Dyamic Antisymmetry and Predication: a Cartesian Dream

Humans are designed to detect symmetry and this powerful notion can be defined in several domains: the physical world, mathematical structures, art, and biological organisms display symmetries, and pervasively so. The aim of this course is to show that symmetry can be detected in human languages as well, more specifically that symmetry matters in syntax, and that it induces fundamental repair effects as if grammar provided a "syntactic epenthesis". The empirical recognition of the types of symmetries will naturally lead to the formulation of a powerful conjecture, namely that symmetry is the way grammar encodes predication. This single hypothesis is able to reconcile the debate concerning clause structure which characterizes linguistics ever since the classical Aristotelian model up to the structuralist debate on the endocentric nature of clause structure: all clauses have a symmetrical, hence exocentric, nucleus although they expand according to an endocentric schema. Considering symmetry to be part of syntax forces a reshaping of the overall architecture of grammar, in particular it redesigns the boundaries between syntax and morphology.