Chomsky’s three levels of adequacy
المؤلف:
David Hornsby
المصدر:
Linguistics A complete introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
161-8
2023-12-25
1641
Chomsky’s three levels of adequacy
Smith and Wilson (1979: 241–2) provide a good example of Chomsky’s three levels of adequacy. In the case of what is known as WH-movement, a noun following a WH- word can be moved to the front of a sentence:
1 Mary met some tourist on the street.
1b Which tourist did Mary meet on the street?
But this movement is not possible for a noun in a co-ordinated NP of the form ‘X and Y’:
2 Mary met a policeman and some tourist on the street.
2b *Which tourist did Mary meet a policeman and on the street?
An observationally adequate grammar would merely state that WH-movement does not allow extraction of a noun or noun-phrase from a co-ordinated structure, but in doing so it might miss a more important generalization, namely that the same constraint also applies elsewhere. Movement from a conjoined NP is similarly ruled out in topicalization, for example:
3 I want to invite that boy to my party
3b That boy, I want to invite to my party.
4 I want to invite this girl and that boy to my party
4b This girl and that boy, I want to invite to my party
4c *That boy, I want to invite this girl and to my party.
A descriptively adequate grammar of English would therefore state that no rule of English – and, equally importantly, no possible rule of English – allows movement out of a co-ordinated NP. But an explanatorily adequate grammar of English would not specify the rule at all, because it seems to be a feature of universal grammar. Movement from co-ordinated NPs appears to be ruled out in other languages, with no known counter-examples:
French:
J’aime beaucoup ton frère et ta sœur ‘I like your brother and your sister’
*Ta sœur, j’aime beaucoup ton frère et *‘Your sister, I like your sister and’
Russian:
Ja vidjel Pavla i Sonju ‘I saw Pavel and Sonya’
*Sonju ja vidjel Pavla i *‘Sonya I saw Pavel and’
Nupe (Nigeria):
egi-zì gí yikã tò n`â? ‘(The) children ate fish and meat’
*n¯ak`â kíci egi-zì gí yikã tò o? *‘meat which children eat fish and’ (*‘Which meat did the children eat fish and’?)
الاكثر قراءة في Syntax
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