Locality in Grammar: From Narrow Syntax to Interfaces

Locality in Grammar: From Narrow Syntax to Interfaces investigates the operation of locality conditions in syntax and semantics from a cross-linguistic perspective.

It is claimed that there are two different types of locality conditions. One is the Generalized Minimality Condition (GMC), and the other is the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). This book demonstrates that these locality conditions play different roles in different computational components of human language, and, therefore, cannot be unified as one constraint as proposed in the literature.

The main idea of the book is that the two different locality conditions are sensitive to the difference between syntactic derivation and semantic interpretation and that of overt and covert syntactic derivations. Further investigation shows a more fine-grained distinction must be made between syntactic computations. It is true that GMC does not constrain overt syntactic derivations and PIC does not play a role in semantic interpretations; however, they both regulate covert syntactic computations.

This book will inform postgraduate students and scholars in the field of linguistics.

Xiaoshi HU is Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of Tsinghua University. He is specialized in formal syntax, syntax-semantics interface, French and Chinese linguistics. His research interest includes various topics of the syntax of French and Chinese as well as other Romance and East-Asian languages.