The Rise of Competition in Syntax: A Synopsis

Syntactic theories differ with respect to how they determine the wellformed-ness or illformedness of a given sentence Si in a given language. One possi-bility is that the decision of whether Si is grammatical or not can be made by exclusively considering properties of Si; properties of other sentences S j, Sk,... are irrelevant. Another possibility is that properties of other sentences S j, Sk,... do play a role in deciding whether Si is grammatical or not in addition to Si ’s own properties. The first possibility, which we may call a local approach, can arguably be viewed as the standard one; this strategy is pursued in, e.g., most versions of government and binding theory (principles and parameters theory), head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical-functional grammar (until recently), and in certain versions of the minimalist program. The sec-ond possibility presupposes a competition of sentences; hence, we will refer to it as a competition-based approach. This strategy is the one that this book is about; it is chosen in certain versions of the minimalist program (in par-ticular, in earlier manifestations), in theories that incorporate the Blocking Principle (the Elsewhere Condition), and, last but not least, in optimality