What question did this study set out to answer?

To define criteria for feature-based explanations in syntax and propose a novel formal framework.

December 21, 2025Continua.0 citations

Rethinking features

TBTommi Buder-GröndahlUniversity of Helsinki VNVitor Augusto NóbregaCenter for Applied Linguistics PPPhoevos PanagiotidisUniversity of Cyprus

Key Points

To define criteria for feature-based explanations in syntax and propose a novel formal framework.
Provided concrete criteria for syntactic phenomena requiring feature-based explanations.
Defined features and syntactic heads in terms of natural numbers based on the Peano axioms.
Analyzed functional heads as vectors that enforce feature-selection.
Demonstrated how categorization and the distinction between roots and functional heads can be understood within the proposed framework.
Clarified the role of features in syntax, emphasizing their necessity and computational status.

Abstract

It is a ubiquitous assumption in contemporary generative linguistics that syntax is feature-driven. Yet, there is no consensus on what features themselves actually consist in. Without a proper analysis of its backbone, syntactic theory is bound to remain underdeveloped. This programmatic article provides, for the first time, (i) a set of concrete criteria for when a syntactic phenomenon warrants a feature-based explanation, along with (ii) an explicitly defined format for both features and syntactic heads. Against prior strongly anti-lexicalist proposals, we reject discarding features outright or reducing them to mere markers of formal difference between syntactic objects. While initially appealing, this begs the question against the main motivation of features: many restrictions on the order and distribution between syntactic objects are resistant to syntax-independent explanation. That said, we align with critics of feature-driven syntax in seeking to reduce their format to the minimum in complexity. To this end, we propose that features amount to natural numbers as defined by the Peano axioms. This directly yields both syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations via succession and (non-)identity relations. Functional heads – as feature bundles – can subsequently be analyzed as vectors, components of which play dedicated roles for enforcing feature-selection in the construction of extended projections with dedicated syntactic domains, as established in prior work. We cover how this framework can be applied to key syntactic explananda: categorization, the distinction between roots and functional heads, the order between functional heads, and the division of extended projections into domains. We further discuss its ramifications for second-order features such as the interpreted-uninterpreted distinction. Overall, our novel approach aims to establish a solid formal foundation for empirically well-established syntactic concepts while clarifying their computational status within the human language faculty.

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