This chapter compares Generative Grammar (GG) and Natural Linguistics (NL). The general result is that GG and NL are less dissimilar than thought, already in their initial state, but much more so since the mid 90s when the minimalist incarnation of GG made a significant move in the direction of NL positions. GG and NL share the idea that language is made of computational systems where an algorithm transforms an input of a specific type into an output. Both also hold that there is a list of items that are universal, genetically coded, and present at birth: Processes in NL, Universal Grammar in GG. The types of universal items are quite different, though. Another issue are functional factors: NL is viewed as a functional theory, while GG as a formal, thus non-functional approach. It may be reasonable to say that nobody denies the existence of functional pressure on language. The question is where exactly this pressure occurs: in the computational systems, or outside of them? GG and NL converge to say that functional elements act outside of computational systems, that is, on their output, while functional OT is an outlier with respect to NL and the general evolution of GG.

This chapter introduces the three major themes of the book: relative clauses, Proto-Indo-European and syntax.

Generative approaches to synchronic linguistics attempt to describe what is part of a language in a mathematically precise way, and generative approaches to the history of English and other languages model diachronic changes as a sequence of stages of the language with differing formal properties. Formalising the grammars of these stages makes falsifiable predictions about what was grammatical in each stage. Generative accounts include phonological analysis, but this chapter focuses on accounts of morphosyntactic changes. Generativists take child language acquisition to be the locus of language change, which is assumed to occur when children are exposed to different Primary Linguistic Data from what older generations encountered, due to factors like phonological change and language contact. Syntactic changes that have been studied extensively within generative frameworks include the development of modal and other auxiliary verbs, clausal negation and changes in word order, particularly in the positioning of the tensed verb.

This chapter looks at the overall goals of generative syntax. It then moves on to a discussion of levels of adequacy for linguistic theory. This leads to a very brief discussion of the development of generative theory since its inception in the 1950s, up to its current version, known as the Minimalist Programme. Finally, we begin the discussion of hierarchy with an exposition of the X-bar theory of phrase structure and the notion of constituency tests as a probe for hierarchical structure.

This chapter provides an overview of the various approaches to theoretical modeling of syntactic variation in human language. Three main types of syntactic variation, i.e., word order variation, silence and doubling, are described and then used to demonstrate how different generative theories capture these phenomena. The generative theories discussed include Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG), Government and Binding (GB) Theory, Minimalism (including Optimality Theory), Nanosyntax, Distributed Morphology, and post-GB Parameter Theory (including parameter hierarchies and the Universal Spine Hypothesis). Taking into account a great many different languages and dialects, the chapter shows that strong progress has been made in our understanding of the nature, range, and limits of syntactic variation.

This chapter introduces the reader to the field of comparative syntax and to the handbook. It briefly addresses the history and the future of the field and describes its research goals. The second part of the chapter provides an overview of the chapters, with brief summaries.

While Present-Day English has SVO as its canonical word order, word order preferences have undergone substantial changes since Old English times. Not only has word order become more fixed (especially with respect to unmarked sentence-initial elements) in main clauses, but verb-final in subordinate clauses has also been lost. The change from V2 to SVO, in particular, has traditionally been attributed to changes in morphology (particularly the loss of case marking). As word order flexibility in declarative main clauses became more restricted, English developed alternative ways to reorder clause elements for information-structuring purposes, including different kinds of passive construction. This chapter reviews previous research on word order changes in the history of English with a view to showing major developments in the field of English historical syntax, such as the shift from largely qualitative to more quantitative, data-based approaches, a change in focus from canonical to non-canonical word order or from core to more peripheral clause elements. Major theoretical models serve as the backdrop of these developments in the field of English historical syntax.

The Introduction outlines the book’s six chapters. Chapter 1 presents the theoretical foundations of Generative Grammar and discusses the ‘prehistory’ of the concept of parameter in the late seventies and early eighties up to the formulation of the Principles and Parameters model of the Government and Binding (GB) framework. Chapter 2 examines the individual formulation of the main parameters that were proposed during that period, summarizing many of the central empirical concerns of research in the 1980s. Chapter 3 traces the development of the concept of parameter in early Minimalism, focusing on the debate over macro- vs. microparameters, the main criticisms raised against the parametric approach, and the latter’s subsequent reformulation within recent hierarchical models. Chapter 4 returns to the parameters of the GB Theory and evaluates their status in current generative theory. Chapter 5 is devoted specifically to the head-complement parameter, whose history arguably embodies the development of the parametric approach to linguistic variation. Chapter 6 draws the conclusions of the historical review conducted in the previous chapters and critically reconsiders the notion of parameter.

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the protohistory of the concept of parameter. The first part mainly focuses on the theoretical foundations of Generative Grammar, as laid out in Chomsky (1965). The discussion then turns to those works which paved the way to the parametric approach in Generative Grammar, with Chomsky (1973) introducing a first set of universal conditions on grammatical rules, and Chomsky (1976) being the generative work in which the term ‘parameter’ is used for the first time. The outcome of Rizzi’s (1978) and Taraldsen’s (1978) pre-parametric inquiries is then reviewed, as they shed new light on the systematicity of linguistic variation. Finally, focus is put on the explicit formulation of the concept of parameter and the consequent shift toward the systematic study of cross-linguistic variation, a problem previously addressed by Greenberg (1963). In this respect, the major advancement introduced by Chomsky (1981a) is the hypothesis of the existence of implicational relations among individual parameters. How the term ‘parameter’ is used in Chomsky and Lasnik (1977) in conjunction with the concept of core grammar is also discussed.

Syntax is perhaps one of the most successful projects in the history of theoretical linguistics. It’s also garnered the most philosophical attention. Thus, this chapter focuses on syntactic metatheory. It surveys a number of prominent frameworks from minimalism to construction grammar, dependency grammar, lexical functional grammar and head-driven phrase structure grammar.The main aim is to find a common argument structure and strategy across diverse theoretical positions. In the tradition of recent work on scientific modelling in the philosophy of science, the approach that’s adopted in this chapter works from a bottom-up review of the cross-framework literature. I’ll make a case for a general explanatory strategy or scientific project at the core of linguistic syntax. The core idea is that this general scientific strategy is relatively stable across syntactic frameworks. In other words, the chapter aims to address the question of what minimalism, dependency grammar, radical construction grammar, head-driven phrase structure grammar, and lexical functional grammar have in common. The answer is a general formal strategy that focuses on rules in creating structural units, captures recursive phenomena, and, most importantly, treats syntactic information as explanatorily autonomous from other systems.

This chapter reviews all the assumptions deployed in Chapters 2–5 and indicates the specific roles played in the derivation of the requisite grammatical effects discussed therein. Bringing all the assumptions together in one place and showing what specific role they play in the derivations should allow dissenters to pick and choose what parts of the proposal they would like to keep and what to dump and the price of each move.

The book argues that the research program of modern Generative Grammar (GG) has been a resounding success. More particularly, it argues that the most current stage of this more general enterprise, the Minimalist Program (MP), has provided profound insights into the structure of the faculty of language (FL). The book outlines the central Minimalist thesis (the Merge Hypothesis) and suggests ways of extending its explanatory reach.

This chapter rounds off the book by recapitulating the argument that the research program of modern Generative Grammar has provided profound insights into the structure of the faculty of language (FL) to explain both linguistic creativity and linguistic flexibility. The proposal is that the Generative enterprise has allowed us to examine what kinds of recursive procedures natural language grammars contain, and to understand key aspects of the fine structure of FL. The Minimalist Program then asks the obvious next question of why FL has the particular structure Generativists discovered it to have. It is argued that the central Minimalist thesis, the Merge Hypothesis (MH), explains how linguistic creativity is the product of a very simple combinatoric operation (i.e. Merge), and then showed how the MH can be extended (into the EMH) by the addition of labels to cover most of the generalizations discovered in the past sixty years of Generative research.

Usama Soltan brings his considerable expertise in generative theory to bear on Arabic morphosyntax in Arabic dialects and in Standard Arabic. He focuses on three topics: agreement phenomena, case marking, and negation structures. Using a Principles and Parameters approach, he discusses subject-verb agreement asymmetry (SVAA) in Standard Arabic and first conjunct agreement in both Standard Arabic and in Arabic vernacular. As he notes, both these topics have garnered the interest of generative linguists in terms of their wider impact on general grammatical theory. Case marking, his second topic, pertains to Standard Arabic only, but is rich in history, analysis, and speculative theory within the Arabic linguistic tradition. Soltan focuses on subject and object marking of NPs, noting the difference between case assigners for each and discussing the role of syntactic government. The morphosyntax of negation is Soltan’s third topic, contrasting the various negation processes of Standard Arabic with the extensive negative formulations of Cairene Egyptian Arabic (CEA) and finding ‘a rich ground for the analysis of clausal structure and its implications’ where the study of the syntax of modern Arabic dialects contributes significantly to general linguistic theory.