In this paper we argue that all modes of perception are organized into salientand background constituents. We show that this organization is parallel tothat of sentences which are divided into a focus constituent and background.We then argue that the process of recognizing these foregrounded constitu-ents is nonmodular (in Fodor's sense) since it is conditioned by featuresexternal to each module. We suggest that a single task-specific mechanism isinvolved in identifying the highlighted constituent in representations of allmodular systems. This mechanism belongs to the central system of cognitivefunctions but applies prior to other central processes which presuppose theforeground-background organization.
Introduction
On the view of linguistic competence which has been developed within theframework of generative grammar over the past 25 years, the capacity toacquire language depends upon the operation of an innate biologicallydetermined cognitive mechanism. The formal constraints which thismechanism places upon the set of possible human languages that a childcan learn define the form of all natural languages. These constraintsconstitute the principles of universal grammar (UG). They contain openparameters whose values the child must set for the language that itacquires on the basis of the relevant linguistic data to which it is exposed.When the child determines the parameters of UG for a language L, itderives the grammar of L.1
Traditionally, UG has been thought of as containing a syntactic and aphonological component, as well as certain principles relevant to aspectsof semantic interpretation. An important problem, which has not, as yet,been investigated in a systematic and detailed way, is the connection
between the conditions of UG and the sorts of principles involved inpragmatic interpretation. One reason for this is that there remains aconsiderable amount of disagreement among linguists as to how tocharacterize the domain of pragmatics. We will not attempt to solve thisproblem here. We will simply make the relatively uncontroversial assump-tion that pragmatics includes all linguistic rules whose formulation makesessential reference to features of extralinguistic context.
A number of theorists have made suggestions concerning the relation-ship between pragmatic principles and knowledge of grammar. Kasher(1976), for example, argues that conversational maxims of the kindproposed by Grice (1975) can be derived from general principles ofrational action. This view implies that conversational maxims are notspecifically linguistic, and so originate outside of the grammar. Similarly,Fodor (1983) claims that rules for identifying the speech-act status ofutterances are not part of the cognitive system which analyzes thegrammatical structure of sentences, but are represented within generalnonlinguistic cognitive mechanisms. On the other hand, Kasher andLappin (1977) suggest that speech-act rules are part of the theory ofgrammar. In this paper we will consider the interaction between UG andthe assignment of the pragmatic property of dominance.
1. Dominance
The notion of dominance has been developed in Erteschik-Shir (1973,1979, 1981, 1982) and in Erteschik-Shir and Lappin (1979, 1983a, 1983b).Dominance is defined as follows:DOM: A constituent c, of a sentence S, is dominant in S if and only if
the speaker intends to direct the attention of his/her hearer(s) tothe intension of c, by uttering S.
This notion of dominance is meant to cover those cases for which focus isgenerally used; however, it differs from focus (as it is usually understood)in two important ways:2
(i) The presupposition of a sentence is not the complement of itsdominant constituent, and presupposition does not exclude dominance.In the following exchange between A and B the italicized complement ofregret is both presupposed and dominant:(1) A: John regrets that he quit his job.
B: Yes I know. It has been filled and he can't go back.(ii) Dominance is not defined in terms of nuclear stress assignment.
Rather, we have argued that primary sentence stress follows from the
Dominance and modularity 673
assignment of dominance. Thus, the following stress rule is employed toaccount for one variety of sentential stress:
Sentential stress rule (SSR):Place primary stress on the dominant constituent of the sentence.
The fact that dominance is defined in terms of speakers' intentions entailsthat it is a pragmatic discourse property which is assigned to a constituentin a context of conversation. However, not all constituents of a sentencecan be assigned dominance with equal ease in a particular discoursecontext. In previous papers we argued that for any sentence there is anetwork of dominance possibilities, only one of which is realized in actualdiscourse. For the definition of dominance to be applicable to actualcases, an operational test — the lie test — for determining the dominancepossibilities of sentences has been devised. The procedure involves placingsentences in a context of direct discourse and then denying each one of theconstituents being tested. If it is not possible to deny a particularconstituent then that constituent is excluded from dominance assignment.(It also follows that the SSR would not apply to it.) For example,(2) A: John gave a book to Mary.
B: That's a lie —It was Bill, [tests the subject for dominance)He sold it to her. [tests the verb]It was a magazine, [tests the direct object]It wasn't to her. [tests the indirect object]He never managed to. [tests the whole VP]He has been in Europe for the last month, [tests the S]
In (2), depending on the context, any one of the syntactic constituentscould be assigned dominance. In (3) this is not the case:(3) A: John gave Mary a book.
B: *That's a lie — It wasn't her.
The test indicates that Mary cannot be dominant in any context, since theresponse which exclusively denies Mary is not acceptable. Mary can,however, be restrictively dominant or contrastive.3
In the operational test, the hearer's response refers exclusively to theconstituent being examined for dominance. If the hearer's attentioncannot be drawn to this constituent by the speaker, such an exclusiveresponse is not possible. This test is based on the principle that the hearerdistributes his attention over the items of a sentence in a mannerconsistent with the structure of dominance possibilities in it. Violating thisprinciple leads to such anomalous discourses as (4):
674 N. Erteschik-Shir and S. Lappin
(4) A: I saw the man who was reading the Times yesterday and invitedhim home for dinner.
B: Oh, but I can't stand the Times. Their editorials are soconservative.
What is wrong with B's response is that it focuses on an item in thenondominant relative clause.
Another operational test which is frequently used to identify the focusof a sentence is to treat the sentence to be examined as the answer to aWH question. The constituent which fills in for the WH-question word inthe answer is then identified as the focus of the response. This test is muchmore convenient but was found not to be useful in identifying the networkof dominance possibilities for the following reason: dominance wasoriginally defined in order to account for extraction phenomena, includ-ing WH movement in questions. The condition on extraction presented inour previous papers isDominance condition:
An NP can only be extracted out of clauses which may be interpreted asdominant, or out of phrases in which the NP may itself be dominant.
It follows that those NPs which cannot be dominant can also not beextracted, which means, in effect, that no WH question can be constructedto test their potential for dominance. Thus, if we wanted to examine thedominance possibilities in (3), the question we would have to construct totest whether Mary could be dominant here, is (5):(5) *Who did John give a book?If we assume the dominance condition (DH), using the ungrammaticallyof (5) to argue that Mary is excluded from dominance assignment in (3)would be circular.
Primary stress in sentences has also been used as an indication of focusand new information (as we have seen above). Since two different rulesare involved in the assignment of primary stress in sentences, the SSR,defined above, and the other the restrictive stress rule which assignscontrastive and list stress, it follows that primary stress cannot be directlyidentified with dominance. It is, however, the case that the stressedconstituent of a sentence is in many cases dominant. Moreover, havingargued for the dominance condition we might, for convenience, use thefact that a particular constituent cannot be extracted as an indication ofits not being interpretable as dominant.
We have seen in (2) that dominance assignment depends on linguisticcontext. Dominance assignment can also be shown to depend on extralin-guistic context. (6) is a classic example discussed in Schmerling (1973):
Dominance and modularity 675
(6) a. Johnson died,b. Truman died.
Johnson's death came as a surprise. (6a) would therefore be uttered as anout-of-the-blue announcement and the whole sentence would be assigneddominance. According to the SSR we would therefore expect more or lessequal stress on the constituents of the sentence. Truman's death occuredin a different context. The fact that he was sick had been in the news forsome time. (6b) uttered in that context would get dominance assigned tothe VP and the stress would be assigned to this constituent accordingly. Itfollows that extralinguistic context (in this case the knowledge thatTruman was sick) determines dominance assignment.
Another case which illustrates the same phenomenon is illustrated in(7):
(7) a. What did Peter lisp that he'd seen?b. What did Truman Capote lisp that he'd do?
Extraction in (7a) is odd because /w/?,being informationally rich, is mostnaturally assigned dominance. The object in the embedded clause istherefore prevented from being dominant and the DH predicts theoddness of the question. The equivalent (7b) is much better, at least forthose people who know that Truman Capote has a lisp. In this context lispis stripped of much of its meaning and dominance assignment occursmuch as it would if the verb say were to occur in its place. Again,dominance assignment depends on extralinguistic knowledge.
Dominance has been shown to determine a variety of linguisticphenomena. In addition to extraction and stress assignment, mentionedabove, dominance also accounts for scope in multiple WH questions (seeErteschik-Shir 1986). Linguistic phenomena are thus explained by meansof a PRAGMATIC property which attaches to constituents only in context,both linguistic and extralinguistic. However, we wish to claim that theassignment of dominance is determined by rules of linguistic knowledge(in the broad sense). The ability to identify a particular constituent of asentence as dominant within an appropriate context is part of knowingthe rules of one's language. If, as we claim, sentential stress is assigned tothe dominant element of a sentence, then to the extent that the assignmentand interpretation of sentential stress is a feature of linguistic competence,the rule which defines the set of correspondences between dominancemarkings and possible contexts of use is also part of competence.4 We aremaintaining, then, that the principles which characterize linguistic knowl-edge must contain pragmatic rules which include, among other things, arule that specifies correlations among dominance choices and contexts.
676 N. Erteschik-Shir and S. Lappin
It is important to recognize that the linguistic phenomena are deter-mined not by the actual assignment of dominance in context, but by thestructure of dominance possibilities determined for sentences by means ofcontext-independent procedures and tests. It follows that a structure ofpotential dominance possibilities is assigned to a sentence independentlyof context. One might, then, conceive of a model of grammar that has asits output, for each sentence, a number of representations, each onerepresenting one of the possible dominance assignments together with theappropriate sentential stress and required contextual features. The actualselection of ONE of these representations is then assumed to be anextragrammatical phenomenon.
2. Fodor's model
In order to clarify the relationship between dominance and UG, it isnecessary to say something more specific about the nature of the cognitivesystem which Chomsky refers to as the 'language faculty'. For thepurpose of our discussion we will adopt Fodor's (1983) distinctionbetween modular and central cognitive mechanisms. Fodor characterizesa modular system as domain-specific and informationally encapsulated. Itis domain-specific in that it operates only on a particular field of data.Thus it is a highly specialized computational device designed to process acertain sort of input. A modular system is informationally encapsulatedby virtue of the-fact that its computations are determined only by theinput which it is designed to operate upon. Therefore it does not haveaccess to information represented in other cognitive domains. Fodoridentifies perceptual processing mechanisms and the device which ana-lyzes linguistic data as modular. By contrast, central systems are domain-general and informationally nonrestricted. They apply to data of anykind, and they have access to the output of any modular system. Fodortakes nondemonstrative inference making and hypothesis evaluation asthe paradigm cases of central processes.
The general model of cognitive structure which he proposes is roughlyas follows. The modular systems receive primary perceptual input ('proxi-mate stimulations') from transducers connected to the surfaces of sensoryorgans. They perform computational operations on this data whichgenerate representations of a form that can be interpreted by centralprocesses. The latter construct and select hypotheses concerning theorganization of the external world on the basis of the perceptualrepresentations made available to them by modular input devices. It isimportant to recognize that Fodor associates the distinction between
Dominance and modularity 677
modular and central processes with a basic difference in cognitivefunction. While modular systems provide perceptual information, centralprocesses determine our commitment to beliefs about the world. Hence,the distinction between them corresponds to the division between percep-tion and thought.5
The linguistic module processes acoustic input in order to identifyspeakers' utterances in a language L as instances of morphemes, phrases,and sentences of L. To identify an utterance as an expression of L, themodule must parse the data to obtain a representation of its phonologicaland syntactic structure and certain aspects of its semantic interpretation.The computations which generate this sort of analysis involve theapplication of the rules of the grammar of L. Hence, the grammar of L isa component of the linguistic module. If, as we are assuming, theprinciples of UG are an innate feature of the human organism and thegrammar of L is derived by assigning particular values to the openparameters contained in these principles, we may take UG as definingpart of the intrinsic design of the linguistic module.
Given that the linguistic module is informationally encapsulated, it canonly contain principles which recover appropriate representations ofstructure solely from the primary acoustic data that constitutes its domainof possible input. It should now be clear why Fodor excludes speech-actrules (and, presumably, all pragmatic principles) from the linguisticmodule. As these rules require information about the nonlinguisticcontext in order to operate, as part of their input, they must have access todata which cannot be represented within the module. Hence, they arerelegated to central processes. As dominance is a pragmatic property, itwould seem that, on Fodor's account, the mechanism responsible for therecognition of dominance must be treated as a central device. In fact, wewill argue that while this mechanism is indeed part of the central system, itconstitutes a highly specialized inference device which structures theperceptual and linguistic reports on which other central processes operate.Before we take up this issue, it will be useful to consider certain analogiesbetween the identification of the dominant constituent of a sentence andseveral features of perception.
3. Perceptual salience
In visual reports, as in auditory reports, perceptions are organized intosalient and background constituents. Various features will render aconstituent naturally salient. In vision, brightness, movement, and size areobvious parameters of prominence. In the auditory mode, pitch, loudness,
678 N. Erteschik-Shir and S. Lappin
and duration determine the foreground. It is interesting to note that thedominant constituent of a sentence is marked by stress which is defined interms of pitch, loudness, and duration.
In our discussion of dominance, we assume that dominance is assignedto syntactic constituents. These are made up of a sequence of one or moreadjacent subconstituents. Similarly, figures, both in vision and in music,adhere to the Gestalt law of proximity, which states that elements close toone another tend to be seen as a perceptual unit or figure. Moreover, goodfigures appear as coherent units, and syntactic constituents exemplify thissort of structural coherence. If dominance was assigned to discontinuouselements that did not form some kind of unit, we would be hard put toargue that the dominant constituent was parallel to the figure in thefigure-ground distinction.
In the case of visual perception, the distinction between salient andnonsalient constituents is in some sense an essential aspect of the percept,and must be correctly identified by the perceiver. Similarly, the organiza-tion of a sentence utterance into dominant and nondominant constituentsis an inherent feature of the utterance determined by the speaker. Theanalogy between visual salience and pragmatic dominance is brought outnicely in Hochberg's (1980) discussion of Rembrandt's use of focalchiaroscuro. Hochberg points out that Rembrandt uses the distributionof light and dark in order to impose a specific focal organization on hispaintings. Those objects in the light areas appear illuminated and arerepresented in detail. They provide the focus of the painting. The otherareas are rendered in a blurred manner and can only be naturallyperceived through peripheral vision. As Hochberg observes, only if theviewer takes the illuminated areas of the painting as the focus andrelegates the dark areas to the background processed by peripheral vision,can he/she see the painting correctly. Given this organization of thepainting into salient and nonsalient components, all parts appear uni-formly detailed. If the viewer attempts to focus on the dark areas of thepainting, the internal organization of the painting is destroyed, and theperipheral objects are reduced to a series of nonrepresentational brush-strokes. In this case the painter has imposed a specific perspective on hisviewers and constrains the choice of perceptual foci available to them. Inthe same way, a speaker selects a particular constituent of a sentence asdominant from among the network of dominance possibilities and marksit as the informational focus of his/her utterance by, among other things,the assignment of primary sentential stress.
In general, one uses perceptual properties like brightness and move-ment, or loudness and duration, to select the salient constituent of areport. It is most natural to direct attention to those parts of a report
Dominance and modularity 679
which exhibit these properties to a high degree, and this is, of course, notaccidental. The packaging of observational reports and linguistic struc-tures into foreground and background on the basis of properties likebrightness, loudness, stress, etc., would seem to insure that the subjectattends to what is, generally, the most important part of the message.However, one can decide to attend to parts of a report or an utterancewhich are not salient with respect to these properties. In doing so, oneimposes a new organization on the elements of a perceptual report or anutterance which results in a different background-foreground structure.The original report is altered and its internal organization is at least tosome extent destroyed. When one attends to the texture of the paint in apainting, one no longer sees it as the representation of a scene. Similarly,if one concentrates on the bass line of a composition (such as a popularsong) rather than on its melody, the shape of the piece is changed.6 In thecase of linguistic reports, attending to a nondominant constituent of anuttered sentence prevents the hearer from recognizing the informationalstructure of the discourse. As a result he or she will make incorrectinferences concerning the speaker's communicative intentions, and theresult may well be an ill-formed discourse sequence of the kind illustratedin section 1.
In section 1, we argued that the recognition of dominance is dependenton features of extralinguistic context. A sentence has a network ofpotentially dominant constituents which is determined by the syntacticand semantic properties of the sentence. Even the assignment of primarysentential stress is not in itself sufficient to allow for the recognition of thedominant constituent in all cases. Generally the hearer must draw onhis/her knowledge of the discourse situation in order to ascertain thedominant constituent of the sentence. As this knowledge is external to thelinguistic module, the process of dominance recognition is not itselfmodular. What about the recognition of salience in other modules? If theperception of the visual or auditory foreground depends solely uponperceptual properties, such as brightness or pitch, internally representedwithin these modes, then our analogy between the capacity to distinguishbetween foreground and background in perception is crucially inade-quate. One consideration which suggests that extramodular factors play arole in determining the foreground of a perceptual report is the obviousfact that auditory data can, in some instances, influence the selection ofthe focus of a visual report. Thus, if a component of a visual percept isalso correlated with a loud sound, it will tend to be more salient than if itis not associated with sound. A subject will focus more readily on a noisypart of his/her visual field than on a (relatively) quiet area. Moreover, aconsideration of cases of perceptual ambiguities of the kind discussed by
680 N. Erteschik-Shir and S. Lappin
Gestalt psychologists also indicates that extramodular factors are in-volved in the recognition of perceptual focus. Figures such as the Neckercube and the old lady/young lady profile, admit of two incompatibleperceptual organizations. If one takes certain components of these figuresas foreground, then one perceives the figures as having a certain shapeand perspective. Choosing other parts as salient imposes an entirelydifferent configuration upon them. In perceptually neutral contexts, bothviews of such a figure are equally possible and one can switch back andforth between them. This would seem to be a case in which the visualproperties of the perception underdetermine the selection of its fore-ground. Hochberg (1970) shows that which view of an ambiguous figureone perceives is in part dependent upon the set of expectancies which onebrings to the perceptual situation. Thus, if one expects to see an old ladyin the profile figure, that is the view of the figure which will be selected.These expectancies couple with intentional eye movements to determinethe orientation perceived (see Hochberg 1970 for discussion of therelevant experimental data). Expectancies of this kind constitute back-ground beliefs which are represented within the domain of centralprocesses/Hence, at least in the case of ambiguous perceptual reports, therecognition of salience is, in part, determined by factors external to thevisual module. This would seem to be analogous to a hearer's use ofextralinguistic context to resolve ambiguity in the recognition of domi-nance.7
An example from the domain of music in which context determinesforeground is the ninth movement of Bach's Magnificat. Here the vocal'Suscepit Israel' is clearly in the foreground, the oboe accompanying inlong low notes. However, the oboe received foreground status for thechurchgoers in Bach's time for whom the oboe's notes were interpreted asa popular and expected Easter song.
An interesting series of experiments which further illustrates theseparallels addresses itself to the problem of extracting global aspects of afigure from its local details. The experiment uses four stimuli: a largeglobal H and a large S composed of small local S's and a large H and alarge S composed of small H's. The results derived from recognition timesindicate that global aspects of such patterns are dominant. The recogni-tion times for locally directed trials were longer than for globally directedtrials, especially in the cases in which two different letters appeared. Theglobally directed trials were immune to interference from local aspects. Ifthe sizes of the stimuli and the spaces between them are varied, the resultsdiffer. In another experiment two patterns were presented one afteranother. If the observer had to identify the global aspect of the pattern onboth presentations, or the local on both, responses were much faster, and
Dominance and modularity 681
more resistant to interference, than if a shift from local to global or thereverse was needed. These results indicate that either global or localaspects of a form can have perceptual priority or processing dominance,depending on the previous stimuli presented and the consequent expecta-tions of the observer.8 These expectations are determined by the firstpresentation. This is parallel to the selection of the dominant constituentfrom the network of dominance possibilities according to the linguisticcontext in which it appears. For example, in (2), as an answer to What didJohn give to Mary?, A can only be interpreted if a book is dominant andhence stressed. We might suggest setting up an experiment to verify thatprocessing is facilitated when the stressed constituent of the answermatches the questioned item in the question.
We have emphasized the analogy between foregrounding in vision anddominance in sentences. However, as the example of the ninth movementof Bach's Magnificat would seem to indicate, similar analogies could bedrawn for other modes of perception as well.
4. The interface between the modular and central systems
In section 2 we argued that the process of dominance recognition is notmodular, given the fact that it is conditioned by features of extralinguisticcontext. As it requires information which is represented outside of thelinguistic module, it does not display the informational encapsulation thatFodor specifies as characteristic of modular systems. The considerationspresent in section 3 provide an additional reason for taking this process tobe nonmodular. If, as we claim, dominance recognition is closely analo-gous to the identification of the foreground or focus of perception, then it isimportant to account for the fact that basically the same organizationalprinciple is involved in structuring the representational outputs of distinctperceptual modes and of the linguistic module. One could propose that adifferent mechanism for identifying the foreground of a perception (or anexpression) operates on the output of each module. This would involveconsiderable duplication of cognitive function for no obvious purpose andwould be consistent with a situation in which foregrounding took placeonly in SOME modes of perception. Unless there is solid empirical supportfor this proposal it should be avoided as inelegant and implausible. We arenot aware of any strong evidence in favor of this view. Given the fact thatsalience is determined for the outputs of different modules according tomore or less analogous strategies, we will adopt the alternative hypothesisthat a single task-specific mechanism is involved in identifying thehighlighted constituent in representations of all modular systems.
682 N. Erteschik-Shir and S. Lappin
If this assumption is correct, it provides a straightforward explanationfor the fact that the outputs of ALL modular systems are organized intoforegrounded and backgrounded elements. This structure is determinedby a single inferential mechanism which applies to the output of allmodules. It follows that this mechanism exhibits the sort of domaingenerality which Fodor regards as one of the defining properties ofnonmodular systems. On the other hand, it is specialized in that it isdesigned to impose a particular kind of informational structure on thereports provided by the different modules.
Fodor suggests that representations generated by modular systems areconstructed from categories which are observationally basic. Basic cate-gories correspond to natural classes which are 'phenomenogically given'and whose members can be directly identified as belonging to theseclasses. So, for example, it is more natural to describe a vehicle speedingdown the street as 'a car driving down the street' than as 'a green Fiat withwhitewall tires driving down the street'. In this sense, the category of carsis observationally given in a way in which the category of green Fiats withwhitewall tires is not. Moreover, one identifies cars directly, but oneperceives objects to be vehicles only by first assigning them to a basiccategory.9
Let us assume that central systems, which determine our beliefs aboutthe world, perform inferences on observational reports organized in termsof basic categories. Then observations of objects as members of basiccategories constitute the data on which central systems operate. But thenwe observe objects, we perceive them not in isolation, but in relation toone another. Each perceptual report represents a configuration of entities,and, as we have already seen in section 3, an intrinsic feature of such aconfiguration is the organization of its constituents into foregroundedand backgrounded elements. Similarly, given the assignment of primarysentence stress, we perceive the utterance of a sentence in context asstructured into dominant and nondominant constituents. It would seem,then, that central operations of belief determination apply to representa-tions in which the focus has already been identified.
We have argued that the mechanism for recognizing dominance andperceptual salience is neither modular nor typically central in Fodor'ssense. How then is it connected to these two types of systems? On the viewof cognitive functions which Fodor presents, the outputs of modularsystems are fed directly into inferential processes. They provide the data onwhich these processes operate. It seems to us that this model is too simple. Ifour characterization of the process for identifying foreground is correct,then it would seem that there is a task-specific central mechanism thatoperates on the output of different modules in order to assign a structure of
Dominance and modularity 683
salience to each report. These structured reports are then taken as thepremise for other belief-fixing processes of nondemonstrative inference. Thismechanism is clearly part of the central system of cognitive functions (givenits domain-general and informationally unencapsulated mode of operation).However, it applies prior to other central processes which presuppose theorganization that this mechanism imposes on the output of the modules.
In general, Fodor's treatment of the relationship between the centraland modular cognitive systems is sketchy. He does not indicate preciselyhow the central mechanisms are able to integrate the informationprovided by several modules in order to construct multidimensionalrepresentations of states of affairs, and of utterances. It should, therefore,not be surprising if it proves necessary to enrich his model with otherspecialized central devices in addition to the mechanism for identifyingdominance and perceptual salience.
Even if Fodor's particular model of cognitive systems is not accepted,given the assumption that universal grammar constitutes a self-containedmental faculty, it is necessary to recognize the process of identifying thepragmatic property of dominance as part of a task-specific system whichmediates between this faculty and perception on the one hand, and moregeneralized cognitive processes on the other. The precise structure andmanner of operation of this specialized system remains to be determined.
Received 7 May 1986 Ben Gurion University of the NegevRevised version received University of Haifa10 December 1986
Notes
* Correspondence address: Dr. N. Erteschik-Shir, P.O. Box 744, Il-Omer 84965, Israel.1. See, for example, Chomsky (1980, 1981, 1982, 1984) for recent versions of this view of
universal grammar.2. In Erteschik-Sir and Lappin (1979, 1983a) we provide a detailed comparison between
our notion of dominance and related concepts proposed in the literature, such as focus,new information, and rheme (for example, those proposed by Prague-school linguists,functional grammarians, Halliday, Kuno, etc.). Intuitively, the concept of dominance isintended to capture the pretheoretical notion which these other terms have been used todenote. However, the fact that we define dominance exclusively in terms of speakers'intentions concerning the semantic content of a sentential constituent and give relativelyprecise operational procedures for discerning the dominant part of a sentence distin-guishes between our particular theoretical concept of focus and the other notions whichwe discuss.
3. For the notion of restrictive dominance see Erteschik-Shir and Lappin (1983a).Restrictive dominance assignment can occur on any constituent and on more than one.
684 N. Erteschik-Shir and S. Lappin
It depends, however, on the definition in context of a restrictive set. For a considerationof different procedures for testing dominance and a justification of these procedures seeErteschik-Shir and Lappin (1979, 1983a, 1983b). In particular (in 1983b) we presentdetailed arguments in support of the variety of tests we have proposed for discerningdominance. One reviewer has suggested that our definition of dominance allowsvirtually any constituent to be dominant in the right sort of context. The dominancetests which we have proposed in earlier papers and summarized here indicate thatspeakers have fairly clear judgments concerning the naturalness (or anomaly) ofextraction from nondominant constituents and the application of noncontrastive stressto a nondominant constituent. It seems to us that these judgments provide an adequateempirical basis for the principles which we propose concerning extraction and stressassignment. The range of fuzzy cases where judgments are not clear is not random buttends to follow the pattern predicted by these principles.
4. In previous papers we have argued at length that syntactic and semantic properties of asentence in a given language determine a structure of dominance possibilities for thatsentence, independently of context. Despite the fact that a sentence in two distinctlanguages may have the same structure of dominance, language-particular factors maygive rise to distinct extraction possibilities in each language. Such factors may includethe presence or absence of a resumptive pronoun strategy, the existence of topicalizationrules, etc. For a detailed analysis of such factors and their influence on comparativeextraction possibilities in languages such as English, Danish, and Hebrew, see Erte-schik-Shir and Lappin (1979, 1983b) and Erteschik-Shir (1982).
5. Fodor treats memory as a central mechanism, which implies that it is also a process fordetermining belief.
6. For a discussion of involuntary and voluntary attention in music see Deutsch (1982).7. Fodor argues that in the case of close texts, the high predictability of certain lexical
items occurring in the blanks in the text is not determined directly by a speaker'sbackground information (which is external to the linguistic module), but by connectionsamong items in one's lexicon which are represented internally to the linguistic module.While these connections may generally reflect real world relations which make up thecontent of a speaker's extralinguistic knowledge, Fodor maintains that they arethemselves entirely contained within the lexicon, and hence module-internal. Given thatsuch connections are sensitive to a speaker's knowledge of the world and can bemodified in response to changes in his/her extralinguistic beliefs, it is not clear to whatextent they constitute an encapsulated module-internal network. Moreover, it is difficultto see how this sort of argument could be extended to the expectancies which resolveperceptual ambiguities of the sort discussed here.
8. Experiments by Navon, Martin, Hoffman, and Ward described in Coren et al. (1984:360-361).
9. See Fodor (1983: 94-97) for a discussion of basic categories and for arguments insupport of the claim that the reports of modular systems are formulated in terms ofbasic categories.
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