The Rise of Competition in Syntax: A Synopsis

Syntactic theories differ with respect to how they determine the wellformedness or illformedness of a given sentence Si in a given language. One possibility is that the decision of whether Si is grammatical or not can be made by exclusively considering properties of Si ; properties of other sentences S j , Sk , ... are irrelevant. Another possibility is that properties of other sentences S j , Sk , ... do play a role in deciding whether Si is grammatical or not in addition to Si ’s own properties. The first possibility, which we may call a local approach, can arguably be viewed as the standard one; this strategy is pursued in, e.g., most versions of government and binding theory (principles and parameters theory), head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical-functional grammar (until recently), and in certain versions of the minimalist program. The second possibility presupposes a competition of sentences; hence, we will refer to it as a competition-based approach. This strategy is the one that this book is about; it is chosen in certain versions of the minimalist program (in particular, in earlier manifestations), in theories that incorporate the Blocking Principle (the Elsewhere Condition), and, last but not least, in optimalitytheoretic syntax. In what follows, we will illustrate fundamental differences between and points of convergence among local and competition-based approaches by considering government and binding theory (section 2) and its development into the minimalist program (section 3), blocking syntax (section 4), and optimality-theoretic syntax (section 5).