• Stefan Müller AG Syntax

  • Contact
  • Publications
  • Talks
  • Software
  • Resources
  • Demos
  • Projects
  • Teaching
  • Events
  • Language Science Press
  • CV
  • Reviewing
  • HPSG Literature
  • LingPhot
  • Mastodon (EN ling)
  • Mastodon (DE ling+climate)

Kernigkeit: Anmerkungen zur Kern-Peripherie-Unterscheidung

Keywords: Core, Periphery, Universal Grammar, Universals, constraint-based grammar

To appear 2014 in Antonio Machicao y Priemer, Andreas Nolda, and Athina Sioupi (Hgg): Zwischen Kern und Peripherie, studia grammatica. Berlin, New York, Heidelberg: De Gruyter, pages 25–39.

It was often noted that the core/periphery distinction made by Chomsky, 1981 is arbitrary. This paper suggests a way to determine a core in a non-stipulative way. Constraints are organized in sets that are relevant for a single language or for several languages. While the core is a set of constraints that holds for all languages and is probably very small, there are various constraint sets that hold for many but not all languages (for instance V2, SOV, SVO, ...). So belonging to the core is seen as a relative property of constraints. Those constraint sets that cover a lot of languages are more corey than others, that is, they are more central when it comes to characterize human language as such or the properties of specific language classes.

I do not make any claims about the constraints that hold for various languages to be part of an innately specified Universal Grammar (UG).

Draft of September 30, 2013:

• pdf (171K)
• BibTeX Entry