巴西语言学会(Abralin, Associação Brasileira de Linguística)在疫情期间广泛联络世界各地知名语言学家，策划了Abralin Ao Vivo(即 Linguists Online)系列讲座，自5月起通过YouTube频道向全球直播。获邀参加的语言学家已超过百位，可谓大师云集，规模空前。陕西师大语言与认知研究所(CogLing.cn)与Abralin达成合作关系，获得Abralin独家内容授权，通过本微信公号向中国大陆学者同行独家转发该系列讲座的精选内容。
今日发布精选集第20期，主讲人是 路易吉·里齐 (Luigi Rizzi)，讲座题目“Cartography and Grammatical Explanation“，直播时间为2020年7月27日。视频英文字幕为本公号后期制作，限于精力，未经逐字校对，敬请谅解。
Luigi Rizzi is Professor of linguistics at the University of Siena, and Honorary Professor at the University of Geneva. He is Principal Investigator of the project Syntactic Cartography and Locality in Adult Grammar and Language Acquisition (SynCart), funded by an ERC Advanced Grant at the University of Geneva. He studied at Scuola Normale Superiore and at the University of Pisa.
He was on the faculty of Departments of Linguistics in European and American Universities: in particular, he was Associate Professor at MIT, Professor at the University of Geneva, Visiting Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, at UCLA, and at Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris).
Rizzi is honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, member of Academia Europaea, honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the International Research Chair Blaise Pascal (Paris) in 2011.
His research interests include syntactic theory and comparative syntax; in particular, he contributed to the development of the parametric approach to syntactic comparison, to the theory of locality, to the study of syntactic representations, with special reference to the cartography of syntactic structures. He also works on language acquisition, with particular reference to the development of morphosyntax in the child, and on the role of the theory of locality in language development.
English Introduction
The cartography of syntactic structures is both a descriptive and a theoretical endeavor. Cartographic projects have a large comparative dimension: we want to know what the fine details are of syntactic configurations across languages, what structural properties are invariant, what properties are variable, and what the limits are of the attested variation of syntactic structures (Cinque & Rizzi 2010, Rizzi & Cinque 2016). It should be clear, though, that the systematic identification of the right maps is only the beginning of the analytic work: we want to connect the observed generalizations to the basic ingredients of syntactic computations and determine to what extent the observed configurations can be deduced from a system of basic operations, of principles constraining them, and of parameters expressing irreducible variation. If we look at things in this way, cartographic analysis can be seen as a powerful generator of well-defined empirical questions, which can nourish and guide theoretical work in syntax, thus enriching and consolidating the empirical basis of syntactic theory. Along these lines, cartographic research can fruitfully interact with theoretical work conducted within the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995 and much subsequent work), but also with other traditions of comparative and typological research on natural language. In this talk, I will address some concrete cases illustrating these points. I will focus on the study of the left periphery of the clause (see Rizzi and Bocci 2017 for an overview of twenty years of research) and illustrate the explanatory role of different principles operating in syntax or at the interfaces with sound and meaning in capturing various cartographic properties, with special reference to properties of ordering and freezing.
Selected references
Cinque, G. & L. Rizzi (2010) “The Cartography of Syntactic Structures”. In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, N. (1995) The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Rizzi, L. & Bocci, G. (2017) “The left periphery of the clause – Primarily illustrated for Italian”, in the Blackwell Companion to Syntax, II edition
Rizzi, L. & G. Cinque (2016) “Functional categories and syntactic theory”. In Annual Review of Linguistics, 2, 2016, pp. 139-163.
版权方：Abralin ao Vivo – Linguists Online is an initiative of Abralin – Associação Brasileira de Linguística in cooperation with several linguistics associations.