题目：Parameters of Variation in the Clausal Domain: A Pan-Romance View

主讲人：Adam Ledgeway（英国剑桥大学教授）

时间：2023-10-24 星期二 10:00-12:00

地点：教二104

主办单位：北京语言大学语言学系、乔姆斯基研究所

摘要：

This talk reviews some of the principal patterns of morphosyntactic variation within the Romània in support of a north-south Romance continuum from an approach which locates the relevant dimensions of (micro)variation between northern and southern varieties in the properties of individual functional heads (Ledgeway 2016; 2020; 2022). This approach, which builds on the insights of the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture (cf. Baker 2008:353), assumes that the locus of parametric variation lies in the lexicon and, in particular, the   (PF)lexicalization of specific formal feature values of individual functional   heads (Borer 1984; Chomsky 1995). These feature values are not set in   isolation, inasmuch as parameters ostensibly form an interrelated network of implicational relationships: the given value of a particular parameter may, in turn, entail the concomitant activation of associated lower-order parametric choices, whose potential surface effects may consequently become entirely predictable, or indeed render entirely irrelevant other parameters (cf. Roberts 2019). Such is the case, for instance, with T which probes the verb in northern Romance, a parametric setting which, in turn, accounts for the availability of verb-subject inversion, Stage II and III negation, subject clitics and active-stative perfective auxiliary selection. In southern Romance varieties, by contrast, all these same options are absent   since T fails to attract the verb which is probed instead by v, a parametric choice which explains the restriction of V-to-C movement to positive imperatives, the use of generalized or person-driven perfective auxiliation, and active participle agreement with in situ objects.Considerable progress in this direction has already been made in establishing, and modelling the relationships between, some of the most important parameters of microvariation within the nominal domain, not just across Romance but also more broadly within Indo-European and beyond, in recent parametric work, especially that couched within the Parametric Comparison Method (see, among others, Guardiano and Longobardi (2005; 2017a,b), Longobardi, Guardiano (2009). In this talk, by contrast, I shall consider a selection of key examples from the clausal domain of representative morphosyntactic divergence between the varieties of northern and southern Romance which highlight a number of significant differences in the featural make-up of the functional heads C-T-v and their associated domains – the left periphery, the inflexional core of the sentence, and the verb phrase – and the parametric options they instantiate. For example, the contrast between northern Romance varieties which show privileged marking of the subject through a system of subject clitics and southern varieties characterized by differential marking of the object highlights a major difference that can ultimately be related to the differential, and often complementary, featural composition and role of the functional heads T and v. Whereas in the north the T head proves particularly active in probing, for example, the verb and spelling out the D-features of the subject through a system of subject clitics, in the south the role of T   is less significant in that it is v that attracts the verb and spells out the various D-related features of the object through a licensing operation of DOM.

References

Baker, M., 2008: “The macroparameter in a microparametric world”, in T. Biberauer (ed.), The Limits of Syntactic Variation, Amsterdam, Benjamins, pp. 351-74.

Borer, H., 1984: Parametric Syntax, Dordrecht, Foris.

Chomsky, N., 1995: The Minimalist Program, Cambridge MA, MIT Press.

Guardiano, C., and Longobardi, G., 2005: “Parametric comparison and language taxonomy”, in M. Batllori, M.-Ll. Hernanz, C. Picallo and F. Roca (eds.), Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 149-74.

Guardiano, C., and Longobardi, G., 2017a: “Phylogenetic reconstruction in syntax: the Parametric Comparison Method”, in A. Ledgeway and I. Roberts (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.   241-71.

Guardiano, C., and Longobardi, G., 2017b: “Parameter theory and parametric comparison”, in I. Roberts (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 377-98.

Longobardi, G., and Guardiano, C., 2009: “Evidence for syntax as a signal of historica relatedness”, Lingua 119/11, pp. 1679-1706.
Ledgeway, A. 2016. “Functional Categories”, in A. Ledgeway and M. Maiden (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 761-71.

Ledgeway, A. 2020. ‘The North-South Divide: Parameters of Variation in the Clausal Domain’, L’Italia Dialettale 81:29-77.

Ledgeway, A. 2022. ‘Disentangling parameters: Romance differential object marking and the distribution of head and edge features’, in Gabriela Alboiu, Daniela Isac, Alexandru Nicolae, Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru & Alina Tigău (eds), A Life in   Linguistics.A Festschrift for Alexandra Cornilescu on her 75th Birthday. Bucharest: Editura Universității din Bucarești, 439-58.

Roberts, I. 2019. Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.