The Mirror Principle (Muysken 1981, Baker 1985) is arguably one of the most influential and most discussed principles of grammar and in the years since its proposal, it has led to a controversial discussion about the relation between syntax and morphology. As a result, current syntactic and morphological frameworks now differ substantially as to whether the Mirror Principle is a core tenet of the framework itself, as to whether it is an additional (potentially violable) `plug-in' or as to whether its existence is disputed and apparent Mirror-Principle-Effects are explained away (e.g. as effects of diachrony, etc). In this seminar, we will look at this discussion in detail in order to get an overview about the matters under discussion. Some of the questions we will discuss concern the empirical validity of the Mirror Principle, its scope, its origins and the significance of various counterexamples and their nature and systematicity. Finally, of course, we will also discuss what our findings mean against the background of the above-mentioned discussion about the relation between syntax and morphology.
- Trainer/in: Philipp Weisser