The Cartographic Project of the Generative Enterprise - An interview with Guglielmo Cinque

Abstract

Cartography, a fine-grained articulation of syntactic structures, accounts for an intensive development of the splitting tradition that aims to capture the rich empirical facts observed in cross-linguistic studies. Thus, it has the theoretical linguistic circle pondering its conceptual necessity in the current linguistic framework. Unfolding from the inception of cartography to its prospects, this interview represents a relatively overall scrutiny of both theoretical and technical details of cartography. The real purpose of the interview is to reveal the relation between cartography and the Minimalist Program (MP) on the one hand, and the contributions of cartography to MP on the other. For the former, the interview first introduces the motivations of cartography and Cinque's strong position in the methodology of cartography, and then compares the architectural differences between MP, Greenberg's typological studies, and cartography. More importantly, the different foci of cartographic maximization of syntactic structure (maximalism) and minimalist minimization of redundancies (minimalism) are expounded, which facilitates demonstration of the compatibility, rather than contradiction, between these two research programs. For the latter aspect, the interview explains the flexible proposal of cartography towards morphology, and then primarily elucidates the different opinions of these two programs regarding parametrization of functional and substantive universals in the lexicon, which paves the way for the interview to illustrate cartographic views about L1 and L2 acquisition. In addition, some potential challenges cartography faces are touched upon, along with its prospects. The interview ends with a brief analysis of two theoretical puzzles initiated by cartography.

Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 333.

“…These properties of roots and other word parts fall only within the scope of Minimalist syntax; outside Minimalism, it is different. For example, cartographic syntax (Maximalism) is word-based, and more precisely, feature-based, that is words in the lexicon could be seen as particular combinations of features (see Mao & Meng 2016: 921–924).…”