What was the broad question that you most wanted to get an answer to during your time in the program?

To what degree is the form of sentences determined by syntax, and to what degree by meaning? And to what degree can these two influences be separated?

What is the current status of this question? Has it been answered? Did it turn out to be an ill-conceived question? If it’s a meaningful question as yet unanswered, please tell us what you think the path to an answer might be, or what obstacles make it a hard question.

I’ve answered the question to my own satisfaction, in my books Architecture of the Language Faculty, Foundations of Language, and (with Peter Culicover) Simpler Syntax. However, it’s clear that the field as a whole isn’t satisfied with my answer.

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