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Structure Dependence and Linear Order: Clarifications and Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Jordi Fortuny
Jordi Fortuny*
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona
*
Departament de Filologia Catalana i Lingüística General, Facultat de Filologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585, Barcelona 08007, Spain, [jordifortuny@ub.edu]
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Abstract

According to Chomsky (2010, 2013) and Berwick and colleagues (2011), the structure-dependence principle suggests that linear order is a reflex of the sensory-motor system and plays no role in syntax and semantics. However, when these authors use the expression linear order, they seem to refer exclusively to the literal precedence/temporal relation among terminals in linguistic objects. This narrow use, which is very common within linguistics, differs from the technical use in a noninnocuous way and does not allow us to exploit the unificational force that the concept of order can have for minimalist investigations. Here I follow Fortuny and Corominas-Murtra's (2009) formal definition of the syntactic procedure, which capitalizes on the foundational set-theoretical concept of nest. I show how the structure-dependence principle can be derived from a local definition of syntactic domain while retaining the idea that central concepts of configurational and transformational syntactic theories are orders.

Keywords

structure-dependence principlelinear orderorder relationsnestssyntactic domainset theorysyntactic theoryminimalism

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 94 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 611 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Linguistic Society of America

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