%A Ahmad Reza Lotfi
%T Semantico-Phonetic Form: A Unitarianist Grammar
%X Semantico-Phonetic Form: A Unitarianist Grammar


Ahmad R. Lotfi
Azad University at Esfahan (IRAN)


ABSTRACT

Semantico-Phonetic Form is a unitarianist theory of language in two different
but inter-related senses: first, it assumes that the Conceptual-Intentional and 
Articulatory-Perceptual systems (responsible for semantic and phonetic 
interpretations respectively) access the data at one and the same level of inter-
pretation; hence a single interface level--Semantico-Phonetic Form, SPF. 
Second, it is unitarianist in that (although it is still a formalist theory of language)
it potentially permits the incorporation of both formalist and functionalist explana-
tions in its formulation of the architecture of language. 
                                             
Within the framework of Semantico-Phonetic Form, and as an alternative proposal 
to Chomsky's minimalist thesis of movement, the Pooled Features Hypothesis pro-
poses that "movement" is the consequence of the way in which the language faculty
is organised (rather than a simple "imperfection" of language). The computational 
system CHL for human language is considered to be economical in its selection of
formal features from the lexicon so that if two LIs (to be introduced in the same 
derivation) happen to have some identical formal feature in common, the feature is 
selected only once but shared by the syntactic objects in the derivation. It follows 
that the objects in question must be as local in their relations as possible. The local-
ity of relations as such, which is due to economy considerations, results in some kind
of (bare) phrase structure with pooled features labelling the structural tree nodes that 
dominate the  syntactic objects. Pooled features, in a sense, are structurally interpreted.
Other features, i.e. those not pooled, will be interpreted at SPF.

KEY WORDS: 
           bare phrase structure, economy, faculty of language, 
           feature checking, feature sharing, formal features,
           imperfections, lexicon, logical forms, minimalist syntax,
           Semantico-Phonetic Form, strength, unitarianist theory

%D 2000
%K semantico-phonetic form, LF, interface levels, minimalism,
minimalist program, interpretation, generative linguistics
%L cogprints1669

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