<OT> Descriptive and Explanatory Adequacy in Linguistics (DEAL)

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

Conference Announcement

Full Title: Descriptive and Explanatory Adequacy in Linguistics
Short Title: DEAL

Location: Berlin, Germany
Contact Person: Hans Broekhuis  <Hans.Broekhuis at uvt.nl>
Meeting Email: DEAL at uvt.nl
Web Site: http://let.uvt.nl/deal05

Call Deadline: 15-Sep-2007

Meeting Description:

This workshop addresses problems concerning descriptive and explanatory
adequacy in linguistics, especially the Minimalist Program and 
Optimality
Theory.

The current state of affairs in the minimalist program (MP) and 
optimality
theory (OT) clearly illustrates the general tension between descriptive 
and
explanatory adequacy. The description of the differences between the two
frameworks in the next three paragraphs is somewhat coarse and 
oversimplified
in order to highlight the general tendencies.

MP is a very austerely formulated theory, but this seems to go at the 
expense
of descriptive adequacy: the empirical scope seems to be restricted to
syntactic and semantic phenomena that involve or can be directly 
related to
movement and features, and during the last decade much effort has been 
devoted
to incorporating established insights of earlier phases of the
theory. Although this endeavour has been successful to a certain 
extent, much
still seems to be out of reach of the theory in its present formulation.

OT, on the other hand, can readily be applied to virtually any 
imaginable
subfield of linguistics. It is widely accepted as the standard 
phonological
theory, and proposals exist that extend its empirical domain to the 
fields of
syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The explanatory adequacy of OT is 
limited,
however, which is clearly related to the fact that OT only offers a 
general
scheme for the formulation of grammars; it has a system of ranked 
violable
constraints at its core, but OT grammars can be specified in various,
sometimes even incompatible ways. A great advantage of this freedom is 
that OT
has brought together researchers from various theoretical frameworks 
(such as
GB, MP, LFG, HPSG, etc), but a drawback of this is that the body of 
work that
could be referred to as OT-syntax lacks internal consistency, so that
OT-syntax is still far from acquiring a reasonable degree of explanatory
adequacy.

The problem concerning explanatory adequacy is actually enlarged by the 
fact
that there is no clear consensus about what constitutes the core of 
OT-syntax,
the universal set of constraints CON. Contrary to what seems to be the 
case in
OT-phonology, there is no well-established and widely accepted set of
substantive syntactic constraints. There is even disagreement on the 
general
format of these constraints: whereas in phonology most constraints are 
assumed
to be either faithfulness or markedness constraints, this is not 
clearly true
for OT-syntax. This, in its turn, is related to the question what forms 
the
input of the OT-syntax. Many possibilities come to mind: a numeration, a
pre-established phrase marker, a semantic representation, etc.

Many researchers construe MP and OT not only as competing but also as
incompatible theories. Since OT is not committed to a particular
representational formalism, this is by no means obviously the case: it 
could
well be imaginable that current MP could be reformulated in OT-terms. 
This
might actually solve one major problem for current OT-syntax since it 
would
restrict the syntactic constraints such that they can only be phrased 
in terms
of (the outputs of) the operations of the generator, which under this 
scenario
would be the computational system CHL, and the legibility conditions 
imposed
by LF and PF. Further, it is clear that MP and OT-syntax in their 
present
formulation focus on different aspects of the grammar: whereas the 
former is
mainly concerned with the derivation of structure, the latter evaluates 
the
syntactic representations created by the generator. Of course, MP 
acknowledges
that the output structures must be evaluated by interface/bare output
conditions, but an explicit formulation of these conditions is still not
provided. Within OT-syntax it is sometimes acknowledged that conditions 
are
needed on the generator, but so far explicit proposals are lacking. It 
is
conceivable, therefore, that MP and OT are actually complementary 
theories,
which can cancel each other's weaknesses. Of course, incorporating 
insights
from MP into OT, or vice versa, can be obtained in a variety of ways. 
The
questions whether this is desirable, and, if so, in which way this must 
be
obtained are largely empirical in nature.

In this workshop we want to address questions that involve the 
descriptive and
explanatory adequacy of MP and OT, and the relation between the two
frameworks. Below we provide some of the questions that could be 
addressed in
this conference. Of course, this set of questions is not exhaustive. 
The way
these questions are formulated is certainly biased, and expresses our 
belief
that the insights of MP and OT can profitably be combined into a more
comprehensive theory. Of course, contributions that contest this belief 
and
argue for the primacy of one of the two frameworks are also welcome at 
this
workshop. It goes without saying that the questions below are just a 
random
subset of the set of questions that can be addressed in this workshop.

The minimalist program

- Empirical scope. So far the empirical scope of MP seems to be 
restricted to
   syntactic phenomena involving or directly relatable to movement. Is 
this an
   inherent restriction of MP? If not, how can MP be extended in order 
to also
   cover cases that cannot be related to movement. If so, how should the 
facts
   that MP cannot account for be addressed?

- Computational system. In the earliest studies within the MP, it was 
claimed
   that CHL is universal and that differences in the output should be
   attributed exclusively to the morpho-syntactic features in the 
lexicon:
   language variation is due to the set of strength/epp-features in the
   lexicon. In general practice, the effect of these features is that 
each
   numeration leads to a single converging syntactic representation. 
Although
   the universality of the CHL is still maintained, the claim that the 
locus of
   language variation is the lexicon is not. In recent work, it is 
assumed that
   the output of CHL is evaluated by the interpretative component INT, 
which
   seems to consist of a set of language-specific filters. This implies 
that
   CHL overgenerates, and that the selection of the acceptable structure 
is
   actually due to the evaluation of the output of CHL. This raises the
   question whether we still need to postulate lexical 
strength/epp-features or
   whether they can actually be assumed to be part of INT.

- Interface/bare output conditions. What are the interface conditions, 
and how
   should they be formulated? In which way are they applied to the 
structures
   created by CHL? What is the relation of the interface/bare output 
conditions
   to the filters of the interpretative component INT? More 
specifically, is
   INT part of the semantic bare output conditions? If so, is there also 
a
   phonological interpretative component?

Optimality Theory

- Input. It is not a priori clear what the input of the OT-generator 
is. Is it
   a numeration of the sort proposed in MP, or is it some other object 
like a
   semantic or some prefabricated syntactic representation. If the 
latter, what
   is the origin of these representations?

- Generator. Although it is generally acknowledged that the generator 
has
   certain properties that affect the candidate set, studies in OT 
normally do
   not explicitly address this. Furthermore, these properties normally 
do not
   play a role in the explanations for the empirical data. Nevertheless, 
a
   fully elaborated theory should make clear what operations the 
generator
   consists of, and what effects these operations have on the output of 
the
   system. In principle, enrichment of the generator may reduce the 
candidate
   sets, which in its turn may void the need of certain constraints and 
would
   shift part of the explanatory power to the generator. Is there 
anything in
   OT that would block such a move? Is such a move desirable? May such a 
move
   contribute to making the theory explanatorily adequate?

- Evaluator. Focus in OT-syntax seems to be on descriptive adequacy, 
and since
   the constraints are crucial in obtaining that, it is not surprising 
that the
   set of proposed constraints is growing abundantly. In a sense 
OT-syntax
   resembles early TG-theory, where the focus was on formulating and
   discovering the properties of the newly introduced means of
   transformations. However, if we can learn something from the history 
of
   generative grammar, it is that we can only achieve explanatory 
adequacy if
   we place severe bounds of the admissible means of describing the 
data. It is
   therefore necessary to develop a constrained and principled theory of
   constraints: What is the general format that the constraints should 
adhere
   to, and what are the types of constraints we may expect to occur?

The Minimalist Program and Optimality Theory

- Should MP and OT-syntax be considered two competing theories? If so, 
what
   properties of the two systems make them intrinsically incompatible? 
What are
   the prospects of solving the problems concerning the 
descriptive/explanatory
   adequacies of the two systems?

- Should MP and OT-syntax be considered as frameworks that simply focus 
on
   different questions, so that they are actually complementing each 
other? If
   so, could they be profitably combined into an overarching theory?

- Should we incorporate aspects of OT into MP (e.g. could we 
reformulate the
   filters in INT and/or the interface conditions into a OT-format) or 
should
   we incorporate MP into OT (e.g. could some version of CHL be the
   OT-generator). How would combining aspects of MP and OT contribute to
   solving the descriptive/explanatory adequacies of the two systems?

Practical information

The workshop is organized by the Linguistics departments of the 
University of
Tilburg (the Netherlands), the University of Potsdam (Germany) and the 
Zentrum
f¸r Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung 
(ZAS)
in Berlin (Germany).

The workshop will be held at the ZAS from Saturday December 17, 2005, 
until
December 19, 2005. The first two days and the morning session of the 
third day
will consist of 15 talks of fifty minutes each (including a 10 minutes
discussion). Five of these talks will be given by the following keynote
speakers:

1) Edwin Williams, Princeton University, New Jersey
2) David Pesetsky, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts
3) GÈraldine Legendre, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
4) Jane Grimshaw, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
5) Chris Collins, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

The afternoon session of the third day will be devoted to a round table
discussion of the five keynote speakers chaired by Henk van
Riemsdijk. Abstracts are solicited for the remaining 10 slots. The 
abstracts
will be reviewed anonymously. Please keep to the following instructions
concerning your abstract:

- Submission is only possible in electronic form, preferably in 
pdf-format but
   we also accept .rtf, .doc, or plain text files.
- Send one copy that includes your name and affiliation, and one 
anonymous copy.
- Abstracts may not exceed two pages of text with an at least one-inch 
margin
   on all four sides.
- Abstracts must employ a font not smaller than 12 point.
- Each page may include a maximum of 50 lines of text.
- Abstracts may include an extra page for references (not examples).
- Abstract should be sent to DEAL at uvt.nl
- Abstract should be received by September 15, 2005.
- Notices of acceptance will be sent out before October 15, 2005.