Move α
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Move α is a feature of many transformational-generative grammars, first developed in the Revised Extended Standard Theory (REST) by Noam Chomsky in the late 1970s and later part of government and binding theory in the 1980s and the Minimalist Program of the 1990s. The term refers to the relation between an indexed constituent and its trace t, e.g., the relation of whom and t in the example
- Whom1 do you think you are kidding t1 ?
In this example, the constituent (whom) and its trace (t) are said to form a "chain".
In syntax, Move α is the most general formulation of possible movement permitted by a rule. More specific rules include Move NP and Move wh, which in turn are more general than specific transformations such as those involved in passivization.[1] This marks a shift of attention in transformational grammar around the 1970s and especially in the 1980s, away from focussing on specific rules to underlying principles that constraining them, which culminated into the development of the Principles and Parameters framework.
Move α is a term used in government and binding theory, under the Principles and Parameters framework, to refer to a single, universal movement rule, which subsumes all specific movement rules also called Alpha-Movement. In this sense, it can be stated more fully as "Move any category anywhere". The rule permits the movement of any phrasal or lexical category from one part of a sentence to another in such a way that the operation involves substitution or (Chomsky-)adjunction. Because in isolation Move α produces massive overgeneration, it is heavily constrained by the other components of the grammar. Chomsky (1980).[2] Its application is restricted by the Subjacency principle of the Bounding theory/module, and its output is subject to a variety of filters, principles, etc. stated by other modules of GB.[3]
In 1984 Howard Lasnik and Mamoru Saito unified Move α and other syntactic operations, such as Insertion and Deletion, into what they called Affect α,[4] a generalization to the effect of "Do anything to any category". The latter is viewed with suspicion by proponents of REST as an overgeneralization.
In Minimalist Program, first developed in the 1990s, Move α (simply called Move) became a structure-building operation together with "Merge", until the proposal that it is simply the application of Merge in which one of the Merged objects is an internal portion of a syntactic structure.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Jack C. Richards and Richard Schmidt / Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics
- ^ R. L. Trask / A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms In Linguistics
- ^ David Crystal/A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
- ^ Lasnik, Howard; Saito, Mamoru (1984). "On the Nature of Proper Government". Linguistic Inquiry. 15 (2): 235–289. ISSN 0024-3892.