How to know what gets in the way

• Applicant: Dr. Kenyon Branan
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 540496921

This project deals with syntactic locality. It is particularly interested in cases of "defective intervention". These are cases where standard "closest" requirements on syntactic dependencies hold, blocking the formation of a "longer" dependency, but where the "closest" element does not itself seem to participate in the relevant sort of dependency. These cases are of particular interest because they are consistently irregularly acquired. This provides a potential insight into the mechanisms used to choose between mental grammars. The project is divided into three work packages. The first is a cross-linguistic survey of cases of irregular acquisition, to see if they can consistently be described in terms of defective intervention. This package serves as a foundation for the second and third work packages. The second involves a development of model for syntactic dependencies that is able to capture the attested range of patterns that can be found. The third work package involves an investigation of the strategies used to decide between grammars that display the effect and those that do not.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants