The Language Economy Principle in Albanian Syntax

The language economy principle and its appearance in communication, constantly had been present in Albanian and had been the focus of some previous works, where especially we aimed to show the economy principle in lexicon, above all its appearance in the category of abbreviations, acronyms, and shortenings, as a typical expression of the economy principle. But, as a principle, that affects and influences language, the principle of the linguistic economy actually is present at all levels or language fields, somewhere more and somewhere less. The purpose of this paper is to see how this principle has affected the syntax. The economy principle is not a new phenomenon in this field, if we consider elliptical sentences, that are a typical example of the economy principle in syntax. Based on the theory of Andre Martinet, the language economy principle aims at least effort, for a particular purpose. On the other hand, this principle should not prejudice the communication itself. From the syntactic view, a formal communication would be ideal, at least with two primary elements: subject and predicate. As we know, in the Albanian language we can find different clauses without subject or without a predicate. We can find in the Albanian language such incomplete sentences which can be considered a manifestation of the principle of linguistic economy and as we shall see throughout this paper, this principle is often crucial for the creation of this incomplete units. The means of syntax in some cases suffer from shrinkage that is directly related to pure economy principle as a dominant factor, on their creation. But, the economy principle is not the only reason for the existence of the elliptical clause, but in some cases it is primary. At the end of this paper, we will aim to see the impact that this principle has in the syntax system and to the language itself.Keywords: language economy principle, syntax, elliptical clause

PoN-S : a systematic approach for applying the Physics of Notation (PoN)

Visual Modeling Languages (VMLs) are important instruments of communication between modelers and stakeholders. Thus, it is important to provide guidelines for designing VMLs. The most widespread approach for analyzing and designing concrete syntaxes for VMLs is the so-called Physics of Notation (PoN). PoN has been successfully applied in the analysis of several VMLs. However, despite its popularity, the application of PoN principles for designing VMLs has been limited. This paper presents a systematic approach for applying PoN in the design of the concrete syntax of VMLs. We propose here a design process establishing activities to be performed, their connection to PoN principles, as well as criteria for grouping PoN principles that guide this process. Moreover, we present a case study in which a visual notation for representing Ontology Pattern Languages is designed

Introduction

This chapter will motivate why it is useful to consider the topic of derivations and filtering in more detail. We will argue against the popular belief that the minimalist program and optimality theory are incompatible theories in that the former places the explanatory burden on the generative device (the computational system) whereas the latter places it on the fi ltering device (the OT evaluator). Although this belief may be correct in as far as it describes existing tendencies, we will argue that minimalist and optimality theoretic approaches normally adopt more or less the same global architecture of grammar: both assume that a generator defines a set S of potentially well-formed expressions that can be generated on the basis of a given input and that there is an evaluator that selects the expressions from S that are actually grammatical in a given language L. For this reason, we believe that it has a high priority to investigate the role of the two components in more detail in the hope that this will provide a better understanding of the differences and similarities between the two approaches. We will conclude this introduction with a brief review of the studies collected in this book.

Indefinites, negation and Jespersen's Cycle in the history of Low German

This paper offers a formal account of the diachronic changes in the interaction between indefinites in the scope of negation and the expression of sentential negation in the history of Low German. Different types of negative concord develop at the different historical stages. Parallel to that, the language underwent Jespersen's Cycle. In addition, I argue that, against common belief, Jespersen's Cycle is at best indirectly related to the type of interaction between indefinites and negation. Changes in the type of indefinites used in the scope of negation arise due to changes in the lexical properties of the indefinites involved, not as a result of changes in the expression of negation. Conversely, changes in the type of indefinites do not trigger changes in the expression of negation

Lexical information from a minimalist point of view

Simplicity as a methodological orientation applies to linguistic theory just as to any other field of research: ‘Occam’s razor’ is the label for the basic heuristic maxim according to which an adequate analysis must ultimately be reduced to indispensible specifications. In this sense, conceptual economy has been a strict and stimulating guideline in the development of Generative Grammar from the very beginning. Halle’s (1959) argument discarding the level of taxonomic phonemics in order to unify two otherwise separate phonological processes is an early characteristic example; a more general notion is that of an evaluation metric introduced in Chomsky (1957, 1975), which relates the relative simplicity of alternative linguistic descriptions systematically to the quest for explanatory adequacy of the theory underlying the descriptions to be evaluated. Further proposals along these lines include the theory of markedness developed in Chomsky and Halle (1968), Kean (1975, 1981), and others, the notion of underspecification proposed e.g. in Archangeli (1984), Farkas (1990), the concept of default values and related notions. An important step promoting this general orientation was the idea of Principles and Parameters developed in Chomsky (1981, 1986), which reduced the notion of language particular rule systems to universal principles, subject merely to parametrization with restricted options, largely related to properties of particular lexical items. On this account, the notion of a simplicity metric is to be dispensed with, as competing analyses of relevant data are now supposed to be essentially excluded by the restrictive system of principles

Typing after syntax. An argument from quotation and ellipsis

The paper, assuming the general framework of Chomsky’s (2013a, 2015b) current version of the Minimalist syntax, investigates the syntax of quotation in light of ellipsis. I show that certain unexpected effects arising for quotational ellipsis are problematic for the standard feature valuation system and, especially, for the theory of phases. I discuss some effects of two possible interpretations of such ellipsis, as well as a constraint following from deviant antecedents, to show that the standard view on the internal syntax of quotational expressions should be reconsidered. The paper offers a new view on feature valuation, as well as the connection between the Narrow Syntax and the C-I interface, defined in terms of recursive typing taking place at the interface

Generative grammar

Generative Grammar is the label of the most influential research program in linguistics and related fields in the second half of the 20. century. Initiated by a short book, Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957), it became one of the driving forces among the disciplines jointly called the cognitive sciences. The term generative grammar refers to an explicit, formal characterization of the (largely implicit) knowledge determining the formal aspect of all kinds of language behavior. The program had a strong mentalist orientation right from the beginning, documented e.g. in a fundamental critique of Skinner's Verbal behavior (1957) by Chomsky (1959), arguing that behaviorist stimulus-response-theories could in no way account for the complexities of ordinary language use. The "Generative Enterprise", as the program was called in 1982, went through a number of stages, each of which was accompanied by discussions of specific problems and consequences within the narrower domain of linguistics as well as the wider range of related fields, such as ontogenetic development, psychology of language use, or biological evolution. Four stages of the Generative Enterprise can be marked off for expository purposes

Prototype effects in discourse and the synonymy issue: Two Lakota postpositions

Despite of being fully synonymous at the semantic level, the postpositions el "locative/directional" and ekta "locative/directional" in Lakota (Siouan, Central North America) display different semantic cores in discourse: the semantic prototype for el is the role of locative, while the semantic prototype for ekta is the role of directional. Both the functional synonymy between el and ekta and the observed prototype effects can be attributed to constellations created by grammaticalization processes: when an innovative grammatical element is developing-in this case, ekta-replacement of a functionally equivalent older element-in this case, el-is unlikely, to happen overnight, so that the innovative and the older element can be expected to coexist for a while, and to share functional domains

Scrambling in German and Japanese: adjunction versus multiple specifiers

This paper argues that short (clause-internal) scrambling to a pre-subject position has A properties in Japanese but A'-properties in German, while long scrambling (scrambling across sentence boundaries) from finite clauses, which is possible in Japanese but not in German, has A'-properties throughout. It is shown that these differences between German and Japanese can be traced back to parametric variation of phrase structure and the parameterized properties of functional heads. Due to the properties of Agreement, sentences in Japanese may contain multiple (Agro- and Agrs-) specifiers whereas German does not allow for this. In Japanese, a scrambled element may be located in a Spec AgrP, i.e. an A- or L-related position, whereas scrambled NPs in German can only appear in an AgrP-adjoined (broadly-L-related) position, which only has A'-properties. Given our assumption that successive cyclic adjunction is generally impossible, elements in German may not be long scrambled because a scrambled element that is moved to an adjunction site inside an embedded clause may not move further. In Japanese, long distance scrambling out of finite CPs is possible since scrambling may proceed in a successive cyclic manner via embedded Spec- (AgrP) positions. Our analysis of the differences between German and Japanese scrambling provides us with an account of further contrasts between the two languages such as the existence of surprising asymmetries between German and Japanese remnant-movement phenomena, and the fact that unlike German, Japanese freely allows wh-scrambling. Investigation of the properties of Japanese wh-movement also leads us to the formulation of the "Wh-cluster Hypothesis", which implies that Japanese is an LF multiple wh-fronting language

Remarks on the architecture of OT syntax grammars

This paper argues for a particular architecture of OT syntax. This architecture hasthree core features: i) it is bidirectional, the usual production-oriented optimisation (called ‘first optimisation’ here) is accompanied by a second step that checks the recoverability of an underlying form; ii) this underlying form already contains a full-fledged syntactic specification; iii) especially the procedure checking for recoverability makes crucial use of semantic and pragmatic factors. The first section motivates the basic architecture. The second section shows with two examples, how contextual factors are integrated. The third section examines its implications for learning theory, and the fourth section concludes with a broader discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed model