Guglielmo Cinque (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

Cartography and Linearization

Cartographic work is indissolubly linked with linear order. The hierarchies which underlie the clause and its major phrases have to be reconstructed from the different word orders in which these are realized in the languages of the world. This requires having a system that maps these hierarchies to the different attested word orders, and that allows the inverse path (from the different word orders to the invariant hierarchies). Not a trivial matter. The idea that the physics of speech may provide a simple solution as it leaves just two options (a head either precedes or follows its complements and modifiers) is illusory, as it cannot account for the generalizations that hold of linear order. An account of them and the hope of deriving the orders of all languages from one and the same hierarchical organization via the same basic principles through a restrictive theory of linear order may however be attained once we have 1) a precise understanding of the fine-grained hierarchies and sub-hierarchies that underlie the clause and its phrases, 2) a restriction on movement whereby only the head of each (sub-)hierarchy can move (by itself or in one of the two pied piping modes), and 3) Kayne’s Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA).

In addition to a possible first implementation of a restrictive theory of linear order along these lines, I will discuss another aspect of the relation between cartography and linear order, the possibility of a novel diagnostic for constituency.