TY - JOUR
T1 - Third factors and the performance interface in language design
AU - Trotzke, Andreas
AU - Bader, Markus
AU - Frazier, Lyn
N1 - Andreas Trotzke thanks Josef Bayer, Anna Maria Di Sciullo, and John A. Hawkins for useful comments and discussion. He gratefully acknowledges financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and from the Germa nExcellence Initiative (Young Scholar Fund, University of Konstanz, project no. 65411). Markus Bader thanks Jana Häussler for helpful discussions. His work was supported by a Heisenberg scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Lyn Frazier is very grateful to Greg Carlson, Chuck Clifton, Pat Keating, Jason Merchant, Chris Potts, and Ivan Sag for discussion of the ideas presented here. Her work was supported by R01HD18708 to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Finally, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
PY - 2013/2/26
Y1 - 2013/2/26
N2 - This paper shows that systematic properties of performance systems can play an important role within the biolinguistic perspective on language by providing third-factor explanations for crucial design features of human language. In particular, it is demonstrated that the performance interface in language design contributes to the biolinguistic research program in three ways: (i) it can provide additional support for current views on UG, as shown in the context of complex center-embedding; (ii) it can revise current conceptions of UG by relegating widely assumed grammatical constraints to properties of the performance systems, as pointed out in the context of lin-ear ordering; (iii) it can contribute to explaining heretofore unexplained data that are disallowed by the grammar, but can be explained by systematic properties of the performance systems.
AB - This paper shows that systematic properties of performance systems can play an important role within the biolinguistic perspective on language by providing third-factor explanations for crucial design features of human language. In particular, it is demonstrated that the performance interface in language design contributes to the biolinguistic research program in three ways: (i) it can provide additional support for current views on UG, as shown in the context of complex center-embedding; (ii) it can revise current conceptions of UG by relegating widely assumed grammatical constraints to properties of the performance systems, as pointed out in the context of lin-ear ordering; (iii) it can contribute to explaining heretofore unexplained data that are disallowed by the grammar, but can be explained by systematic properties of the performance systems.
U2 - 10.5964/bioling.8953
DO - 10.5964/bioling.8953
M3 - Article
SN - 1450-3417
VL - 7
SP - 1
EP - 34
JO - Biolinguistics
JF - Biolinguistics
ER -