ABSTRACT
In theoretical linguistics, a common type of explanation takes the form of a proposal that ties together observed similar phenomena whose relatedness would otherwise be obscured. The generative treatment of passive sentences and their active counterparts is a simple example, according to which the observed similarities between such constructions (with respect to their ‘argument structure,’ etc.) are explained given the idea that they have a common or similar D-structure source. Chomsky’s Subjacency is another example, as it ties together a number of Ross’s island constraints, thus providing an explanation for their clustering in a way that the individual constraints do not.
