Week8.Midtermdebrief

Click to edit Master title style,Click to edit Master text styles,Second level,Third level,Fourth level,Fifth level,*,Week 8. Midterm debrief,CAS LX 522Syntax I,Midterm results,Mean: 88,Median: 93,A,A-,B+,B,B-,Some mid-term policy decisions and clarifications,Proper names in English as DPs with D.,Pronouns are DPs with no NP inside.,Main clauses are,CPs,Predicate-internal subjects, auxiliaries, nonfinite clauses.,EPP holds in nonfinite clauses,Expletives dont get,q,-roles.,Expletives are not there at DS.,q,-roles can only be assigned within the XP headed by the,q,-assigner. So, within VP.,ECM, embedded,TPs,.,Proper names,Henceforth, we will consider proper names in English to be DPs with a,D head, in order to capture the crosslinguistically common form of proper names,the Bill, as well as to allow for,the Bill I know, etc.,D,D,DP,N,NP,Bill,N,Matrix clauses are CPs,We will also consider,all matrix clauses,to be full CPs,.,In questions, we need a CP headed by a,+Q,morpheme in C.,In declaratives, we will assume that we have a CP headed by a (null),Q,morpheme.,C,C,CP,Q,T,T,TP,should,DP,Bill,Predicate-internal subjects,VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis,The subject of a verb originates in the specifier of VP at DS.,This goes for other subjects of other predicates, e.g., small clauses like,I find Bill intolerable,.,All,q,-roles are assigned within the predicates own XP.,V,V,VP,DS,T,T,DP,V,V,A,AP,DP,A,intolerable,Bill,find,Internal subjects and auxiliaries,Note that this means that the subject has to be in the specifier of the,main verb,in cases where there are auxiliaries.,Not,in the specifier of the auxiliary verbits the main verb which assigns the,q,-roles.,Also note:,This has nothing to do with whether the clause is finite or notthis has to do with,VP,(or,AP, etc.),not,with TP. The subject is always in the specifier of the predicate.,DP,lunch,V,eaten,V,VP,T,past,T,DS,V,have,V,VP,DP,Bill,EPP: Clarification,The EPP is a constraint on TP, it says that,SpecTP must be filled,.,It is not a property of,finite,T alone,it is a property of T in general.,In particular, the SpecTP position of a nonfinite clause must be filled as well. This will be relevant later today.,Expletives and,q,-roles,Let me reiterate, the,reason,we have expletives at all is because we have a conflict between the,q,-criterion and the EPP.,The EPP requires something in SpecTP.,The,q,-criterion says we can only have as many arguments as there are,q,-roles.,In,it rains,it,is not present at DSit,cannot,be, because it cannot get a,q,-role (since there is none around for it to get), but is,inserted,between DS and SS in order to satisfy the EPP.,Government,These three environments,Sister,Specifier,Specifier of sister,are together the positions which are,governed,by the head,X,.,Y,Y,YP,X,X,XP,DP,DP,The radius ofgovernment,Government,A Case-assigning head,X,can assign Case to a DP which is any of these positions.,Case-assignment can only take place between a Case-assigner and a DP within the radius of government.,Y,Y,YP,X,X,XP,DP,DP,The radius ofgovernment,Government,Take this to be,The Truth,.,Bill wants me to leave,.,Here the verb,want,assigns an,Experiencer,q,-role and a Proposition,q,-role, the proposition assigned to the embedded clause.,Me,is getting Case from,want, apparently, since it is accusative.,Y,Y,YP,X,X,XP,DP,DP,The radius ofgovernment,Case,Given what weve got so far, we might expect this structure.,But can this be right?,Can,want,provideCase for,me,?,C,Q,C,CP,DP,i,Bill,t,j,V,VP,V,j,+T,wants,T,TP,SS,VP,T,to,T,TP,leave,V,V,t,k,DP,k,1sg,t,i,*,Case,Answer:,No,.,Want,and,me,are too far apart.,Me,is not in the government radius of,want,.,C,Q,C,CP,DP,i,Bill,t,j,V,VP,V,j,+T,wants,T,TP,SS,VP,T,to,T,TP,leave,V,V,t,k,DP,k,1sg,t,i,*,Case,Instead, it must look like this, where there is no CP containing the embedded clause, just a bare TP.,Now, everything is fine.,DP,i,Bill,t,j,V,VP,V,j,+T,wants,T,TP,SS,VP,T,to,T,TP,leave,V,V,t,k,DP,k,1sg,t,i,CP,So when do we have CP and when dont we?,Finite clauses always have a CP,(this includes matrix clauses now too.).,Nonfinite clauses generally dont have a CP unless you can,see,it,(unless there is a complementizer or some other evidence of CP).,I want for Bill to leave.,(CP),I want Bill to leave.,(TP),I dont know what to buy.,(CP),ECM,This configuration, where a Case-assigning predicate provides Case to the specifier of its sister, is sometimes called,Exceptional Case Marking,(,ECM,).,The idea was that its an unusual configuration for Case (not complement or specifier of the assigner).,DP,i,Bill,t,j,V,VP,V,j,+T,wants,T,TP,SS,VP,T,to,T,TP,leave,V,V,t,k,DP,k,1sg,t,i,ECM,Note,!,The textbook provides an altogether different analysis of how,me,gets Case in this sentence, under the name “object raising”.,Problem is, doing it the way the textbook does right now breaks X-bar theory and we dont want to do that. So, for now,this,is the official way to analyze these sentences,.,DP,i,Bill,t,j,V,VP,V,j,+T,wants,T,TP,SS,VP,T,to,T,TP,leave,V,V,t,k,DP,k,1sg,t,i,Abstract thoughts,Pick a bunch of things from the lexicon.,The lexicon is where we store all of our language-particular informationnot only words like,student, but also words like,the,and,that,and,-ed.,Assemble them logically into predicates and arguments in a DS tree, using the X-bar schema.,Does every,q,-role of every predicate get assigned to exactly one argument? Does every argument get assigned exactly one,q,-role?,Clauses have information about,force,(question, statement, exclamationC),tense,and modality (past, present, certain, conditionalT), and predicate-argument combinations (VP).,Problems at DS,The arrangement of things at DS is not good enough.,DPs need to be in one of the privileged positions in the structure (near a Case-assigner)”DPs need Case” (Case Filter).,The specifier of TP cannot be left empty (EPP).,And some other things,We think of these as,requirements,that need to be met, and often they are requirements imposed by a particular head in the tree.,T requires that its XP have a non-empty spec.,D requires that its XP be near a Case assigner.,Problems at DS,More requirements of this sort,Question-type C (that is, +Q) needs to be near T.,Hence in questions T will have to move up to C.,T (when the type that gets realized as a suffixe.g., -,ed, -,s, but not,will,or,might,) needs to be near an auxiliary verb if there is one.,Hence auxiliaries will have to move up to T.,Its a requirement of T not of the auxiliary.,John wasnt under the table.,John will be under the table.,John hasnt been under the table for some time now.,Solving problems through movement,The problems with DS are generally that things which need to be next to each other arent.,Note that we couldnt have put things next to each other initially at DS, though, because,q,-role assignment has to be local, among other things.,So, we,move,things from one place in the tree to another, to satisfy the requirements. Move heads to adjoin to heads (but not over other heads), move,XPs,into,specifiers,(e.g., moving to,SpecTP,).,Crash?,If you get to the end of the moves you can make and there is still some requirement left unmet, sometimes we say that the,derivation,crashes,. That is, the sentence you were trying to make is ungrammatical.,Syntax,vs,. phonology,When something is pronounced differently from how youd expect based on the DS, this could be either,Movement in the syntax,Alteration in the morphology,Hard to tell the difference.,Clues: In syntax,movement is only upward,(moved element must c-command its trace),.,Syntax,vs,. phonology,Given that,do,-support must be phonological.,Some kinds of T have the,morphological property,that they are,verbal suffixes,they are pronounced at the ends of verbs.,If you try to pronounce T without a verb to hook onto, theres no crashthe morphology just deals with it as best it can, by inserting the most meaningless verb,do, and pronouncing T on that.,Labeling,When labeling things in a tree, theres a certain amount of flexibility in what you write.,past, -,ed, ,However, if a feature indicates a,requirement,thats affecting the syntax, you need to put it in. Hence: C +Q.,If a pronunciation is seriously ambiguous as to what lexical item you have, this is also no good. For example: T,-,. What tense is that?,vs,.,We often distinguish the syntactic structure of something from its,pronounciation,.,C is there in the tree, whether its pronounced,that,or not pronounced at all.,We write the “silent C” as .,But if theres no C at all, you dont write , since that means “silent C”.,