MRG 4th dose
240506
i’ve just now changed the title of this page to MRG (standing of course for minimalist reading group, a slight variation on the theme from last year’s minimalist retreat group when we went to kausani with a lot of fanfare, didn’t we, and then everything fell apart, oh god, dont even remind me of that) from OnEdge, cos the latter was more inclusive, in the sense we did psycho, gender studies and of course a lot of syntax. do check the earlier versions of this page.
today we met as usual and went up to p27 of the 1st chapter of MP, not much in terms of coverage but isnt it Chomu bhaiyya who said that we’re NOT into coverage (read the interview) but explanation of why something is something. great! but we do agree when start looking at the problem of coverage (read, Typo), you are never going to cover everything anyway, certainly not in a lifetime but never. so forget about coverage, let’s see what we’ve actually done today.
1. re-iterated difference between I and E lg (a sure qn in any lingx job interview:)) and made sure everybody understood that E-lg is NOT external spoken lg but rather the system of “formal lg” as in progamming lgs and arithmetic (+, -, %, etc). and we have nothing really to do with E-lg. Our concern is I-lg, which is, basically, “narrow syntax” (comes up several times in minimalist discussions generally, so useful to know), ie, the lexicon and the mapping from D- to S-str, the computational system, that is.
2. lg out in the real world is only an epiphenomenon—a significant theme of Chomu’s ideas but not many ppl know about it or dare to engage in discussions. See for immediate reference p18 para beginning “it has sometimes …”.
3. a bit of revision of L1 topics like levels of adequacy (remember?) and what really is meant by explanatory adequacy in the minimalist progrom (not a spelling mistake!). Gladly Sarah asked questions about it and i could draw a horse! (of course khuong for some reason started to laugh, for the first time, at this point)
4. then of course the interesting para on p 20 starting with “We assume …”. It’s very interesting cos here i think for the 1st time chomu talks about checking. now we have revised it twice and i hope it’s clear to all present. pd (as in probal dasgupta) many yrs ago gave this exposition of minimalism when it was still hot from the bakers (or is THE baker?) in hyd in 1992. i recorded that talk/ exposition or most of it as i remember i had to rush to nampally station 40 kms away to catch a train to delhi. i dont know where that cassette is. but the fact of the matter is that he used a very vivid metaphor for exactly this point: earlier in GB we let affixes hang from branches of trees like PAST or -ed from the I node and walk from the V node etc. and then let movement (raising or lowering) take care of it. now (that is since 92 or so and certainly concretely in 95 when the present book came out), we take the whole guy and check whether s/he has hands, legs, etc at several departments, if you like. {this is where khuong started to laugh again, again for reason somewhat unknown to me!}. As i was saying, earlier limbs used to hang around and you had to construct a whole human, now you have the human, you just need to checking at several specialists, to make sure everything’s alright (yeah, it IS funny, isnt it?). anyway read the para again.
5. then we read this 3rd para on p21 and i confessed that i didnt know that levels of representations like PF and LF (what about D and S str?) must satisfy three conditions: universality, interface-like, uniformity.
6. related: and on this i think we’d some discussion last march/ april on the MRG website (link from my site again), that PF and LF are external interface levels and D-str is the internal interface level.
7. Variations in lgs would mean 2 things: lexicon, and point where S-str is. On this last point (see p26) we discussed for long the case of wh-in-situ (but only apparently in-situ) lgs and question semantics. Also, Q-movement for scope reasons.
8. brief intro to full interpretation (end of p27) and on p28, end of first para, and i quote: ”...when matters are properly understood, [economy principles] subsume much of what appears to the specific character of particular principles.” Here I briefly mentioned (the part Rose missed cos she had a dentist appointment, too many chocolates?) the case of bounding theory in GB being derived from Relativised Minimality and the Minimal Link Condition of MP.
Finally, I DIDN’T talk about lg evolution, my favourite topic, today (but i did on the 22nd!)
Bye and post reactions if any
i’ve just now changed the title of this page to MRG (standing of course for minimalist reading group, a slight variation on the theme from last year’s minimalist retreat group when we went to kausani with a lot of fanfare, didn’t we, and then everything fell apart, oh god, dont even remind me of that) from OnEdge, cos the latter was more inclusive, in the sense we did psycho, gender studies and of course a lot of syntax. do check the earlier versions of this page.
today we met as usual and went up to p27 of the 1st chapter of MP, not much in terms of coverage but isnt it Chomu bhaiyya who said that we’re NOT into coverage (read the interview) but explanation of why something is something. great! but we do agree when start looking at the problem of coverage (read, Typo), you are never going to cover everything anyway, certainly not in a lifetime but never. so forget about coverage, let’s see what we’ve actually done today.
1. re-iterated difference between I and E lg (a sure qn in any lingx job interview:)) and made sure everybody understood that E-lg is NOT external spoken lg but rather the system of “formal lg” as in progamming lgs and arithmetic (+, -, %, etc). and we have nothing really to do with E-lg. Our concern is I-lg, which is, basically, “narrow syntax” (comes up several times in minimalist discussions generally, so useful to know), ie, the lexicon and the mapping from D- to S-str, the computational system, that is.
2. lg out in the real world is only an epiphenomenon—a significant theme of Chomu’s ideas but not many ppl know about it or dare to engage in discussions. See for immediate reference p18 para beginning “it has sometimes …”.
3. a bit of revision of L1 topics like levels of adequacy (remember?) and what really is meant by explanatory adequacy in the minimalist progrom (not a spelling mistake!). Gladly Sarah asked questions about it and i could draw a horse! (of course khuong for some reason started to laugh, for the first time, at this point)
4. then of course the interesting para on p 20 starting with “We assume …”. It’s very interesting cos here i think for the 1st time chomu talks about checking. now we have revised it twice and i hope it’s clear to all present. pd (as in probal dasgupta) many yrs ago gave this exposition of minimalism when it was still hot from the bakers (or is THE baker?) in hyd in 1992. i recorded that talk/ exposition or most of it as i remember i had to rush to nampally station 40 kms away to catch a train to delhi. i dont know where that cassette is. but the fact of the matter is that he used a very vivid metaphor for exactly this point: earlier in GB we let affixes hang from branches of trees like PAST or -ed from the I node and walk from the V node etc. and then let movement (raising or lowering) take care of it. now (that is since 92 or so and certainly concretely in 95 when the present book came out), we take the whole guy and check whether s/he has hands, legs, etc at several departments, if you like. {this is where khuong started to laugh again, again for reason somewhat unknown to me!}. As i was saying, earlier limbs used to hang around and you had to construct a whole human, now you have the human, you just need to checking at several specialists, to make sure everything’s alright (yeah, it IS funny, isnt it?). anyway read the para again.
5. then we read this 3rd para on p21 and i confessed that i didnt know that levels of representations like PF and LF (what about D and S str?) must satisfy three conditions: universality, interface-like, uniformity.
6. related: and on this i think we’d some discussion last march/ april on the MRG website (link from my site again), that PF and LF are external interface levels and D-str is the internal interface level.
7. Variations in lgs would mean 2 things: lexicon, and point where S-str is. On this last point (see p26) we discussed for long the case of wh-in-situ (but only apparently in-situ) lgs and question semantics. Also, Q-movement for scope reasons.
8. brief intro to full interpretation (end of p27) and on p28, end of first para, and i quote: ”...when matters are properly understood, [economy principles] subsume much of what appears to the specific character of particular principles.” Here I briefly mentioned (the part Rose missed cos she had a dentist appointment, too many chocolates?) the case of bounding theory in GB being derived from Relativised Minimality and the Minimal Link Condition of MP.
Finally, I DIDN’T talk about lg evolution, my favourite topic, today (but i did on the 22nd!)
Bye and post reactions if any
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