The intention of this workshop, as that of its precursor held in 2001, is to bring together theoretical researchers in contemporary grammatical theory, where the emphasis is on a strong reading of the term 'theoretical', to be understood in its common scientific sense: researchers directly concerned with the model itself (the `theory'). It is the goal of this workshop to create a space for this important segment of the field to convene, exchange ideas, and develop common foci. This has the double ambition of stimulating theoretical research, and of helping foster a peer-community of theoretically minded researchers. The need for such an event, and its importance, has become abundantly clear over the last few years.
The central background factor is the stage of development of the discipline. Syntactic theory has developed into a blooming, academically well grounded, research community. But the discipline is still maturing, and structuring itself accordingly. Several strong and partially independent sub-fields have emerged, such as syntactic diachrony, acquisition of syntactic competence, creole-syntax studies, various branches of comparative syntax, etc. This has all been possible thanks to theoretical progress, which has created tools with which the above communities have been able to discover - and make sense of - a variety of deep generalizations about natural language syntax. Two decisive breakthroughs include for instance the discovery of `X-bar' theory in the early seventies, and the discovery of the `Principles & Parameters theory' of syntax, in the early 80s. These theoretical advances provided the field with two tools – parameters and articulated phrase-structure - with which they were able to address a wealth of phenomena previously unaccounted for, or not even noticed.
These theoretical innovations have created blooming `empirical' sub-disciplines, but they have not yet led to the emergence of a sub-discipline devoted to systematically craft and refine the theoretical tools themselves. Important work in this area is conducted within the minimalist program and theorists elaborating the commonalities between the minimalist conception of grammar and other frameworks (such as categorial grammar, tree adjoining grammar), but much of the work in this area is still done in relative isolation.
On the other hand, all the conditions are set for such a sub-field to emerge, as has been amply demonstrated by the precursor of this workshop held in 2001. The empirical blooming of the field has led to the availability of a solid basis of empirical generalizations (about locality, about phrase-structure, about binding and coreference, etc.). These provide solid ground under the feet of theoretical investigations, and it is thus becoming possible to productively focus on the theoretical tools, computational properties of systems, thanks to the results of prior and ongoing empirical research.
There is also an increasing need for such an endeavor given the role linguistics will have to play in the field of cognitive science. It is extremely important that the results of the investigation of the computational structure of the linguistic system can be stated in a way that brings out as clearly as possible what can be considered real achievements, and which issues are still under empirical investigation and debate. Clearly, also apart from this, it is important for the health of any discipline to have a sound core of theoretical research, both to provide the framework on which to hang the facts, and to help digest the generalizations which emerge from the empirical work.
Just to illustrate the kinds of questions that could arise we mention some of the relevant discussions from the present or nearby past:
- there used to be two means in our tool chest allowing one to express word order variations: movement and the head-parameter. This resulted in a move to eliminate the head parameter;
- every "move" (almost) presupposed a corresponding chain. Chains could do whatever move could do. Hence, the investigation of their relation, and moves to eliminate the redundancy;
- c-command is a pretty complex tool; hence there are endeavors to reduce it to simpler notions that are needed anyway (merge, sisterhood, dominance, etc.);
- we used to have two tools that looked very much alike: government and spec-head relations. A substantial part of the beginning of minimalism stems from the attempt to reduce one to the other;
- the contents of the tool chest of syntactic theory have been expanding over the years; hence the proposal for a fundamental reduction on the basis of the inclusiveness condition.
We invite papers that address fundamental issues in linguistic theory formation, which can provide the nucleus for extensive further discussion.
The format of the workshop takes this into account. The slot for a presentation will in principle be 90 min. We strive for optimal interaction between speakers and audience, hence discussion during presentations will be allowed, or even encouraged.