Operator (linguistics)

In generative grammar, the technical term '''operator''' denotes a type of expression that enters into an a-bar movement dependency.<ref name="Chomsky">Chomsky, Noam. (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht.</ref><ref name="Haegeman">Haegeman, Liliane (1994) Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Blackwell.</ref><ref name="Koopman and Sportiche">Koopman, H., & Sportiche, D. (1982). Variables and the Bijection Principle. ''The Linguistic Review, 2'', 139-60.</ref> One often says that the operator "binds a variable".<ref name="Cinque">Cinque, Guglielmo (1991) Types of A-Bar Dependencies. MIT Press.</ref>

Operators are often determiners, such as interrogatives ('which', 'who', 'when', etc.), or quantifiers ('every', 'some', 'most', 'no'), but adverbs such as sentential negation ('not') have also been treated as operators.<ref name="Zanuttini">Zanuttini, R. (1997) Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages, Oxford University Press.</ref> It is also common within generative grammar to hypothesise phonetically empty operators whenever a clause type or construction exhibits symptoms of the presence of an a-bar movement dependency, such as sensitivity to extraction islands.<ref name="Chomsky" /><ref name="Haegeman" /><ref name="Cinque" /><ref name="Rizzi">Rizzi, Luigi. (1990) Relativized Minimality. MIT Press.</ref>

== Examples == The following examples illustrate the use of the term '''operator''' within generative grammatical theory.

=== Wh-operators === The following example is a case of so-called "wh-movement":

: 1. '''What''' did Bill say he wants to buy __ ?

Here, "what" is an operator, binding a phonetically empty "variable" indicated here as "__".

=== Quantifier raising ===

In the generative model of the syntax-semantics interface, a quantifier must move to positions higher in the structure, leaving behind a trace which it then binds. When this movement leaves the spoken word order unchanged, it is said to be "covert".<ref name="May" /> This process of covert '''quantifier raising''' ('''QR''') can create scope ambiguities as in the following example.

: 2. I didn't do '''something'''.

This sentence is ambiguous between an "I did nothing" reading and another, "there's something I didn't do" reading. On the latter reading, one would represent the sentence as follows within generative grammar (omitting irrelevant details):<ref name="May">May, Robert. (1977) "Logical Form and Conditions on Rules." In Kegl, J. et al. eds. Proceedings of NELS VII, pp. 189 - 207. MIT, Cambridge, Mass.</ref>

: 3. Somethingx [I didn't do x]

Here, "x" is the variable, and "somethingx" is the operator binding that variable.

=== Tough constructions === The following is an example which is treated within generative grammar in terms of an invisible operator binding an invisible variable:<ref name="Chomsky" /><ref name="Cinque" />

: 4. John is easy to please.

The relevant aspects of this sentence are represented as follows:

: 5. John is easy [OPx to please x].

Here, "Opx" is the empty operator and "x" is the variable bound by that operator, functioning as the object of the verb "please". Part of the reason to assume the empty operator—variable dependency in such sentences is that they exhibit sensitivity to extraction islands. For example, the following attempt to create a similar example results in an ungrammatical sentence. The theoretical representation of the sentence is given right below,<ref name="Haegeman" /> omitting, again, irrelevant details.

: 6. '''Bad:''' John is easy to decide whether to please.

: 7. John is easy [Opx to decide '''whether''' to please x]

Here, "whether" creates an island for a-bar movement. This means that the operator Opx is unable to bind its variable "x", and this is thought to be the reason why the sentence is ungrammatical. One popular theoretical implementation of this is called "relativized minimality".<ref name="Rizzi"/> Roughly, it states that a variable of a given kind must be bound by the closest available operator of the same kind. In (6,7), "x" can't be bound by "Opx", because there is a closer operator of the same kind as "Opx": "whether".<ref name="Rizzi" /> The sentence (4) with its representation (5) is grammatically acceptable because there's no intervening operator between "Opx" and "x" which blocks the dependency in that sentence.

== See also == * wh-movement * syntactic movement * Complementizer * Topic marker

== References == {{reflist}}

Category:Grammar Category:Generative syntax