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Why Surface Syntactic Structure Reflects Logical Structure As Much As It Does, But Only That Much

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

James D. McCawley
James D. McCawley*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
*
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1010 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637 [jmccawle@midway.uchicago.edu]
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Extract

The hypotheses that (1) with regard at least to scope, deep structure is identical to logical structure, e.g. a quantified expression is a sister of the S that is its scope, and (2) the rules relating deep structure to surface apply according to a strict principle of cyclicity, explain both why there are many systematic parallels between surface syntactic structure and logical structure (e.g. cases where surface c-command relations match logical scope relations) and why there are the derivations there are from these parallels (as where a tensed auxiliary verb in English can be in the scope of a following floated quantifier, contrary to an otherwise valid generalization).

The approach is put to work in accounting for distinctions (explored in Heycock 1995) between cases in which anaphora constraints seem to require 'reconstruction' of an underlying structure vs. those in which they do not. The resulting analysis, which exploits some hitherto overlooked details of the logical structures and an improved statement of the restrictions on anaphoric relations, has no need of reconstruction.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , March 1999 , pp. 34 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 Linguistic Society of America

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