Minimalist Program and Syntactic linearity

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Minimalist Program and Syntactic linearity

What drives the evolution of generative grammar from Government Binding theory (GB) into Minimalist Program (MP)? The constraint of the variation of parameters is an important driving force now that GB does not define clearly the parameter setting, which leads to many theoretical problems. Minimalist Program rises up to the occasion by confining parameter variation to LF and PF, thus, overcoming the previous deficiency and bringing a series of modification to Generative Grammar.

1.Steps toward Minimalism

In spite of its radically different analyses, the Minimalist Program is a progression rather than a complete U-turn. The overall aim continues the tradition of making statements about human language that are as simple and general as possible; ¡®From the early 160s its ¡®generative grammar' central objective was to abstract general principles from the complex rule systems devised for particular languages, leaving rules that are simple, constrained in their operation by these UG principles' (Chomsky, 15b, p. 88). The minimalist framework continues this drive for simplification. In particular it draws on concepts from Chomsky's late 180s papers, such as Full Interpretation and Economy of representation and derivation.

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The principle of Full Interpretation claims that there are no redundant elements in the structure of the sentence each element plays some role, whether semantic, syntactic, or phonological, and must be interpreted in some way. The Principle of Economy is more general requirement that all representations and processes used to drive them be as economical as possible.

How does the Principle of Economy lead to minimalism? If the linguistic system needs to be as economical as possible, in terms of both how it represents and generates structures, clearly the smallest possible set of devices to account for language phenomena should be used ¨C the defining characteristic of the Minimalist Program. Economy of representation requires that representations of syntactic structure contain no more than the required elements (the principle of full Interpretation may be a consequence of this condition). But it was a general requirement with no implication about the number of levels involved.

The linguistic system has been assumed to use two external interface levels, which are interpreted by the semantic and phonetic components, LF and PF, and an internal level that represents basic lexical information, D-structure. These three levels are connected by a single level of representation S-structure. These combine to form the well-known (upside-down)T-model.(1)

The Minimalist Program questions whether al these levels of representation are really necessary. In the minimalist framework, only LF and PF are really necessary and there is the possibility of doing away with D-structure and S-structure. Of course there must still be a lexicon and a ¡®computational system' which forms LF and PF representations from lexical information. Hence the ideal minimalist design would be something like

Lexicon

PF ¨C(phonetic component)

LF

Where the lines represent the computations that form the LF and PF representations, drawing from the lexicon.

Developments in some areas of the GB theory caused tensions for other areas which had long been taken as crucial to the whole theory. Something had to give the result was that in the Minimalist Program, the A-and A-bar-positions are no longer taken to be basic, their effects stemming from more fundamental principles concerning how the computational system works.

A second GB problem is the concept of government, which, despite having considerable empirical motivation, is nonetheless an ¡®arbitrary syntactic relation' (Lasnik, 1, p.). Moreover there are many different notions of government, some working better than others for certain phenomena; fortunately, no version is perfect for all purposes. Take the following government relation as an example

= governs ß if and only if

(1)= is a governor (e.g. N, V, P, A, etc)

() = and ß mutually c-command each other

() if = governs ß, then = governs the specifier of ß

This was chosen mainly because of its relative simplicity, but it allows too wide a range of relationships for it to be considered perfect.

A more serious problem is that, under these assumptions, AGR governs, and therefore can assign Case to, the specifier of TP. If this is so, there needs to be an explanation why the subject moves into the specifier of AGRP to receive Nominative Case instead of staying in the specifier of TP. Whatever solution we give to this problem takes us further away from pure explanation as it clears up a problem caused by an imperfect definition of government rather than by the nature of grammar itself ideally, the answer might be expected to lie in the definition of government rather than in patching it up with yet more stipulation.

The minimalist solution to the problem is to abandon government as a fundamental notion of the theory. Of course, this is a radical move.

Other developments within GB theory itself also paves the way for the development of the Minimalist Program. One recurrent theme since the work of Pollock (18) has been the distinction between languages that raise Verbs to the inflectional nodes, such as French, and those that seem unable to move main Verbs out of the VP, such as English. In the latter case, there is the problem of how Verbs which do not move get their inflections, the usual solution being that, at least at some level of representation, the inflectional elements themselves lower onto the Verb. It expressly goes against the Empty Category Principle, which says that the trace of a moved element must be properly governed. Moving a head to a lower position in a tree means, if anything, the trace will govern the moved head rather than the other way round.

The solution is to assume that Verbs are given their inflectional properties and forms in the lexicon; an already ¡®inflected' Verb is inserted into its base position in the VP and so does not have to move anywhere to become inflected. The inflectional nodes, instead of adding inflections to a bare Verb, perform the function of checking that the inserted Verb has the appropriate features when it moves into them.

Procrastinate plays a large part in explaining the different Verb movement properties of French and English and states that movement operations should be delayed for as long as possible. So in English, where the Verb is not raised until LF, we can see that Verb movement accords with Procrastinate. The analysis allows us to assume that some movements actually take place later at LF rather than occurring to other cases, diminishing the role of S-structure almost to nothing.. This paves the way for the Minimalist Program to reduce the levels of structural representation to the bare minimum, LF and PF, and it demonstrates once more how the Minimalist Program develops directly out of the GB approach.

.A Brief Sketch of the Minimalist Framework

So the theory attempts to reduce the grammar to its minimum, reconstructing the effects of the grammatical mechanisms that it abandons on the basis of more fundamental, and therefore more explanatory, considerations. What remains are the bare essentials that necessarily have to be assumed given that languages have meaning and form, it is not possible to dispense with the interface between the grammar and semantics (LF) or with that between the grammar and phonetics (PF). Furthermore, there has to be some syntactic mechanism that forms the structures that appear at the interface levels, i.e. a computational system of some kind. Finally, there will be considerations of what constitutes a legitimate object at each representational level, which possibly have their foundations in the interpretative components themselves. Ideally, the grammar should consist of only the bare minimum.

One important difference between minimalism and GB is that, in the former, structures are built up piecemeal. In GB, D-structure was presented as a complete structure and not much was said about the internal process of how it was formed it was an ¡® ¡°all-at-once¡± operation' (Chomsky, 1, p.1)

The Minimalist Program is transformational and so a movement operation is part of the computational system. As well as actually building trees, the computational system also moves elements about in the trees. This may indeed be part of the tree formation process as elements may be moved into structural positions created by the process itself. For example, consider the position where the AGR system has just been added to a partially formed tree with the subject still inside the VP, presented here in a simplified tree

AGRP

AGR'

AGR TP

T VP

DPV'

John

V DP

Loves Mary

As it stands here, AGRP has no specifier position. So, for the subject John to move into AGR, the specifier position will need to be created and then the subject moved into it, forming the tree

AGRP

DP AGR'

John

AGRTP

T VP

DP V'

t

V DP

LovesMary

The operation which moves elements about is called simply Move. The tree building process is thus made up of two basic operations¡ªMerge and Move.

As to how the computational system is constrained, it is obvious that the constraint offered by the convergence condition at the interface levels seems inadequate. As is well known, movement is not an unconstrained operation; in particular movement needs to be kept local. Following the basic observation of Relativized Minimality, Chomsky proposes that movements are constrained by a Minimal Link Condition that only accepts movement into the nearest relevant position ¡®= must make the ¡°shortest move¡±¡­' (Chomsky, 15b, p. 401). The other two major constraints on the Move operation, one is Procrastinate which delays movement for as long as possible, the other one is called ¡®Greed', which allows movement of an element only if it satisfies some property of the moved element ¨Cmovement cannot be made to satisfy the properties of an element that becomes related to the moved element by the movement process ¡®Move raises to = to a position ß only if morphological properties of = itself would not otherwise be satisfies in the derivation' (Chomsky, 15b, p. 400). Their general effect is to cause a derivation to crash if they are not adhered to.

To wrap up, the computation system starts off with a Numeration of the lexical items from which the SD is to be formed. Then, by the operations of Merge and Move, SDs are built up piecemeal, with the Move operation being constrained by the Minimal Link Condition, Procrastinate and Greed. Hence the whole system is in a sense ¡®driven' by the lexical items and their morphology; ¡®operations are driven by morphological necessity certain features must be checked in the checking domain of the head, or the derivation will crash' (Chomsky, 1, p.). This process proceeds to a point at which the derivation splits into phonetically relevant and semantically relevant information Spell-out. From here two separate representations are formed. The computational system continues to form structures after Spell-out, but, if the end points of these operations do not conform to a Full Interpretation condition, the derivation crashes. If these conditions are met at both LF and PF, the derivation converges. We can represent this in the following diagram

Numeration

PF

Spell-Out

LF

In this diagram, the lines represent the workings of the computational system Full Interpretation is applied to both interface representations, but of course differently according to whether semantic or phonetic information is being interpreted.

The thrust of MP is to reduce the grammar down to its bare essentials, with no more stipulation than absolutely necessary. Everything is cut out but the interface levels and the minimum of operations. If successful, the Minimalist Program accounted for by a very small number of assumptions about the structure of the grammar, most of which are necessary for any grammar. It's not appropriate to come to a hasty conclusion how successful the Minimalist Program will be in pursuing its goal. As Chomsky puts it, ¡°We are left with hard and challenging questions, of a new order of depth, and prospects for a theory of language with properties that are quite surprising' (Chomsky, 15b, p. 44). But we can never ignore MP due to the fame and popularity of the guru, Chomsky.

.Application of MP in syntactic linearity of Simultaneous Interpretation

In Yang Chengshu (00)'s ¡®Syntactic Linearity in Simultaneous Interpretation ¨C An Exploration Study of its Operation through the Use of the Minimalist Program', theoretic research developed in modern linguistics on the natural language generative process is used to explore both the process of language derivation and the governing principles of language operation during simultaneous interpretation. Furthermore, that paper tests the validity of the principle and methods of syntactic linearity.

The paper was triggered by the fantasy that interpretation performance will be improved greatly if interpretation reformulation/derivation coincides the production way of natural language.

Natural language derivation is concept-driven so the ideal interpretation process goes like this the interpreter transforms the received phonetic information of the source discourse into Concept, and then to Words, and finally derive/generate grammatical sentence in equivalent words or phrases according to the connotation of the concept.

The study and application of Economy Theory may provide solutions to problems in Simultaneous interpreting and facilitate operation of simultaneous interpretation derivation/reformulation.

Major components of Economy Theory in association with syntactic linearity under discussion are

(1)Greed the movement of an element is to satisfy morphological requirement of the moved element;

()Procrastinate any movement should be procrastinated until necessary;

()Fewest step fewest steps should be taken to move an element;

(4)Least effort least effort should be taken in movement;

(5)Shortest link shortest distance should be taken to move an element.

Syntactic linearity is applicable to simultaneous interpreting, sight interpreting and even consecutive interpreting. Being not only an interpreting skill, syntactic linearity is considered operational principle concerning interpretation quality and efficiency in the whole process of source discourse analysis and translation derivation.

If simultaneous interpreter were to adopt the near-natural language derivation way to arrive at interpretation reformulation, he has to

(1)take the phonetic information of the source discourse as words or concepts of natural language;

() spot the information focus of the source discourse;

()reduce the interference of the source language;

(4)decide how to handle the different word order in both source discourse and target discourse;

(5)and then produce interpretation according to principles of natural language derivation.

To eliminate or reduce source language interference, the interpreter should also implement ¡®segmenting (information)', ¡®retaining (the original sentence form)', ¡®moving(elements of the discourse when necessary)', converging(or adjunction)' and ¡®deleting(redundant element)', thus achieving the ultimate goal of syntactic linearity.

Among the above mentioned methods, all except segmenting and retaining are in accordance with MP.

Concrete Examples

1.Please allow me to address some words/ on behalf of / my colleagues of Merck's Executive Board.

Ç ÈÝΠ˵¼¸¾ä °£¬À ú±í£¬µÂ¹úĬ¿Ë¶­Ê á±í ïÎ ÃǵÄÐÄ â¡£

The segment in bold face indicates added part.

.It is an honor for me /to celebrate with you / the 10th anniversary of our company.

±¾ÈË(movement)ºÜÈÙÐ £¬ÄÜ Ú³¡¸÷Πͬ ¶¶È±¾¹ ˾ʮÖÜÄêÇì¡£

4.Looking Ahead

It seems that Chomsky's Minimalist Programme can be applied to syntactic linearity in English-Chinese Interpretation with some modification. Further trail and error test will be implemented in other language combination. And Chomsky is always on the move in his theory, we will have to collect more data to prove the validity of the application and the attempt to provide more efficient solutions to problems in simultaneous interpretation.

Bibliography

Chomsky, N. 15. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press

Cook & Newson, 000. Chomsky's Universal Grammar An Introduction. Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

³Ì¹¤£¬18£¬Chomsky×î¼ò·½°¸ÐγɵÄÀíÂÛ¶¯ ò£¬Íâ ï½Ì § о¿£¨×Ü11£

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