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Auxiliary inversions and the notion ‘default specification’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Georgia M. Green  and
Jerry L. Morgan
Georgia M. Green
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. E-mail: g-green@uiuc.edu (Green) jlmorgan@uiuc.edu (Morgan)
Jerry L. Morgan
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. E-mail: g-green@uiuc.edu (Green) jlmorgan@uiuc.edu (Morgan)
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Extract

It is commonly thought that (1) the description of English auxiliary inversions requires a feature with a default value, (2) that non-default values must be stipulated and learned as exceptions and (3) that when languages exhibit different values for a feature in different contexts, learning theory requires grammars to stipulate a default value. Distinguishing two perniciously confused uses of the term DEFAULT enables a demonstration that the first and third assumptions are incorrect. Conseqently, any argument that depends on them is invalid, and the absence in a theory of a mechanism for default-value declarations is not a deficiency. It is then shown that a comprehensive account of inverted structures has to encompass considerably more diversity of structural types than is generally recognized, but is entirely possible in a constraint-based grammar with monotonic multiple-inheritance and no overridable default specifications.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 43 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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