This document discusses the faculty of language and how it generates hierarchical syntactic structures through recursive operations like Merge and movement. It describes: - The faculty of language narrow (FLN) which builds syntax through recursion and Merge, combining two items into one. - The faculty of language broad (FLN) which interfaces language with other cognitive systems through sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional interfaces. - Other syntactic operations like labeling, which provides labels to constituents, and movement, which moves constituents to other positions for licensing or non-syntactic reasons. - Three types of movement: head movement, argument movement, and non-argument movement.

1. The Language
MachineLCD 105 – Class 6 – Professor Nathacia

2. System
A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular.
A set of principles or procedures according to which something is done;
an organized scheme or method.
GREEK
sun-
with
GREEK
histanai
set up
GREEK
sustēma systema
LATE LATIN
FRENCH
système
system

3. System
A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular.
A set of principles or procedures according to which something is done;
an organized scheme or method.
STRUCTURE
The arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of
something complex.

4. System PROCESS
STRUCTURE PRODUCT
REPRESENTATION

5. PROCESS
PRODUCT PRODUCT
INPUT OUTPUT
REPRESENTATIONREPRESENTATION

6. 220lb

7. 220lb 180lb

8. 220lb 180lb 140lb

9. 220lb 180lb 140lb 115lb

10. 220lb 180lb 140lb 115lb
OUTPUTINPUT

11. 220lb 180lb 140lb 115lb
OUTPUT
INPUT INPUT INPUT
OUTPUT OUTPUT

12. DERIVATION
PROCESS 1
PROCESS 2
PROCESS 3
PROCESS N
(General or Global Process)

13. DERIVATION
PROCESS 1
PROCESS 2
PROCESS 3
PROCESS N
(General or Global Process)
SYSTEM
OPERATES
AND CONTROLS

14. SYSTEM
GENERATOR OF
PRODUCTS
(OR REPRESENTATIONS)
THROUGH
DERIVATION
(OR ORGANIZED PROCESSES)

15. PROCESS
PRODUCT PRODUCT
INPUT OUTPUT
REPRESENTATIONREPRESENTATION
COMPUTATION

16. Language
“This new perspective regarding computation enabled for the first time a
clear formulation of what we should recognize as the most basic property
of language: providing a discretely infinite array of hierarchically
structured expressions that receive systematic interpretations at two
interfaces, roughly, thought and sound.”
Everaert et al (2015:729)

17. Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch (2002)

18. The Faculty of Language
☇ Faculty of Language Narrow (FLN) is the core of the Language System, it
basically built syntax structure through recursion.
☇ There are two types of recursion: a general one, found in many systems (not
only language, but including language), and the language specific ones.
☇ The general one is known as Merge, and it is an operation of putting together
two items into one new item.
☇ Merge is one of the operations that build syntax structure.
Ex: [Yellow] + [House] = [Yellow house]

19. The Faculty of Language
☇ Faculty of Language Broad (FLB) is responsible for the interaction between FLN
and other cognitions.
☇ To do that, it has two interfaces: Sensory-Motor Interface and Conceptual-
Intentional interface.
☇ Sensory-Motor interface is responsible for providing the interaction between
FLB and the cortexes (motor and sensorial).
☇ Conceptual-Intentional interface is responsible for providing the interaction
between FLB and the cognitions responsible for meaning computations and
world knowledge assessment.
☇ FLB provides access to memory during lexical selection as well.

20. Asymmetric

21. The Faculty of Language
☇ During syntactic computation, other two operations are evoked: labeling and
movement.
☇ Labeling is the operation that provides the proper label (information of nature
of the constituent) to the system.
☇ That information is extremely important to the other operations as it is to
license the lexical items to fill the positions.
☇ Some of the upper labels are:
- Verbal Phrase (VP)
- Determiner Phrase (DP)
- Noun Phrase (NP)
- Adjective Phrase (AdjP)
- Adverbial Phrase (AdvP)
- Prepositional Phrase (PP)
- Tense Phrase (TP)
- Agreement Phrase (AgreeP)
- Complementizer Phrase (CP)
- Focus Phrase (FocP)
- Topic Phrase (TopP)

22. The Faculty of Language
☇ Movement is the operation that take a constituent and move it to another position within another
phrase.
☇ There are movements motivated exclusively by Syntax, and there are movements motivated by other
reasons as Intention, Style, and Pragmatics.
☇ The Movements are of three types:
- Head Movement
- A Movement (or Argument movement)
- A-bar Movement (or Non-argument movement)
☇ Head Movement is the movement where one head (ex: the verb) is moved to another head (ex: T in
Tense Phrase) in order to be licensed.
☇ A Movement is the movement where one argument (ex: the external argument of the verb) is moved
to another argument position (ex: the specifier of TP) in order to be licensed.
☇ A-bar Movement is the movement where a phrase is moved to CP in order to fulfill a non-syntactic
demand.

23. The X-BAR THEORY

24. The X-BAR THEORY