Questions of Syntax

"There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought. Yet there are far fewer than there might have been. We need to understand why, in both cases. One common and relevant theme that runs through these chapters, with varying degrees of explicitness, concerns how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other things, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role) and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. More and more questions need to be asked, if we are to achieve depth of explanation. Comparative syntax provides evidence bearing on questions which are not initially comparative in nature. It is extremely fruitful to search for correlations across syntactic differences as a means of establishing a new kind of window into the language facult