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Structure dependence and linear order. Clarifications and foundations
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According to Chomsky (2010, 2013) and Berwick and colleagues (2011), the structuredependence 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.
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FORTUNY ANDREU, Jordi. Structure dependence and linear order. Clarifications and foundations. Language. 2018. Vol. 94, num. 3, pags. 611-628. ISSN 0097-8507. [consulted: 15 of August of 2026]. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/168598