Workshops

W O R K S H O P D E S C R I P T I O N

Introduction to Non-Minimalist Syntactic Theories
Tom Wasow

While "Principles and Parameters" (P&P) approaches (i.e. Government-Binding and Minimalism) have been the dominant paradigm in syntax for over two decades, a great deal of work has been done in the same period developing other theories of syntax, notably, Lexical Functional Grammar, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and various forms of categorial grammar and construction grammar. These frameworks share a number of properties that distinguish them from P&P, most notably, that they are surface-oriented, in the sense that they generate sentences without recourse to derivations involving structure-altering operations (transformations). That is, they generate observable forms directly. This workshop will focus on HPSG, but much of what is said could easily generalize to the other frameworks cited.

Two properties of HPSG that make it a natural tool for working on variation are its concern with broad coverage and its formal explicitness. Whereas P&P research is primarily directed at what is universal in language (and hence dismisses a great deal of variation as "peripheral"), much work in HPSG has focused on providing detailed and precise descriptions of the full range of constructions found in the languages to which it has been applied. In addition, HPSG employs a sign-based architecture that provides a uniform representational format for a wide range of types of information (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and social), facilitating descriptions of their interactions.

The usefulness of these properties for variationists will be illustrated with an HPSG analysis of some well-known dialect differences in the English auxiliary verb system. The variation in question includes differences in which auxiliaries invert (particularly, 'have') and copula absence, with particular reference to African American Vernacular English.