Ben Rochd

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9782322209071
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

This book is a summary of major works done on generative grammar (Standard Model). It further develops a minimalist view of linguistic interface between (universal) Logical Form and (language specific) Phonetic Form as suggested in the works of famous linguists, logicians and philosophers of the present and the past, such as Noam Chomsky, Richard Kayne, Boole, Gazdar, McCarthy, Montague, Gottlob Frege and Aristotle to mention but a few.

EL MOUATAMID BEN ROCHD

Generative GrammarGenerative Grammar

(SYNTAX-LF-PF)

BOD

Acknowledgments

Many thanks are due to Khalid Chaouch, Reitha Ben Rochd, Peter Gilbert, Jeanette Meyer, Abderrahim Fatmi, Diana Shcherbovskaya, Hanin Alawi, Ahmed Haggach, Mohamed Touhami, Katarina Hartmann and Keiko Hattori for their help and kindness.

All shortcomings are mine.

Epigraph

“There can hardly be a more significant topic for investigation for us than the human mind.” “There are many aspects to the way the human mind works but certainly language is one very central aspect.”

(Noam Chomsky)

Contents

PREFACE

1. SYNTAX

1.1. X-BAR

1.1.1. X-bar vs. PS rules

1.1.2. Souali’s X-bar treatment of Arabic

1.2. CLITICIZATION

1.2.1. The Returning Clitic in Classical Arabic

1.2.2. Kayne’s “Null Subject and Clitic Climbing

1.2.3. Ouhalla’s “Clitic Movement and the ECP

1.2.4. Two Alternatives to Cliticization

2. LOGICAL FORM

2.1. CHOMSKY VS. ARISTOTLE

2.1.1. FORMAL LOGIC

2.1.2. LOGICAL FORM (LF)

2.2. TRUTH AND CONCEPT

2.3. FORMAL SEMANTICS

2.3.1. Sommers

2.3.2. Montague

2.3.3. Robert May

3. PHONETIC FORM

3.1. GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY

3.2. MCCARTHYISM

3.3. MORPHOLOGY/SYNTAX – THE INTERFACE

GLOSSARY

REFERENCES

PREFACE

FRAMEWORK

Generative grammarians argue for a strong link between linguistics and psychology. In his book Language and Mind , Chomsky puts a particular emphasis on this issue. The ultimate goal of linguistics is to shed light on the nature of the human mind. Therefore, linguistics is best seen as part of cognitive psychology (psychology of knowledge).

Knowledge of language (called competence) is a very wide and complex subject. To suggest a few solutions to it we may try and show the type of problem it poses by studying the structure of language – within the generative framework. Among the foundations of Generativism we find the philosophical and psychological traditions (in the West) which tried to fix the essence of man and the human mind essentially.

Language study was central to those philosophical and psychological questions. There are indeed good reasons to choose language investigation in any attempt to answer questions about man and the human mind. One of the major reasons behind this is the fact that language is a major biological endowment which is common to all human beings. It is human specific. Add to this that language is strongly embedded in man’s thinking and social interaction.

Descartes (d. 1650) had already noticed the productive and non-finite properties of language. The goal of modern language studies is to explain the problems of language production and language perception. Generativism concentrates on the former mainly.

APPROACH

The problem we are facing con...