Minimalist Program Grammar Implementation

Sandiway Fong (University of Arizona) and Jason Ginsberg (Aizu University, Japan)

Worked Examples from Binding Theory

Extends an earlier implementation (see here) of Chomsky's Derivation of Phase to account for Binding Theory facts.

(See lower section below for a short summary of the theory. See also draft of paper Computation with doubling constituents: Pronouns and antecedents in Phase Theory here. )

Note: Javascript must be enabled for your browser to see the parses and buttons that permit you to step through the derivations for the various example sentences.

Example:

(1) *John[1] praises him[1]

Derivation steps:

Summary

  1. A doubling constituent (DC) combines a pronoun or anaphor with its antecedent.

    Covert d and self head the pronominal and reflexive DCs, respectively.

    A pronoun selects for its antecedent (and crucially not the other way around).

    An antecedent must escape the DC to be properly (theta and Case) licensed. Self (not null d) is a phase head.
    Note: The latter assumption accounts for the differences in distribution between pronominals and anaphors.

  2. The scope of probe-goal licensing is limited to two phases. Phase heads are:
    (I) c (complementizer), (II) v ("little v") when limited to v*, and (III) d (determiner) when it is self or possessive 's.
    Note: v* and 's both provide for a subject theta position, self doesn't.

  3. Any active lexical item still remaining at computation's end will cause the derivation to crash.
    Note: active lexical items contain unvalued feature(s).

  4. Only items in imminent danger of falling outside probe-goal scope can (I) preferentially undergo internal merge (last resort (LR) move) into an available theta position, or (II) go into the (subject) buffer for later external merge.
    Note: regular move is limited to merge to heads that have an EPP (or edge) feature. These are t (tense) and c (when Q).

  5. In the case of merge to a theta position, simple external merge has priority over internal merge, LR move and the (subject) buffer.

Last modified: Mon Oct 24 08:03:00 MST 2011