And Rosta wrote:
> 
> Joe:
> > And Rosta wrote:
> > >
> > > Although in principle I exempt myself from responsibility for mentalist
> > > issues, I do in fact have two answers:
> > > (i) invisible words occur where there are apparent gaps in paradigms
> >
> > Without counting reference to the situational or speech context, these
> > gaps can be filled in either internally to a node (as in, e.g., HPSG)
> > or externally as an extra node (as P&P does in abundance). This is
> > what the debate is all about, I think.
> 
> I don't understand what you mean.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what I think that I think:

In WG, as I see it, each node on the dependency tree is really a rich
network of information. Loosely speaking, you can represent just about
anything in these nodes (except perhaps for linear precedence?). So
why not take advantage of the (potential) richness of each network
and represent the information of invisible words in the relevant
nodes? This way you get the best of both worlds, which should be
very appealing. You could also do "coenunciation" this way (think
of Chet's work on hybrid categories).


> Here's an example of what I had in mind:
> 
>     this book    these books
>     that book    those books
>     the  book    the   books
>     a    book          books

Actually, the last line should be, no?

      a    book    some  books

(Spanish has a very clear possibility in this case:

      un libro    unos libros
       a book     a-PL books
      'a book'   'some books'

Things are more complicated than this because you also have
algun(o) 'some-SG' ~ algunos 'some-PL.')

Anyway, gaps occur all over the place:

     parent             grandparent            ???
     /    \                /  \               /   \
mother   father  grandmother  grandrather  aunt  uncle

So I'm not sure what gaps really show.

 
> -- there's a surprising gap where you'd expect to find the plural
> indefinite article. Everything looks a bit more regular if you take
> there to be a phonologically invisible plural indefinite article.
> 
> > > (ii) syntactic structure being semantic structure, invisible words
> > > are detectable from semantic structure, e.g. when the compositional
> > > meaning of the phonologically visible words in a sentence does not
> > > add up to the actual meaning.
> >
> > Wow! Can you go into this in a bit more detail? It sounds as if
> > you've given up (rather radically) on modular syntax.
> 
> I haven't. I broadly agree with GB/Minimalism, which has syntax interfacing
> with the 'conceptual-intentional' system.
> 
> I have gone into a bit more detail in another recent posting, with a
> diagram & stuff.

Yes, but in the posting, which is very interesting (give me some time
to digest it, though), you don't really justify the move of treating
syntax and semantics on the same plane. Perhaps by "semantics" you
mean LF, and that you don't take LF to be part of conceptual
structure. This would be very much like Jackendoff's _Architecture_
book, which conjectures the following structure:

Syntax module<--->LF interface<--->Concept. struc. mega-metamodule(!)

I don't think that this is very WGish, personally, though I'm almost
certain that Nik might disagree.

Joe
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