a: Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means To grammar even kings bow. J.B. MOLEIRE, Les Femmes Savantes, 11672 It is a remarkable fact that any speaker of a human language can lear and store in his or her mental lexicon thousands of words, each of which is an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning. Even more astonishing is our ability to combine these words to produce and understand an infinite number of novel sentences, as we showed with the following sentence: This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. ‘To further illustrate, consider the following: Snorlax is asleep. The monster is asleep. The friend of the monster is asleep. ‘The rightmost person in the first row is asleep. The person immediately to the left of the rightmost person in the front row is asleep. The person behind the person immediately to the left of the rightmost person in the first row is asleep. Snorlax is asleep. Pikachu noticed that Snorlax is asleep. ws76 CHAPTER ® Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means Nobody cares that Pikachu noticed that Snorlax is asleep. Squirtle knows that nobody cares that Pikachu noticed that Snorlax is asleep, We can do this because we know (a finite number of) rules, which can be applied repeatedly. All spoken language is governed by rules—the set of rules is called a grammar. Every speaker has a mental grammar of the rules of his or her language that he or she follows in producing, understanding, and mak- ing judgments of well-formedness (grammaticality) about his or her language. If we modify the order of words or omit some of the words, the sentences sound “weird” or “odd.” (Recall that the asterisk or star preceding a sentence is the linguistic conventio or indicating that the sentence is ungrammatical or ill-formed according to the rules of the grammar) *Asleep is Homer. “Professor the is asleep. *Rightmost person the in the first row is asleep. “Homer asleep. *Right most person front row is asleep. The oddness of these sentences indicates that some rule of the language has been violated. The sentences are ungrammatical To further illustrate this idea let’s look at a simple made-up rule of English that we'll call the “everybody knows” rule: Rule: If is a sentence of English then Everybody knows that S is a sentence of English. This rule can be iterated (repeated) any number of times to produce an arbitrary number of new sentences. Snorlax is asleep. Everybody knows that Snorlax is asleep. Everybody knows that everybody knows that Snorlax is asleep, Everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows that Snorlax is asleep. ‘This simple rule in the mind of a speaker enables him or her to produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sentences. The “everybody knows” rule describes (generates) an infinite set of sentences. Any sentence that con- forms to the rule is judged well-formed and any sentence that does not conform to the rule is judged ungcammatical, such as the following: “Knows everybody that Snorlax is asleep. Given any sentence a speaker could create another sentence by adding a (nother) prepositional phrase, relative clause, or by embedding one sentence inside another as in the “everybody knows” examples. Or simply by adding another adjective: The kindhearted boy had many girlfriends. The kindhearted, intelligent boy had many girlfriends. The kindhearted, intelligent, handsome boy had many girlfriends.What the Syntax Rules Oo 77 All languages have mechanisms of this sort that make the number of sen- tences limitless. Like words, discussed in the previous chapter, sentences are composed of finitely many diserete units that are combined by rules. Thus lan- guages make infinite use of finite means. In this respect knowledge of language is like knowledge of integers. There is no limit to the number of even integers you could enumerate: 2, 4, 6,8, 10, .... Clearly, you didn’t memorize al of them. Rather, you know a rule that allows you to produce new integers from old ones. Rule: IfE is an integer, E+2 is an integer. This ability to make infinite use of finite means shows the creative nature of human linguistic knowledge—not creative in the sense that we are all accom- plished poets, but creative in that none of us is limited to a fixed repertoire of expressions, Rather, we can exploit the resources of our language and gram- mar to produce, understand and make judgments about a limitless number of sentences embodying a limitless range of ideas and emotions. The part of grammar that represents a speaker's knowledge of sentences and their structures is called syntax. The aim of this chapter is to first show you what syntactic structures look like and then to familiarize you with some of the rules that determine them. Most of the examples will be from the syntax of English, but the principles that account for syntactic structures are universal. What the Syntax Rules Do “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “Ido;" Alice hastily replied, “at least—I mean what | say—that’s the same thing, you know.” “Not the same thing a bit! said the Hatter. eat’ is the same thing as‘I eat what | see’! fou might just as well sey that‘ see what “You might just as well say” added the March Hare, “that ‘like what | get’ is the same thing as get what like!" “You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse .. .“that “| breathe when | sleep’ Is the same thing as Isleep when I breathe" “It is the same thing with you," szid the Hatter. LEWIS CARROLL, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 The rules of syntax combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences. Among other things, the rules define the correct word order for a language. For example, English is a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. The English sentence in (1) is grammatical because the words occur in the right order; the sentence in (2) is ungrammatical because the word order is incorrect for English. 1, The President nominated a new Supreme Court justice. 2. *President the Supreme new justice Court a nominated. The rules of the syntax also specify the grammatical relations of a sentence, such as subject and direct object. In other words, they provide information78 CHAPTER ® Syntax: nf 4 Use of Finite Means about who is doing what to whom. This information is crucial to understanding the meaning of a sentence. For example, the grammatical relations in (3) and (4) are reversed, so the otherwise identical sentences have very different meanings. 3. Your dog chased my cat. 4, My cat chased your dog. The word order of a sentence is crucial to its meaning. The sentences in (5) and (6) contain the same words, but the meanings are quite different, as the Mad Hatter points out. 5. Imean what I say. 6. Isay what I mean. Although the structure of a sentence contributes to its meaning, as illustrated in the examples 3-6, grammaticality and meaningfulness are not the same thing. Consider the following sentences: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. A verb crumpled the milk. Although these sentences do not make much sense, they are syntactically well-formed. They sound funny, but their funniness is different from what we find in the following strings of words, which are not syntactically well-formed: “Furiously sleep ideas green colorless. *Milk the crumpled verb a There are also sentences that we understand even though they are not well- formed according to the rules of the syntax. We can easily interpret Yode’s words to Luke Skywalker although the word order is incorrect for English. “....when gone Iam .... the last of the Jedi will you be” To be a sentence, words must conform to specific patterns determined by the specific syntactic rules of the language. Some sentences are grammatical even though they are difficult to interpret because they include nonsense words, that is, words with no agreed-on mean- ing. This is iustrated by the following lines from the poem “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll: "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ‘These lines are grammatical in the linguistic sense that they obey the word order and other constraints of English. Such nonsense poetry is amusing pre- cisely because the sentences comply with syntactic rules and sound like English. Ungrammatical strings of nonsense words are not entertaining: *Toves slithy the and brillig ‘twas wabe the in gimble and gyre did Grammaticality does not depend on the truth of sentences. If it did, lying would be easy to detect. Nor does it depend on whether real objects are being discussed or whether something is possible in the real world. Untrue sentencesSentence Structure 79 can be grammatical, sentences discussing unicorns can be grammatical, and sentences referring to pregnant fathers can be grammatical. The ability to produce, understand, and judge the grammaticality of a sen- tence depends on whether it conforms to the unconscious rules of our mental grammar. This grammar is different from the prescriptive grammar rules that wwe are taught in school. We develop the mental rules of grammar long before we attend school, as we shall see in Chapter 9. Sentence Structure {really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming. sentences. GERTRUDE STEIN, “Poetry and Grammar, 1935 ‘The job of the linguist is to describe the structure of the sentences in a language ina way that matches the linguistic knowledge of its speakers. We can compare two competing hypotheses. The first says that a sentence consists simply of a string of words organized in a flat structure as in (1). . ; 7 The child found a puppy ‘We have already seen that word order is an important aspect of syntactic knowl- edge and this simple diagram correctly captures the SVO word order of English: The subject (S) the child, comes before the verb (V) found, which comes before the object (0) a puppy. Let us contrast this kind of description with another, one that says that sen- tences have a tree-like structure in which words are grouped together into natural units nested within other natural units in a hierarchical arrangement, as in (2). the child found > \ a puppy root The “tree” in (2) is upside down with its “root” encompassing the entire sen- tence, “The child found a puppy,” and its “leaves” being the individual words the, child, found, a, and puppy. The tree diagram in (2), embodies the hypothesis that these words are organized into subunits (or subtrees) and that speakers mentally represent sentences not as flat strings of words, but as complex strue- tures with an internal organization. The subunits (or subtrees) of the sentence are called constituents.BO CHAPTER 2 Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means In the tree diagram in (2), the words a and puppy form a constituent, as indicated below: As the child found Cam) We can also represent constituents by using square brackets around the words [a puppy]. Constituents can be nested inside one another. So, [a puppy] occurs inside the constituent [found a puppy], as illustrated in the following tree. uke ila, Ry) >) Using bracket notation, we would write this as [found [a puppy]. There is one more constituent in the tree in (2). Do you know what it is? If you guessed [the child] you would be correct. SS A constituent consists not just of the words, but of the subtree that branches into the words, and it ends at the node where the branches meet. A constituent corresponds to a node on the tree. And to be a constituent all the words under the node must be included. The words that form a constituent are contiguous (next to one another), but not all contiguous words form a constituent. In the following tree, the words found a are contiguous but they do not form a constitu- ent. They are not contained exclusively under the same node. 3) pebpy vot aconsiteent We began our discussion with a simple sentence “The child found a puppy,” but this simple sentence belies a complex internal structure. The tree diagram in (2) groups the words of the sentence into the constituents the child and foundSentence Structure 81 puppy, corresponding to the subject and predicate of the sentence. A further division of the phrase found « puppy divides naturally into two branches, one for the verb found and the other for the direct object a puppy. This division conforms to our intuitions about the natural units of the sentence in a way that a different division, say, found a and puppy, would not. Constituents and Constituency Tests In addition to our intuitions of naturalness, various linguistic tests reveal the constituents of a sentence. The first test is the “stand alone” test. If a group of words can stand alone, for example, as an answer to a question, they form a constituent. So, in response to the question “What did the child find?” a speaker might answer a puppy, but not found a. A puppy can stand alone while found a cannot. We have a clear intuition that one of these isa meaningful unit and the other is just a list of words. The second test is “replacement by a pronoun,” Pronouns can substitute for natural groups. In answer to the question, “Where did the child find a puppy?” a speaker can say, “I found hint in the park.” Words such as do (which is not a pronoun per se) can also take the place of the entire predicate found « puppy, asin “The boy found a puppy and the git! did too.” Ifa group of words can be replaced by a pronoun or a word like do, it forms a constituent. {A third test of constituency is the “move-as-a-unit” test. If a group of words can be moved together and remain grammatical, they form a constituent. For example, if we compare the following sentences to the sentence “The child found a puppy,” we see that certain elements have moved: It was a puppy that the child found. ‘A puppy was found by the child. In the first example, the constituent « puppy has moved from its position fol- lowing found; in the second example, the positions of a puppy and the child have been changed. In all such rearrangements, the constituents a puppy and the child remain intact. Found a does not remain intact, because it is not a constituent. Nor does child fourtd for the same reason, Even though both these pairs of words ‘occur next to each other in the original sentence The child found a puppy; they do not pass constituency tests, illustrating again that sentences are not simply string of words. Some sentences have prepositional phrases in the predicate, for example: ‘The puppy played in the garden. We can use our tests to show that in the garden is also a constituent, as follows: Where did the puppy play? In the garden (stand alone) The puppy played there. (replacement by a pronoun-like word) In the garden the puppy played. (move as a unit) It was in the garden that the puppy played. (move as a unit) ‘The prepositional phrase in this example passes all three constituent tests. But in general a constituent need not pass all three tests. It is sufficient to pass one.82 CHAPTER? Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Meant As before, our knowledge of the constituent structure of a sentence may be graphically represented by a tree diagram. The tree diagram for the sentence “The puppy played in the garden” is as follows: the puppy played the garden ‘The move-as-a-unit test can also tell us when what appears to be a con- stituent, such as a prepositional phrase, is in fact something different. The two phrases ran up the hill and ran up the bill are superficially quite similar, but we see in (3) and (4) that they behave quite differently. Consider first the expression ran up the hill, as in (3a). The rules of the syntax allow the word orders in (3b, c) as variants, revealing that up the hill is a constituent. By contrast, the expression run up the bill in (4a) does not have these same options, as shown in (4b, ©), ‘which means that up the bill is neither a prepositional phrase nor a constituent. 3. (a) Jack ran up the hill. (b) Up the hill Jack ran. (©) Up the hill ran Jack. 4. (a) Jack ran up the bill. (b) *Up the bill Jack ran. (©) *Up the bill ran Jack. Structural Ambiguity DID You NOTICE OUR T DONT WAITRESS IT MUST NOT RAVE Noce RING?, 4 BEEN THAT LOUD, Hilary B. Price/King Features Syndicate Syntactic trees reflect our judgments about the internal organization of sen- tences; flat structures do not. They can also account for other linguistic judg- ments, such as when a sentence is ambiguous. A sentence is ambiguous if itSentence Structure 83 has two or more meanings. Sometimes an ambiguity arises because a word has more than one meaning, as in the following sentence: This will make you smart. ‘The two interpretations of this sentence are due to the two meanings of smart— “clever” and “burning sensation.” This is referred to as a lexical ambiguity and will be discussed further in Chapter 4. Other times multiple meanings arise because a sentence has more than one tree structure associated with it, result- ing in a structural ambiguity. Each tree will correspond to one of the possible meanings of the sentence. For example, the sentence: Sue saw the man with the telescope. has two different meanings: Meaning 1: The seeing is done with the telescope. Meaning 2: The man is holding the telescope. Notice that none of the individual words is ambiguous. The ambiguity is struc~ tural: The sentence has two different trees. Meaning 1 corresponds to the tree in (1), what we might call the instrumental meaning in which Sue is using the telescope to see the man. In this tree, the the man and the prepositional phrase with the telescope do not form a constituent. is ——_ Stie Ss > Cae) han “inte esp not a constituent Meaning 2 corresponds to the tree in (2). In this case, the phrases the man and with a telescope do form a constituent, reflecting the meaning in which the man is holding the telescope. ms, sie DetN 3. VP+VNP You can think of PS rules as templates that a tree must match to be grammati- cal. They express the regularities of the language and make explicit a speaker's knowledge of the order of words and the grouping of words into syntactic cat- egories. For example in English an NP may contain a determiner followed by a noun. This is represented by rule 2. This rule conveys two facts: ‘A noun phrase may contain a determiner followed by a noun in that order. A determiner followed by a noun is a noun phrase. Phrase structure rules specify the well-formed structures of a language pre- cisely and concisely. To the left of the arrow is the dominating category NP. ‘The categories that it immediately dominates appear on the right side, in this case Det and N. The right side of the arrow also shows the linear order of these components. Thus, the subtree for the English NP looks like this: NP a Det N Rule 1 says that a sentence (S) contains (immediately dominates) an NP and a VP in that order. Rule 3 says that a verb phrase consists of a verb (V) followed byan NP. These rules are general statements and do not refer to any specific VP. V, or NP. The subtrees represented by rules 1 and 3 are as follows: s ve YN NP VP V NPSentence Structure 91 AVP need not contain an NP object, however. It may include a verb alone, as in the following sentences: ‘The woman laughed. The man danced. The horse galloped. These sentences have the structure: s “N NP VP \ v Thus, a tree may have a VP that immediately dominates only V, as specified by rule 4, which we include in our grammar. 4. VP>V ‘The following sentences contain prepositional phrases following the Verb: The puppy played in the garden. The boat sailed up the river. A girl laughed at the monkey. The sheepdog rolled in the mud, The PS tee for such sentences is a NP ve oN aN Det oN ¥ PP Pop LAN the puppy played P = NP in Det ON I the garden To generate structures of this type we need two additional PS rules as in 5 and 6. 5. VP VPP 6. PP--PNP Another option open to the VP is to contain or embed a sentence. For example, the sentence “The professor hoped that the students read the chapter” con- tains the sentence “the students read the chapter.” Preceding the embedded sentence is the word that, which belongs to the category of complementizers92 CHAPTERS Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Meant Comp), a functional category like T(ense) and Det. Here is the structure of such sentence types: ba oN Vv cr | ge the professor hoped I — tha NP ve o™ “™ Da oN Vv NP Pobool ON the students read Det N | the chapter To allow such embedded sentences, we need to add these two new rules to our set of phrase structure rules. 7. VP VCP 8 CPCS CP stands for complementizer phrase. Rule 8 says that CP contains a comple- mentizer such as that followed by the embedded sentence. Other complementiz- ers are if and whether in sentences such as I don’t know whether I should talk about this. The teacher asked if the students understood the syntax lesson. which have structures similar to the one above. Here are the PS rules we have discussed so far. The rules have been slightly renumbered to keep all the VP rules together. We will introduce some other tules later. 1, SNP VP 2. NP Det N 3. VP—>VNP 4. VP+V 5. VP>VPP 6. VP+VcP 7. PP PNP & CPCSSentence Structure 93 Building Phrase Structure Trees Everyone who is master of the language he speaks... may form new... phrases, provided they coincide with the genius of the language. JOHANN DAVID MICHAELIS, “Dissertation, 1739 ‘The phrase structure rules can be used as a guide for building trees that follow the structural constraints of the language. In so doing, certain conventions are followed. The $ occurs at the top or “root” of the tree (remember the tree is upside down). So, first find the rule with $ on the left side of the arrow (rule 1) and put the categories on the right side below the S, as shown here s “N NP VP Continue by matching any syntactic category at the bottom of the partially constructed tree to a category on the left side of a rule, then expand the tree with the categories on the right side. For example, we may expand the tree by applying the NP rule to produce: The categories at the bottom are Det, N, and VP, but only VP occurs to the left of an arrow in the set of rules and so needs to be expanded using one of the VP rules. Any one of the rules will work. The order in which the rules appear in the list of rules is irrelevant. (We could have begun by expanding the VP rather than the NP.) Suppose we use rule 4 next. Then, the tree has grown to look like this: s Go NP YP WN AX Det N V PP We continue in this way until all phrasal categories are expanded, that is, none of the categories at the bottom of the tree appears on the left side of any rule. The PP must expand into a P and an NP (rule 7), and the NP into a Det and an N. (Proper names and pronouns which are NPs and not nouns are an94 CHAPTER 2 Syntex: Infinite Use of Finite Meant exception to the “full expansion convention.”) We can use a rule as many times as it can apply. In this tree, we used the NP rule twice. After we have applied all the rules that can apply, the tree looks like this: By following these conventions, we generate only trees specified by the PS rules, and hence only trees that conform to the syntax of the language. By impli- cation, any tree not so specified will be ungrammatical, that is, not permitted by the syntax. At any point during the construction of a tree, any rule may be used as long as its left-side category occurs somewhere at the bottom of the tree. By choosing different VP rules, we could specify different structures corresponding to sentences such as: The boys left. (VP + V) The wrind blew the kite. (VP -> V NP) The senator hopes that the bill passes. (VP —> V CP) Because the number of possible sentences in a language is infinite, there are also an infinite number of trees. However, all trees are built out of a finite set of phrase structure rules. The Infinity of Language: Recursive Rules ‘Though incomplete, the set of PS rules we have introduced thus far is sufficient to illustrate the mechanisms by which languages generate a limitless number of sentences. Consider the following set of sentences, similar to those discussed at the beginning of this chapter. 1, Homer caught a pokémon, 2. Marge noticed that Homer caught a pokémon. 3. Bart wonders whether Marge noticed that Homer caught a pokémon, 4, Lisa knows that Bart wonders whether Marge noticed that Homer caught a pokémon. We see that sentence 1 is embedded inside sentence 2, sentence 2 inside sentence 3, sentence 3 inside sentence 4. We could continue this process indefinitely. This is made possible by the fact that rule phrase structure rule 6 (VP — V CP) in combination with rules 8 (CP -> CS) and 1 (S -> NP VP) form a recursive set, in which the symbols $ and VP occur on both the left and right side of the rules. ‘Therefore, the rules allow $ to contain VP, which in turn contains CP, which inSentence Structure 95 turn contains S, which in turn again contains VP and so on, potentially without end, Recursive rules are of critical importance because they allow the grammar to generate an infinite set of sentences. The PS tree for sentence 4 illustrates the application of these rules (here we use triangles under the NPs to indicate that proper names are full NPs, not nouns): s Np VP A —™ Lia VCP a knows © s 1 that NP ve Bye Ban V ce . wonders C s | whether NP VP PE Marge VCP 1 aes noticed C tes that NP VP Ry Homer V NP LA caught Det N rot a pokemon The property of recursion also illustrates the difference between compe- tence and performance, discussed in Chapter 1. All speakers of English (and all other languages) have as part of their linguistic competence—their mental grammars—the ability to embed phrases within each other ad infinitum. How- ever, as the structures grow longer, they become increasingly more difficult to produce and understand. This can be due to short-term memory limitations, muscular fatigue, breathlessness, boredom, or any number of performance fac- tors. (We will discuss performance factors more fully in Chapter 10.) Neverthe- less, these very long sentences would be well-formed according to the rules of the grammar. Below, we will sce other examples of recursive rule sets such as the one responsible for the potentially infinite number of prepositional phrases in sen- tences like: The person behind the person immediately to the left of the rightmost person in the first row is asleep.96 CHAPTER? Synten: Infinite Use of Finite Means The Internal Structure of Phrases | really do think that science has an internal structure, and it makes sense, and we can test it. LISA RANDALL, Theoretical Physicist In the previous sections, we focused on the hierarchical organization of sen- tences into phrasal categories such as NP, VP, and FP. In this section, we will look at the internal structure of phrases themselves. Heads, Complements, and Selection One of the striking things we observe when we consider the various phrase structure rules given above (and the subtrees they generate) is that they have a similar organization. Consider the following examples of each of the phrasal categories we have discussed: NP: the mother of James Whistler VP: sing an aria PP: over the hill For completeness, we add the category AP (adjective phrase), illustrated by the example AP: wary of snakes generated by the following rule: 9. AP APP ‘As we noted in our discussion of grammatical categories, the core of every phrase is a lexical category of its same syntactic type (italicized), which is its head; for example, the NP the mother of James Whistler is headed by the noun mother; the VP sing an aria is headed by the verb sing; the AP wary of snakes is headed by the adjective wary; the PP over the hill is headed by the preposition over. Loosely speaking, the entire phrase refers to whatever the head refers to. For example, the VP sing an aria refers to a “singing” event; the NP the mother of James Whistler to someone’s mother. In addition to the head, the phrasal categories may contain other categories such as NP, PP or CP. These sister categories are called complements. A com- plement is a phrasal category that occurs next to a head, and only there, and which elaborates on the meaning of the head. The complements are underlined: For example, the head N mother takes the PP complement of James Whistler; the head V sing takes the NP complement an aria; the head A(djective) wary takes the PP of snakes, and the P(reposition) over takes the NP the hill as complement. Selection Complements are not always present in the phrase structure. They are optional; only the head is obligatory. ‘The choice of complement type for any particu lar phrase depends on the specific properties of the head of that phrase. For“The Internal Structure of Pl example, verbs select different kinds of complements: find is a transitive verb and requires an NP complement (direct object), as in The boy found the ball, but not *The boy found, or *The boy found in the house. Some verbs such as eat are optionally transitive. John ate and John ate a sandwich are both grammatical. Sleep is an intransitive verb; it cannot take an NP complement: Michael slept. “Michael slept the baby. Some verbs, such as think, may select both a PP and a sentence complement (underlined): Let’s think about it. I think a girl won the race. Other verbs, such as tell, select an NP and a sentence: told the boy a girl won the race. Yet other verbs such as feel select either an AP or a sentence complement: Paul felt strong as an ox. He feels he can win. Categories besides verbs also select their complements. For example, the noun belief selects either a PP or a sentence, while the noun sympathy selects a PP, but not a sentence, as shown by the following examples: the belief in freedom of speech the belief that freedom of speech is a basic right their sympathy for the victims *their sympathy that the victims are so poor Adjectives can also have complements. For example, the adjectives tired and proud select PPs: tired of stale sandwiches proud of her children The information about the complement types selected by particular verbs and other lexical items is called C-selection or subcategorization, and is inchuded in the lexical entries of the items in our mental lexicons. (C stands for “category.”) A verb also includes in its lexical entry a specification that imposes cer- tain semantic requirements its subjects and complements, just as it selects for syntactic categories. This kind of selection is called S-selection. (S stands for “semantic.”) For example, the verb murder requires its subject and object to be animate, while the verb quaff requires its subject to be animate and its object liquid. Verbs such as like, and hate select animate subjects. The following sen- tences violate S-selection and can only be used in a metaphorical sense. (We will use the symbol “I” to indicate a semantic anomaly.) !Golf plays John. Mhe beer drank the student. !The tree liked the boy.9B CHAPTER: Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means ‘The famous sentence Colarless green ideas sleep furiously cited above is anomalous because (among other things) $-selection is violated (e.g., the verb sleep requires an animate subject). In Chapter 4, we will discuss the semantic relationships between a verb and its subject and objects in far more detail. The well-formedness of a phrase depends, then, on at least two factors: whether the phrase conforms to the structural constraints of the language as expressed in the PS rules, and whether it obeys the selectional requirements of the head—both syntactic (C-selection) and semantic (S-selection).. The Three Levels of Phrases In addition to the head and its complements, a phrase may have an element preceding the head. These elements are called specifiers. For example, in the NP the mother of James Whistler, the determiner the is the specifier of the NP. In English, possessives may also be specifiers of NP, as in Nelli’s ball. The speci- flier position may also be empty, as in the NP dogs with bones. PPs, APS, and VPs also have specifiers, but for various reasons they are harder to see. They usually show up when the phrase is embedded in another sentence, as in a. Betty made [Jane wary of snakes}. b. Theard [Pavarotti sing an arial. ¢. Isaw [everyone at the stadium]. In (a) Jane is the specifier of the AP wary of snakes, in (b) Pavarott is the speci- fier of the VP sing an aria, and in (¢) everyone is the specifier of the PP at the stadiura, Specifier is a purely structural notion. In English, it is the first position in the phrase, if it is present at all, and a phrase may contain at most one specifier. Unlike complements, specifiers are not sisters of the head, but rather sisters of the phrase formed by the head and the complement. These observations tell us that all of the phrasal categories, NP, VP, AP, and PP, have a similar three- tiered structure, as follows: specifier of N | Pie the N (head) PP (complement of N) | So mother of James Whistler ve ee specifier of V I —_— Pavarotti V (head) NP (complement of V) I gs sing an aria‘The Internal Structure of Phrases 99 AP et specifier of A A a Jane A (head) PP (complement of A) | pene wary of snakes PP. - aa specifier of P [a | ee everybody P (head) NP (complement of P) | at the stadium To capture the generalization that each phrasal category has the same inter- nal structure, we substitute X in place of N, V, P, A.and we get the following tree: xP oT specifier of X x ee X head) complement of X This three-tiered structure, referred to as X-bar (X) schema, is a template or blueprint that specifies how the phrases of a language are organized, or alter- natively, how PS rules are formed. The X-bar schema “stands for” the various phrasal categories given above (and others we will see later) and applies to all syntactic phrases. The parentheses around the specifier and complement indi- cate that these expansions are optional and depend on the selectional properties of the head. The head is the only obligatory category of a phrase. The “bar” category is an intermediate level category necessary to account for certain syn- tactic phenomena that we'll see shortly. ‘Assuming X-bar schema we must modify our PS rules to incorporate the three tiers. Here are the revised rules for NP: 2a: NP — (Det) N 2b: NN (XP) Under the new rules, NP expands as an optional Det and N and N expands as N and an optional complement of any category (XP). These rules will generate the PS tree for phrase the mother of Whisiter, illustrated on the previous page, where XP stands for the PP of Whistler as complement to the head N mother.TOO CHAPTER 2 Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means: We have several VP rules in our list showing the different complements to V (cules 3-6). X-bar allows us to collapse these VP rules as follows: 3a: VP > (Spec) V 3b: V— V (XP) Under the new rules, VP expands to include an optional specifier (Pavarotti in sentence b above), and V, which in turn contains V and an optional comple- ment of any category such as NP as direct object in found a puppy. Here is the revised set of rules. Notice that the rules have been renumbered and are more compact: 1, $—NPVP 2. NP (Det)N 3. NN (xP) 4. VP — (Spec) V 5. VV (XP) 6. PR->PNP 7. CPCs 8. AP>APP Our PS rules for PP, and AP (rules 6 and 8) also adhere to X-bar (e.g., PP -> (Spec) P etc.) but we omit the details. We will revisit the rules for $ (rule 1) and CP (rule 7) below. The X-bar schema is hypothesized to be part of Universal Grammar. As such, all languages have phrases that consist of heads, specifiers, and complements that relate to each other as just described. However, the order of the head and complement may differ in different languages. In English, for example, we see that the head comes first, followed by the complement. In Japanese, comple- ments precede the head, as shown in the following examples: Taro-ga inu-o mitsuketa Taro-subject marker dog-object marker found “Taro found a dog” Inu-ga niwade asonde iru Dog-subject marker garden-in playing is “The dog is playing in the garden” In the first sentence, the direct object complement inu-o, “dog,” precedes the head verb mitsuketa, “found.” In the second, the NP complement niwa, “garden,” precedes the head preposition de, “in.” English is a VO language, meaning that the verb ordinarily precedes its object. Japanese is an OV language, and this difference is reflected in the head/complement word order. For Japanese, the X-bar schema looks like this: x S i complement X (head)‘The Intemal Structure of Phrases 101 Compare this to the English schema: x as X (head) complement X-bar schema specifies a vast amount of syntactic knowledge in a concise way. If, as many linguistics believe, X-bar is universal (order aside) and hence part of children’s innate endowment for language, it also helps explain how they so quickly learn the abstract hierarchical structures of phrases in their language (see Chapter 9). Upon hearing Taro-ga inu-o mitsukeia (Taro dog finds), the Japanese child automatically knows not only that NP complements precede the verb in his or her language, but also that all other complements do so as well. For example, NPs precede their prepositional heads, as in niwa-de (garden in). ‘The English-speaking child will just as easily come to the opposite order based on sentences such as John found the dog. What Heads the Sentence ‘Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries. GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANN EVANS), Middlemarch, 1872 We have suggested that the structure of all phrasal categories follows the X-bar schema. One category that we have not yet discussed in this regard is sentence (S). To preserve the powerful syntactic generalization that the X-bar schema offers, we want all the phrasal categories to have a three-tiered struc- ture with specifiers, heads, and complements, but what would these be in the case of $? ‘To answer this question, we first observe that sentences are always “tensed.” Tense provides a time-frame for the event or state described by the verb. In English, present and past tenses are marked on the verb: John dances. (present) John danced. (past) Future tense is expressed with the modal will (John will dance). Modals also express notions such as possibility (John may dance); necessity (John must dance}; and ability (John can dance). A modal such as may says it Is possible that the event will occur at some future time, must that it is necessary that the event occur at some future time, and so on. The English modals are inherently “tensed,” as shown by their compatibility with various time expressions: John may/must/can win the race today/tomorrow. “John may/must/can win the race yesterday. John could/would have tantrums when he was a child. John could leave the country tomorrow.102 CHAPTER Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means Just as the VP is about the situation described by the verb—eat ice cream is about “eating”—so a sentence is about a situation or state of affairs that occurs at some point in time. Thus, the category Tense is a natural category to head S. Using this insight, linguists refer to sentences as TPs (Tense Phrases) with the following structure conforming to the X-bar schema: 1 a Specifier a ae ‘T (head) Complement For sentences, or TPs, the specifier is the subject of the sentence and the comple- ment of the T isa verb phrase. The head T contains the tense (+pst) and modal verbs such as can or would and takes VP as its complement. The introduction of T gives the sentence its traditional subject-predicate form. 1. a Ne OT TX T YP pst Modal ‘The NP left daughter of the TP functions as the subject of the sentence; the T right daughter is what is traditionally called the predicate. We are now able to represent the structures of such sentences as The girl may cry and The child ate: TP. Pas NP T NP T Ze eS ZS TS the gil T VP the child) T VP LA As may “cry 4st “eat In these structures, the T containing +pst and eat is ultimately pronounced ate. When there is no modal under T, the present or past tense is realized on the verbal head of the VP.The Internal Structure of Phrases 103 Another way tense is expressed in English is by the tense-bearing word do that is inserted into negative sentences such as John did not go and questions such as Where did John go? In these sentences, did means “past tense.” Later in this chapter, we will see how do-insertion works. While many of the details of X-bar syntax are beyond the scope of an intro- ductory text, we will briefly show how the inclusion of an intermediate X tier allows the grammar to generate a wide range of sentences that could not be otherwise produced, and also further explains the recursive property of human languages. The Infinity of Language Revisited So, naturalists observe, 3 flea Hath smallarfleas that on him prey, ‘And these have smaller stil to bite ‘em, ‘And se proceed ad infinitum. JONATHAN SWIFT, “On Poetry, 2 Rhapsody?" 1733, We noted at the beginning of the chapter that languages have various means of creating longer and longer sentences. For example, an NP may contain any number of adjectives as in the kind-hearted, intelligent, handsome boy. One benefit of positing the abstract category N is that it allows us to account for the poten- tially limitless number of adjectives. Here we need a recursive rule—one that repeats itself—on N: 9. NAN This rule generates the NP structure in question: the kindhearted A N intelligent A N handsome N | boy104 CHAPTER: Syntax: Infinite of Finite Me Without N we would be forced to have a recursive rule on NP such as NP > A NP. Such a rule would capture the recursion of the adjective, but it would also allow the Det to show up in an impossible place as in kind-hearted, intelligent, the boy: NP aS A NP “™ A NP iN Det N A similar kind of recursion occurs in this cartoon: TE BON LOSER: © SSeS m2 td POKES AIS syns. come wesncin Goo ‘THE BORN LOSER © 1993 At and Chip Sansom. Reprinted by permission of ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION for UFS. All rights reserved. Another way speakers of English can build structures of theoretically limitless size is by repeating the category of Intensifier (Int) within an AP. The recursive rule looks like this and would not only handle Hattie’s 100-word essay but also takes care of the more modest expression really very pretty:The Internal Structure of Phrases 105 10.K> nth A slightly different form of recursion involves PP recursion, as illustrated by she went over the hills through the woods to grandmother's house. . . . Sentences of this sort requires recursion on V. 11.V> VPP giving rise to the following subtree Note that the PP in (11), like the adjective in (9) and the intensifier in (10), are not complements, they are not sisters to the head of the phrase. Rather, they are sisters to V, N, and A respectively. A phrasal category that is sister to an X and daughter of a higher X, as in the above structures, is called an adjunct. Like complements, adjuncts may be of any grammatical category. Distinguishing between complements and adjuncts is not always straightfor- ward, Structurally, the distinctions are unambiguous: complements are sisters to X; adjunets are sisters to X. But in analyzing sentences it is not always clear whether an addendum to a head is a complement or an adjunct. Here’s one example illustrating the difference between a complement and an adjunct, an example that will bring us back to our discussion of the structural ambiguity of the sentence: Sue saw the man with the telescope.V6 cHarTeRa Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Ms [As discussed earlier, this sentence has more than one PS tree, each corre- sponding ‘o a different meaning, Under the “instrumental” meaning (Sue used the telescope to see the man) the complement of saw is the simple NP the man and the PP is an adjunct introduced by rule 11. The sentence has the following constituent structure: (From now on we'll adopt the convention of using a tri- angle when we are not concerned with the internal structure of the category.) Vv NP with the telescope Lass saw ‘the man Under the second meaning of the sentence (the man is holding the telescope), the man and with the telescope form an NP constituent and the PP isa complement to the head noun, as illustrated in the following structure: i NP ve as ‘Sue ¥ ~~. v NP ee, saw Det N | 2 the oN PP | ae ee, man with the telescope Thus, the different meanings arise from the fact that in the first case the PP with the telescope is sister to (hence modifies) the V see the man; but in the second case itis sister to (hence modifies) man. The two interpretations of this sentence are possible because the rules of syntax permit different structures for the same linear order of words. Let us sum up our discussion thus far. We have seen that sentences have a tree-like organization. They are not simply “flat” strings of words, as shown byDependencies 107 various constituency tests, as well as structural ambiguities. Phrase structure trees specify (i) the grammatical categories of words and groups of words in a sentence, for example, N, V, VP, and so on, (ji) the position of categories with respect to each other, that is, word order, and (iii) the internal organiza- tion of words into hierarchically arranged phrases. The PS rules for a language thus define the (infinite set) of well-formed (grammatical) structures in that language. Grammatical Dependencies ‘Method consists entirely in properly ordering and arranging the things to which we should pay attention. RENE DESCARTES, Oeuvres, vol. X,€. 1637 In addition to the properties discussed above, the syntactic component of the grammar must describe various relationships and dependencies that hold across and within sentences. It is clear that certain sentence types are related, for example, the declarative-question pair below: Homer will sleep. Will Homer sleep? Our grammar must reflect the speaker's knowledge of relationships of this sort. Similarly, within a sentence two elements can be related even when they are separated by an arbitrary number of words. These “dependencies at a distance” provide further evidence for the hierarchical organization of sentences pro- vided by the PS rules. Two such rules are subject-verb agreement, and question formation. Subject-Verb Agreement In many languages, including English, the verb must agree with the subject. The verb (in English) is marked with an -s when the subject is third-person singular and otherwise unmarked. 1. This guy seems kind of cute. 2. These guys seem kind of cute. A simple rule that expresses the agreement relationship in terms of the linear adjacency of the noun (guy/guys) and verb (seem/seems) would work for the sentences in 1 and 2: Linear Agreement Rule The verb agrees in person and number with the word to its left. But what about the sentences in 3 and 4? 3. The guy we met at the party next door seems kind of cute. 4. The guys we met at the party next door seem kind of cute.VOB CHAPTER Syntax Infinite Use of Fini The verb seem must agree with the head of the subject NP, guy or guys, regard- less of the number of words between the head noun and the verb. Moreover, there is no limit to how many words may intervene, or whether they are singular or plural, as the following sentence illustrates: The guy (guys) we met at the party next door that lasted until 3 a.m. and was finally broken up by the cops who were called by the neighbors seems (Seem) Kind of cute. ‘The (much abbreviated) phrase structure tree below explains why this is so. Te ge Se NPG", sg) The guy wemet at the party that... T pst seems kind of cute In the tree, the NP may in principle be indefinitely long and complex. However, speakers of English (and all other languages) know that agreement depends on sentence structure and not on the linear order of vrords: agreement is between the head of the subject NP and the main verb. As far as the rule of agreement is concerned, all other material can be ignored. (Although in actual performance, if the distance is too great, the speaker may forget what the sub- ject was.) Thus, the rules of grammar that relate different elements in the sen- tence are structure dependent and therefore a more accurate agreement rule must be stated in terms of hierarchical structure: Structure dependent agreement rule: The verb agrees in person and num- ber with the subject of the sentence, where subject is defined as the NP immediately dominated by S (TP). ‘The fact that rules are structure dependent supports the tree-like arrangement of constituents in a sentence. If sentences were just flat strings of words, it would be impossible to state an agreement rule. Structure dependency isa principle of Universal Grammar, and is thus found in all languages. In languages that have subject-verb agreement, the depen- dency is between the verb and the subject, and never some other NP such as the closest one, as shown in the following examples from Italian, German, Swahili, and English, respectively (the third-person singular agreement affix in the verb is in boldface and is governed by the boldfaced NP, not the underlined one, even though the latter is nearest the main verb): La madre con tanti figli lavora molto. Die Mutter mit den vielen Kindern arbeitet viel. Mama anao watoto wengi anajitahidi. The mother with many children works a lot.Grammatical Dependencies 109 Question Formation Rules WARP SPEED, WHAT IS, ‘Tim SORRY, BuT ONCE AGAIN “TAATS NOT IN TRE FORM oF THE ARGYLE SWEATER © 2012 Scott Milburn Dist. By ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. Reprinted with permission. llrightsreserved. Yes-no questions | put the words down and push them bit, EVELYN WAUGH, quoted in The New York Times, April}, 9966 Within any language certain sentence types relate systematically to other sen- tence types, such as the following pairs: ‘The boy will sleep. Will the boy sleep? The dog is barking. Is the dog barking? The man has eaten a fish. Has the man eaten a fish? Each pair of sentences is about the same situation. For example, the first sen- tence asserts that a “boy-sleeping” situation will happen. Such sentences are called declarative sentences. The corresponding question asks whether such a “boy-sleeping” situation will occur. Sentences of the second sort are called yes-no questions. The only actual difference in meaning between these sen- tences is that one asserts information while the other asks for confirmation of information, This meaning difference is indicated by the different word orders, illustrating that two sentences may havea structural difference that corresponds in a systematic way to a meaning difference. The grammar of the language must account for this fact.TO cuarreRa Synten: Infinite Use of Fini The standard way of describing these relationships is to say that the related sentences come from a common underlying structure. Yes-no questions are a case in point. A yes-no question begins life as a declarative sentence, a TP in the X-bar schema, for example: TP BS NP a Mes POS theboy T VP Les will sleep ‘The head of the TP, namely T (the modal will in this example), is central to the formation of yes-no questions as well as certain other types of sentences in English. In yes-no questions, the modal or auxiliary verb have or be appears in a different position; it precedes the subject. The relationship between a declarative sentence and a yes-no question can be described by a rule that moves the material in T before the subject NP. This rule applies to the tree structure. For the sentence The boy will sleep shown on the previous page to derive the structure below: oo ~ ~~ . 2 = NP T \ Z~ boy KVP NET wit “ep Ii Tor descriptive purposes, we'll call this rule Aux inversion. Aux inversion is an example of what is traditionally referred to as a transformational rule. For now, we will leave unspecified the structural position that the auxiliary moves to in the tree above. We return to that below. Thus, yes-no questions are thus generated in two steps: 1. PS-rules generate a basic structure. 2, Aux inversion applies to the basic structure to produce the derived structure. By generating questions in two steps, we are claiming that a principled struc- tural relationship exists between a question and its corresponding statement. Intuitively, we know that such sentences are related. The transformational rule is a formal way of representing this knowledge.Grammatical Dependencies More generally, the basic structures of sentences are called deep structures or d-structures. Variants on the basic sentence structures are derived via trans- formational rules. The derived structures—the ones that follow the applica- tion of transformational rules—are called surface structures or s-structures. Loosely said, we speak and hear s-structures but mentally connect s-structures to d-structures. If no transformations apply, then d-structure and s-structure are the same. If transformations apply, then s-structure is the result after all transformations have taken effect. In our discussion of the constituency test “move as a unit,” we saw other rules that dislocate elements of a sentence, for example, the active-passive pair in 1 and PP-preposing in 2: 1. The child found a puppy —- A puppy was found by the child. 2. The puppy played in the garden > In the garden the puppy played. We saw earlier that the rule of subject-verb agreement is sensitive to struc- ture and not to the linear position of elements in a sentence. We can now go further and state that all grammatical rules are structure dependent. For example, the PP-preposing rule in 2 cannot move just any string of words that begins with a preposition: It looks at the specific structure of the sentence con- taining the PP. This is made evident by the fact that with a telescope, Sue saw the man is not ambiguous. It has only the meaning “Sue used a telescope to see the man,” corresponding to the first phrase structure on page 106 where the PP is immediately dominated by the V. In the structure corresponding to the other meaning, “the boy saw a man who had a telescope,” the PP is in the NP, as in the second tree on page 106. The PP-preposing transformation applies to the first structure but not the second. ‘Aux inversion provides yet another illustration of structure dependency. 1. The boy who can run fastest will win. 2. Will the boy who can run fastest win? 3. *Gan the boy who run fastest will win? The contrast in grammaticality of the sentences in 2 and 3 shows that to form 2 question Aux inversion applies to the modal within the T that is dominated by the root (highest) TP, and not simply to the first modal in the sentence, as illustrated in this highly abbreviated structure. L_ ‘Aux Inversion: mTI2_cHAPTER: Syntex: Infinite Use of Meane Let’s now look at the structure of “Will the boy sleep?” in more detail. Thus far we have been assuming $ (TP) is the root of the sentence. Strictly speaking, this is not correct. Remember our PS rule 7, repeated below. 7. CPCs From this rule, we see that CP (Complementizer Phrase) dominates S (TP). ‘Though this rule was previously used only for embedded sentences such as ‘Marge noticed that Homer caught a pokémon, yes-no questions (and many other structures) tell us that all sentences have CP as their root. Like all other cat- egories, CP conforms to X-bar schema and hence we modify rule 7 according! 7a). CP > (Spec) 7b).: C+ CTP The sentence root is CP and TP is the complement to the head C. C contains the abstract element +Q for questions or —Q for declaratives. Putting aside the specifier of CP for the moment, the X-bar analysis of CP has the advantage that C provides a home for T when Aux inversion relocates it. The d-structure for questions is: and the modal is moved to C:Grammatical Dependenci The auxiliaries have and be also undergo Aux inversion in yes-no question: Spot has chased a squirrel. Has Spot chased a squirrel? Nellie is snoring. Is Nellie snoring? But the d-structure position of these auxiliaries is not under T. We know this because they can also occur with modals (which occupy the T position) as in: Nellie may be snoring, Spot must have found a squirrel Moreover, like other verbs in English (and unlike modals) have and be inflect for tense (and agreement): am, is, are, was, Were, have, has, had. These observations lead us to conclude that have/be originate under V. When there is no modal in the sentence, have or be can undergo a movement that is not available to other verbs: they can “raise” from the position under V to T, and then undergo a sec- ‘ond movement to C to form a question, as follows: v Ye wy snoring Additional PS rules would be needed to account for sentences with both have and be such as Spot has been chasing squirrels and even such unusual sentences as The squirrels have been being chased by Spot. In addition to questions, the need for the complementizer phrase (CP) is provided by phrasal categories that take sentences (TPs) in their complements (underlined): belief that iron floats (CP complement to head N) wonders if iron floats (CP complement to head V) happy that iron floats (CP complement to head A) about whether iron will sink (CP complement to head P) 1"M14 cunrrena Syntax: The words that, if, and whether are complementizers and the CP has a place for them under its head C, for example: Wh Questions Whom are you? said he, for he had been to night school. GEORGE ADE, “The Steel Box,” in Bang! Bong!, 1928 We have shown that syntactic rules are structure dependent and do not pay attention to the length or content of the words in a sentence. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in wht questions such as the following. 1. (a) What will Max chase 2 () Where should Pete put his dog bone 2 (c) Which toys does Pete like Wh questions contain wh phrases of various syntactic categories, for example, what is an NP, which is a determiner, and where is a PP. They are inserted into a PS tree under the appropriate category node, like all other words. In English and many other languages, wh phrase generally have to move from their d-structure position, indicated by the in the sentences in (1), to the beginning of the sentence (“echo questions” like you ate what!? behave differently and we'll ignore them here). Several clues tell us that the wh phrases in (1) have undergone movement. For example, the verb chase in sentence (a) is transitive, yet there is no direct objectGrammaticel Dependenci following it. There is a “gap” where the direct object should be. The verb put in sentence (b) is subcategorized for a direct object and a prepositional phrase, yet there is no PP following his bone. Finally, in sentence (c) like is followed by a gap and also has the third-person singular s morpheme though it is preceded bya plural noun. We can explain the grammaticality of the sentences in (1) despite these “abnormalities” by assuming that in each case the wh phrase originates in the position of the gap, as in (2), and is then moved to the beginning of the sentence by transformational rule. 2. (a) Max will chase what? (b) Pete should put his dog bone where? (©) Pete likes which toys? ‘The sentences in (1) are grammatical because the requirement that chase and like have a direct object is satistied by the what and which toys, while the PP requirement of put is satisfied by where. The subcategorization requirements of the verbs are met prior to movement of the wh phrase. In any wh question, there is a dependency between the wh phrase at the beginning of the sentence and a gap somewhere else in the sentence. Wh questions such as those in (1) are generated in several steps: phrase structure principles provide the basic declarative word orders in (2) (or more precisely the d-structure) with the wh expression in complement position, as required by the X-bar schema and the selectional properties of the verbs chase, put and like. Transformational operations then apply. Taking (Za) as illustrative, the rule wh movement relocates the wh expression from its d-structure position to a structural position at the beginning of the sentence, which we now identify as the Specifier of CP. Aux inversion moves the modal to the C, as in the deriva- tion of yes-no questions. Following are the d-structure and s-structure trees for the sentence “What will Max chase?” is: ce Ow —~ Specifier of CP ,NP Q [2 ga what Cig TP a T NP z Vara wie © Ye l — will ¥ ¥ JE aN Vv oNP Vv oNP | ZS I chase “what ~__ chaseMIG. clAPTER-2 Syntax: Infinite Use of Fin [At this point, it is worth observing that like proper names and pronouns, wh expressions such as what and who are full NPs, not Ns. Unlike nouns, who and what cannot appear with a determiner, an adjective, or any other NP element. *The what did you see? *The fast who won the race? However, what can bea determiner, like which. This is reflected in the structure for the sentence Which toys does Pete lke? Following is the d-structure of this sentence: cP a Specifier of CP é ‘After wh movement and Aux Inversion have done their work we have this near s-structure:Grammatical Dependenci Additionally, when T lacks an actual word and carries only the present tense, as in this sentence, it still undergoes movement because Aux Inversion is struc- ture dependent and doesn’t pay attention to the particular words (or lack thereof) under a category. With T separated from the main verb by an NP, something is needed to carry the tense. That something is the “dummy” word do, and it is put in place by a transformational rule of do-insertion, yielding the final s-structure: ce — ze ~ NP E L—~ fl which toys C.g TP if 2 NP T LS 7 -ps\ Pete T VP. | do v / “N | Vv oNP \ (do-insertion] | ] a ee Do combines with [-pst] to yield the present tense does. Rulles that convert inflectional features such as past tense or third-person present tense into their proper phonological forms are called spell-out rules. They apply to the syntac- tic output of s-structures. ‘A notable property of wh questions is that the wh phrase is relocated to a position outside its original d-structure clause. Indeed, there is no limit to the distance that a wh phrase can move, as illustrated by the following sentences. The dashes indicate the d-structure position from which the wh phrases has been moved. Who did Helen say the senator wanted to hire 2 Who did Helen say the senator wanted the congressional representative to try to hire a Who did Helen say the senator wanted the congressional representative to try to convince the Speaker of the House to get the Vice President to hire ? “Long-distance” dependencies such as those created by wh movement are a fundamental part of human language. They provide still further evidence that sentences are not simply strings of words but are supported by a rich scaffold- ing of phrase structure trees, These trees express the underlying structure of a sentence es well as its relation to other sentences in the language, and as always reflect a person's knowledge of syntax. WTi8. cHAPTER: Syntex: Infinite Use of Finite Mé UG Principles and Parameters ead eae ag Sea ia) Pear ctig urea Cae ree Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, thats the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his Verb in his mouth. MARK TWAIN, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889 In this chapter, we have largely focused on English syntax, but many of the grammatical structures we have described for English also hold in other lan- guages. This is because Universal Grammar (UG) provides the basic design for all human languages, and individual languages are simply variations on this basic blueprint. Imagine a new housing development. Al! of the houses have the same floor plan, but the occupants have some choices to make. They can have carpet or hardwood floors, curtains or blinds; they can choose their kitchen cabinets and the countertops, the bathroom tiles, and so on. This is more or less how the syntax operates. Languages conform to a basic design, and then there are choice points or points of variation, All Ianguages have structures that conform to the X-bar schema. Phrases con- sist of specifiers, heads, and complements; barred categories express recursive properties; sentences are headed by T, which is specified for information such as tense and modality; and so on. However, languages may have different orders within the phrases and sentences. The word order differences between English and Japanese, dis- cussed earlier, illustrate this interaction of general and language-specific properties. UG specifies the structure of a phrase. It must have a head and may take a complement of some type and have adjuncts. However, each language defines for itself the relative order of these constituents: English is head- initial, Japanese is head-final. We call the points of variation parameters. All languages appear to have transformational rules for reordering elements to achieve certain purposes such as creating questions or emphasizing certainGrammatical Dependenci constituents. In Dutch, for example, in which the modal moves, if there is one, as in (1), and otherwise the main verb moves, as in (2): 1, Zal Femke fietsen? (from “Femke zal fietsen.”) will Femke bicycle ride (Will Femke ride her bicycle?) 2. Lest Meindert veel boeken? (from “Meindert leest veel bocken.”) reads Meindert many books (Does Meindert read many books?) Main verbs in Standard American English do not move. Instead, do spells out the stranded tense and agreement features. All languages have expres- sions for requesting information about who, when, where, what, and how. Even if the question words in other languages do not necessarily begin with “wh,” we will refer to such questions as wh questions. In some languages, such as Japanese and Swahili, the wh phrase does not move. It remains in its original d-structure position. In Japanese the sentence is marked with a question suffix -no: Taro-ga mani-o _ mitsuketa-no? Taro what found Recall that Japanese word order is SOV, so the wh phrase nani (“what”) is an object and occurs before the verb. In Swahili, the wh phrase—nani by pure coincidence—also stays in its base position: Ulipatia —nani_—_kitabu? you gave who a book However, in all languages with wh movement (i.e., movement of the tion phrase), the question clement moves to the same sentence-initial position. ‘The “landing site” of the moved phrase is determined by UG. Among the wh movement languages, there is some variation. In the Romance languages, such as Italian, the wh phrase moves as in English, but when the wh phrase ques- tions the object of a preposition, the preposition must move together with the wh phrase. In English the preposition can be “stranded” (ie., left behind in its original position): A chi hai dato il libro? To whom (did) you give the book? *Chi hai dato il libro a? Who(m) did you give the book to? In some dialects of German, long-distance wh movement leaves a trail of wh phrases: Mit Wem —glaubst_ “Du = Mit» wem =—-Hans_—_spricht? With whom think == you with» whom = Hans talks (Whom do you think Hans talks to?) 2 119120. CHAPTERS Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means Wen willst = Du wen Hans — anruft? Whom want you whom = Hans call (Whom do you want Hans to call?) In Gzech a quantity question phrase can be moved, leaving behind the NP it modifies: Jak —velké Vaclav Koupil_ auto? How Big Vaclav bought car. (How big a car did Vaclav buy?) Despite these variations and despite the fact the wh phrase can move a very long distance, there are certain instances in which it cannot apply and these constraints are universal and structure dependent. For example, consider the following three “sentences:” (Remember that the position from which the wh phrase has moved is indicated with -) 1. (a) Spock asked Kirk if Scotty had fixed the warp drive? (b) Who did Spock ask whether Scotty had fixed the warp drive? (c) *Who did Spock ask Kirk whether ____ had fixed the warp drive? The only difference between the grammatical (1b) and the ungrammati- cal (10) is that in (1b) the wh phrase originates in the higher clause, whereas in (Ie) the wh phrase comes from inside the whether clause. This illustrates that the constraint against movement depends on structure and not on the length of the sentence. Some sentences can be very short and still not allow wh movement: 2. (a) George admired Martha's mother. (b) Who did George admire? (c) Whose mother did George admire? (d) “Whose did George admire mother? The sentences in (2) show that a wh phrase cannot be extracted from inside a possessive NP. In (2b) it is okay to question the whole direct object. In (2c) it is even okay to question a piece of the possessive NP, providing the entire wh phrase is moved, but (2d) shows that moving the wh word alone out of the possessive NP is illicit. The principle of structure dependency, the X-bar principles governing the organization of phrases, and the constraints on movement just illustrated, are part of UG. These aspects of grammar need not be learned. They are part of the innate blueprint for language that the child brings to the task of acquir- ing a language. What children must learn are the language-specific aspects of grammar. Where there are parameters of variation, children must determine the correct choices for their language. The Japanese child must determine that the verb comes after the object in the VP, and the English-speaking child that the verb comes before it. The Dutch-speaking child acquires a rule that moves theGrammatical Dependencies 121 verb to make a question, while the English-speaking child has a more restrictive rule regarding such movement. Italian, English, and Czech children learn that to form a question the wh phrase moves, whereas Japanese and Swahili children determine that there is no movement. As far as we can tell, children fix these parameters very quickly. We will have more to say about how children set UG parameters in Chapter 9. Sign Language Syntax All languages have rules of syntax similar in kind, if not in detail, to those that we have seen for English, and sign languages are no exception. Signed languages have phrase structure (PS) rules that build hierarchical structures out of linguis- tic constituents and specify the word order of a given signed language. ASL is an SVO language, The signer of ASL knows that the first two sentences below are grammatical sentences of ASL, but the third is not. [The capitalized words represent signs.] CAT CHASE DOG “The cat chased the dog.” DOG CHASE CAT “The dog chased the cat.” *CHASE CAT DOG Unlike in English, however, adjectives can follow the head noun in ASL, as in Spanish, for example, and other spoken languages. The PS rules also determine the grammatical functions of a sentence such as subject and object, so that a signer of ASL knows that while the first two sen- tences are both grammatical, they differ with respect to who is chasing whom. Finally, the PS rules of signed languages exhibit language-specific variation, just as those of spoken languages do. The grammatical sentences given above for ASL would not be grammatical for signers of Italian Sign Language (LIS or “Lingua dei Segni Italiana”), because LIS is an SOV language. In ASL, as in English and other spoken languages, the basic word order can be modified by movement rules. For example, a direct object or other constituent such as a temporal adverb can be moved to the beginning of the sentence in a process called topicalization. This is done to bring attention to this constituent: BOOK, JOHN READ YESTERDAY YESTERDAY, JOHN READ BOOK It is also possible for movement to apply iteratively, giving a double topicaliza- tion structure, as in: YESTERDAY, BOOK, JOHN READ Topicalization in ASL is accompanied by raising the eyebrows and tilting the head upward, marking the special word order, much as intonation does in English. The use of such non-manual markers is a salient feature of signed lan- guages and something that distinguishes them from spoken languages. Spoken122. CHAPTER: Syntax Infinite Use of Finite Mé language may be accompanied by facial expressions and other non-manual gestures. But however expressive or informative such gestures are, they do not form part of the grammatical system of a spoken language as they do in signed languages. Wh questions in ASI, may also be formed via movement. In contrast to Eng- lish, the movement is optional. In ASL, wh phrases may remain in the d-structure position as in Japanese and Swahili. The ASL equivalents of Who did Bill see ‘yesterday? and Bill saw who yesterday? are both grammatical. As in English and other spoken languages, wh movement in signed languages is constrained in various ways (see Appendix D). For example, in ASL it is not possible to ques- tion one member of a coordinate structure: *WHO JOHN KISS MARY AND _ YESTERDAY? **Who did John kiss Mary and yesterday?” Similac constraints operate in topicalization, For example, a constituent cannot be moved out of the clause beginning with another wh phrase: *MOTHER, I NOT-KNOW WHAT LIKE, **(As for) Mother, I don't know what likes.” Wh questions in ASL are accompanied by an obligatory facial expression with a tilted head and furrowed brows. These nonmanual markers are analogous to the special intonation that indicates interrogatives in many spoken languages. Signed languages also have complex structural means to express notions such as tense, modality, and negation. In ASL, as in English, there are several forms of negation, including NO, NOT, NONE, and NEVER, and they may follow different rules. The sign NOT, for example, can come at the end of an ASL sentence, quite unlike the behavior of the English word not. The structural rules for negation in ASL also require that the signer shake his or her head while producing a nega- tive sentence, and even allow a signer to “shorten” or “reduce” the negation of a sentence to just a head shake, without producing the actual sign for NOT or NEVER. This is similar to how a speaker of English can shorten not to n't. ASL and other sign languages show an interaction of universal and language- specific properties. The rules of sign languages are structure-dependent, and movement rules are constrained in various ways, Other properties such as the nonmanital markers and the use of space are an integral part of the grammar of sign languages but not of spoken languages. The fact that sign languages appear to be subject to the same principles and parameters of UG that spoken languages are subject to shows us that the human brain is designed to acquire and use language, not simply speech. Summary Speakers of a language recognize the grammatical sentences of their language and know how the words in a sentence must be ordered and grouped to convey a certain meaning. All speakers are capable of producing and understanding an unlimited number of new sentences that have never before been spoken or heard. They also recognize ambiguities, know when different sentences mean the same thing, and correctly interpret the grammatical relations in a sentence,such as subject and direct object. This kind of knowledge comes from their knowledge of the rules of syntax. Sentences have structure that can be represented by phrase structure trees containing syntactic categories. Phrase structure trees reflect the speaker's mental representation of sentences. Ambiguous sentences may have more than one phrase structure tree. Phrase structure trees reveal the linear order of words and the constituency of each syntactic category. There are different kinds of syntactic categories: Phrasal categories, such as NP and VP, are composed of other syntac- tic categories; lexical categories, such as Noun and Verb, and functional categories, such as Det and T, often correspond to individual words. The hierarchical structure of the phrasal categories is universal and is specified by X-bar schema. NPs, VPs, and so on are headed by nouns, verbs, and the like. The sentence (S or TP) is headed by T, which carries such information as tense and modality. The particular order of elements within the phrase is subject to language- particular variation and can be expressed through the phrase structure rules of each language, which conform to the X-bar schema. Here is a composite of all the phrase structure rules given in this chapter renumbered to keep phrasal types together. 1. $(=TP) + NPT 2.T>TVP 3. NP > (Det) N 4. N— N (xP) 5.N>AN 6. VP ~ (Spec) V 7. Vv OP) 8.V-- VPP 9. PP > PNP 10. CP — (Spec) C 11. C > CTP (=8) 12. AP» APP 13, A IntA ‘A grammar is a formally stated, explicit description of the mental grammar or the speaker's linguistic competence. The lexicon represents the knowl- edge that a speaker has about the vocabulary of his or her language. This knowledge includes the syntactic categories of words as well as the subcat- egorization or C-selection properties of particular lexical items that specify the complements they can take, for example, whether a verb is transitive or intransitive. The lexicon also contains semantic information, ineluding the Kinds of NPs that can function as semantically coherent subjects and objects: $-selection. Selectional restrictions must be satisfied in the d-structure rep- resentation of the sentence. Transformational rules such as Aux Inversion, Wh Movement, and do- insertion account for relationships between sentences such as declarative and interrogative paits, including wh questions. The output of the transformational rules is the s-structure of 2 sentence, the structure that most closely determines Summary 123124 CHAPTERS Syntax: Infini Use of Fini how the sentence is to be pronounced (or signed). Inflectional information, such as tense, may be represented as abstract features in the phrase structure tree. Afier the rules of the syntax have applied, these features are sometimes spelled out as affixes such as -ed or as function words such as do. The basic design of language is universal. Universal Grammar specifies that syntactic rules are structure-dependent and that movement rules may not move phrases out of certain structures, among many other constraints, including a need to not violate the X-bar schema. These constraints exist in all languages—spoken and signed—and need not be learned. UG also contains parameters of variation, including the order of heads and complements, and the variations on movement rules. A child acquiring a language must fix the parameters of UG for that language. References for Further Reading Baker, M. C. 2001. The atoms of language: The mind's hidden rules of grammar. New York: Basie Books. Camey, A. 2012. Syntax: A generative introduction, 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Chomsky, N. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1972. Language and mind, rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, . 1965. Aspects ofthe theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jackendoff, R. $. 1994. Patterns in the mind: Language and human nature. New York: Basic Books. Pinker, S. 1999, Words and rules: The ingredients of language. New York: HarperCollins, Radford, A. 2009, Analysing English sentences: A minimalist approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2004. English syntax: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, Exercises 1. Besides distinguishing grammatical from ungrammatical sentences, the rules of syntax account for other kinds of linguistic knowledge, such as: a. when a sentence is structurally ambiguous. (Cf. The boy saw the man with « telescope.) b. when two sentences with different structures mean the same thing. (CE. The father wept silently. and The father silently wept:) . systematic relationships of form and meaning between two sentences, like declarative sentences and their corresponding interrogative forms. (CE. The boy can sleep. and Can the boy sleep?) Draw on your linguistic knowledge of English to come up with an example illustrating each of these cases. (Use examples that are different from the ones in the chapter.) Explain why your example illustrates the point. If you know a language other than English, provide examples in that language, if possible.Exercises 125 2. Consider the following sentences: a. Thate war. b, You know that I hate war. ¢, He knows that you know that I hate war. i, Write another sentence that includes sentence (0). ii, What does this set of sentences reveal about the nature of language? iii. How is this characteristic of human language related to the difference between linguistic competence and performance? (Hint: Review these concepts in Chapter 1.) 3. Paraphrase each of the following sentences in two ways to show that you understand the ambiguity involve: Example: Smoking grass can be nauseating. i, Putting grass in a pipe and smoking it can make you sick. ii, Fumes from smoldering grass can make you sick. Dick finally decided on the boat. The professors appointment was shocking. The design has big squares and circles. ‘That sheepdog is too hairy to eat. Could this be the invisible mans hair tonic? The governor is a dirty street fighter. I cannot recommend him too highly. Terry loves his wife and so do L They said she would go yesterday. j. No smoking section available. kk, We will dry clean your clothes in 24 hours. 1, [bought cologne for my boyfriend containing 25% alcohol. m. The new magazine has between one and two billion readers. rig me ae ee 4. Here are two examples where structural ambiguities lead to humorous results. For sale: an antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers. We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $10.00. Using square brackets to delineate constituents, explained the ambiguity and the resulting humor of these two sentences by doing a constituent analysis. 5. Following the X-bar schema, draw two phrase structure trees to repre- sent the two meanings of the sentence The magician touched the child with the wand. Be sure you indicate which meaning goes with which tree. (Hint: this is similar to an example in the text)126 CHAPTER? Syntax Infini Use of Fini Indicate the grammatical category of each of the words in the following sentences. a, The girls love sushi. b, That boy has won many races. ¢. Mary will finish her homework in the library. d. A strong wind uprooted the tall trees. ©. My dog is exceptionally smart. 7. Consider the phrase structure rule NP — (Det) N as given in this chapter to account for NPs such as dogs in dogs bark. Why would this rule not work for expressions such as who, he, Mary. Draw the NP subtrees for the italicized NPs in the following sentences: a. Every mother hopes for good health. b. A big black dog is barking. cc. Angry men in dark glasses roamed the streets. d. Challenge exercise: Melissa’s garden is beautiful. . In all languages, sentences can occur within sentences. For example, in Exercise 2, sentence (b) contains sentence (a), and sentence (©) contains sentence (b), Put another way, sentence (a) is embedded in sentence (b), and sentence (b) is embedded in sentence (©). Sometimes embedded sen- tences appear slightly changed from their normal forms, but you should be able to recognize and underline the embedded sentences in the fol- lowing examples. Underline in the non-English sentences, when given, not in the translations (the first one is done as an example): a. Yesterday I noticed my accountant repairing the toilet. b. Becky said that Jake would play the piano. ¢. I deplore the fact that bats have wings. d. That Guinevere loves Lorian is known to all my friends. ¢, Who promised the teacher that Maxine wouldn't be absent? £. It’ ridiculous that he washes his own Rolls-Royce. § The woman likes for the waiter to bring water when she sits down. ‘h. The person who answers this question will win $100. i, The idea of Romeo marrying a 13-year-old is upsetting. j._ [gave my hat to the nurse who helped me cut my hair. k, For your children to spend all your royalty payments on recreational drugs is a shame. 1. Give this fork to the person I'm getting the pie for. m.khdw chy = wai-—khruu—— maa. (Thai) He believe that teacher. come He believes that the teacher is coming. nm. Je me demande quand il_partira. (French) I me ask when he will leave I wonder when he'll leave. ©. Jan zei dat Piet dit boek niet heeft gelezen. (Dutch) Jan said that Piet this book not has read Jan said that Piet has not read this book,Exercises 127 10. Adhering to the X-bar schema, draw phrase structure trees for the fol- lowing sentences. a. The puppy found the child. b. Asurly passenger insulted the attendant. , The house on the hill collapsed in the earthquake. . The ice melted. , The hot sun melted the ice. f. The old tree swayed in the wind. g The wondrous, beautiful, blue guitar sold for a song. M1, Greate three phrase structure trees of 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 words. Use your ‘mental lexicon to fill in the bottoms of the trees. 12, Using one or more of the constituency tests (i.c., stand alone, move as a unit, replacement by a pronoun) discussed in the chapter, determine which of the boldfaced portions in the sentences are constituents (and which are not). Provide the grammatical category of the constituents. ‘a. Martha found a lovely pillow for the couch. b, The light in this room is terrible. ¢. I wonder whether Bonnie has finished packing her books. . Melissa slept in her class. e. Pete and Max are fighting over the bone. £. I gave a bone to Pete and to Max yesterday. g. I gave a bone to Pete and to Max yesterday. 13. The two sentences below contain a verbal particle up: He ran up the bill. He ran the bill up. ‘a. The verbal particle up and the verb run depend on each other for the ‘unique idiosyncratic meaning of the phrasal verb run up. (Running up @ bill involves neither running nor the location up.) Does up the bill form a constituent? Give at least one argument that favors your answer. b. List five other verb+ particle combinations in English. 14. In terms of C-selection restrictions, explain why the following are ungrammatical: a. *The man located. 1b. “Jesus wept the apostles. , *Robert is hopeful of his children. d. *Robert is fond that his children love animals, . *The children laughed the man, 15, The complement of V may be a single NP direct object as for find. Eng- lish also has ditransitive verbs, ones whose complement may be two NPs, such as give: ‘The emperor gave the vassal a castle. Think of three other ditransitive verbs in English and give example sentences.128. CHAPTERS Syntax Infinite Use of Finite Means 16. Tamil is a language spoken in India by upward of 70 million people. Fol- lowing are word-for-word translations of PPs from Tamil to English: Tamil to English Meaning the bed on “on the bed” the village from “from the village” a, Based on these data, is Tamil a head initial or a head final language? 'b, What would the PS tree for a Tamil PP look like? 17, Here are three more word-for-word glosses in Tamil: a story tell “tell a story” the boy acow saw “the boy saw aco woman this slept “this woman slept” Do these additional data support or argue against your analysis in Exercise 16? What would the pertinent VP and NP trees look like in Tamil, based on these data? 18. Provide the d-structure for each of the following wh questions. Then state the grammatical function of the wh phrase (c.g., subject, object, ete.) Example: Who did Mary see? d-structure: Mary saw who Who is the direct object a. Who left the party early? 'b. Where did Mary leave her wallet? cc. What did you eat for dinner last night? d. Who did Mary write to? , Which book did Sue read? £. Whose jacket are you wearing? Who did Al forget that Betty invited to the party? hh. Which bear did Goldilocks say that Mama Bear gave porridge to? i, What did Goldilocks say that Mama Bear gave to Baby Bear? 19. As illustrated in the last two examples of the previous question, awh phrase can move a very long distance. But as we saw in the chapter, there are certain instances in which it cannot apply and these constraints are universal and structure dependent. Consider the following sentences and state (in your own words) the constraint that blocks wh movement in the ungrammatical examples. a, Paul and John play beautiful music. b. Who plays beautiful music? ¢. Paul and who €lse) play beautiful music? . “Who do Paul and play beautiful music. €. The children love macaroni and cheese? £. What do the children love? What do the children love macaroni with? hh. *What do the children love macaroni and?Exercises 129 20. There are many systematic, structure-dependent relationships among sentences similar to the one discussed in the chapter between declara- tive and interrogative sentences. Here are some example sentences based on existential there sentences: a. (i) A boy ison the roof Gi) There is a boy on the roof. b. GA boy danced on the roof. Gil) “There danced a boy on the roof. ¢. (i) A boy was dancing on the roof. Gil) There was a boy dancing on the roof. 4.) Awwallet was left in the restaurant. )) There was a wallet left in the restaurant. e. (i) The boy is on the roof. () “There is the boy on the roof. ‘Aman seems to be in the garden. i) There seems to be a man in the garden. Formulate in your own words a transformational rule relating the pairs in (@) and Gi). Be careful that your rule generates the grammatical pairs but not the ungrammatical ones. Challenge exercise: Now consider the following pair of sentences: & ()_ Students must be in the dorm by midnight. Gi) There must be students in the dorm by midnight. Can you describe the difference in meaning between sentence (i) and (ii)? Does this meaning difference undermine the transformational analysis of there sentences? 21, State at least three differences between English and the following lan- guages, using just the sentence(s) given. Ignore lexical differences (i.e., the different vocabulary). Here is an example: Thai: Deg Khon ni kamlang kin. boy classifier this. progressive eat “This boy is eating.” Mia tua ran kin khdaw. dog classifier that eat_—_ rice “That dog ate rice.” Three differences are (1) Thai has “classifiers.” They have no English equivalent. (2) The words (determiners, actually) this and that follow the noun in Thai, but precede the noun in English. (3) The “progressive” is expressed by a single separate word in Thai. The verb does nat change form, In English, the progressive is indicated by the presence of the verb to be and the adding of -ing to the verb. a. French Cet homme _ intelligent comprendra_—_la question. this man intelligent will understand _ the questionBO. cHAPTER2 Syntax: Infinite Use of Finite Means ‘This intelligent man will understand the question.’ Ces hommes —_intelligents_ comprendront __les questions. these = men intelligent will understand — the questions “These intelligent men will understand the question.” b. Japanese Watashi ga sakana 0 tabete iru I subject fish ‘object eat (ing) am marker marker “1am eating fish.” . Swahili Mtoto alivunja kikombe. oe woo a li vunja ke kombe class. child he past break class cup marker marker “The child broke the cup.” Watoto ‘wanavunja vikombe. wa- toto. wae na vunja vie kombe class. child they present break class cup marker marker “The children break the cups.” d. Korean Ki sonyon-iee wiywlil masi-ass-ta. ki sonyon- fee = wiyue lm ass ta the boy subject milk object drink past assertion marker marker “The boy drank milk.” Kinin mugs-il makeass-ninya ki nin muas- il mak. ass-_ ninya he subject what object eat —past__ Question marker marker “What did he eat?” e. Tagalog Nakita ni Pedro-ng puno na ang bus. nakita ni Pedro. ng puno na ang_—obus saw article Pedro that full already topic bus marker “Pedro saw that the bus was already full.” 22, Transformations may delete elements, as in the following “elliptical” sentences: G)_—_ Mary will study hard for the exam and John will too. Gi.) John wrote a letter to someone, but 1 don't know who. ii) John loves carrots and Mary broccoli. itt in—iimin tt himilniiime” nti iii mackBI a. Identify the omitted constituent in each of the examples above. (Hint: Do this by providing the d-structure for each sentence.) ‘b. Provide three more examples of each kind of “ellipsis” illustrated above. Research question: Consult with a speaker of another language and determine whether this language has the same kinds of ellipsis es English does, or other kinds. (If you know another language you can use your ‘own intuitions to answer this question.) 23, Challenge exercise: Compare the following French and English sentences: French English Jean boit toujours du vin, Jean John always drinks some wine. drinks always some wine (’Jean ‘John drinks always some wine. toujours boit du vin.) Marie lit jamais le journal. Marie Mary never reads the newspaper. reads never the newspaper “Mary reads never the newspaper. (Marie jamais lit le journal.) Pierre lave souvent ses chiens. _Peter often washes his dogs. *Peter Pierre washes often his dogs. washes often his dogs. (Pierre souvent lave ses chiens.) a. Based on the above data, what would you hypothesize concerning the relative positions of adverbs of frequency (eg., toujours, jamais, souvent, always, never, often) and the verbs they modify in French and English? b. Now suppose that UG specifies that in all languages the adverbs of frequency must precede V reflecting a phrase structure rule V— Adv V. Describe in words—don't worry about the details—a trans- formational rule needed to derive the correct surface word order for French? (Hint: review the discussion of the auxiliaries have and be raising and the phrase structure tree that illustrates that process.) . In terms of that transformational rule how do French and English differ? 24, Dutch and German are Germanic languages related to English, and as. in English, wh questions are formed by moving a wh phrase to sentence- initial position. In what way are the rules of question formation in Dutch and German different from those in English? Base your answer on the following data: German Dutch Was hat Karl gekauft?’ Wat heeft Wim —_gekocht? what has Karl bought what has Wim bought “What has Karl bought?” “What has Wim bought?”32 _ CHAPTERS Synten: Infinite Use of Fini 25. 26. German Dutch ii, Was kauft Karl? Wat —koopt_ Wim? What buys Karl what buys Wim “What does Karl buy?” “What does Wim buy?” iii. Kauft Karl das Buch? Koopt Wim het boek? buys Karl the book buys. Wim =the book “Does Karl buy the book?” “Does Wim buy the book?” Challenge exercise: We noted that it is often not straightforward to dis- tinguish adjuncts from complements. “One-replacement” provides a test: only nouns with adjuncts can be substituted for by one, as in a pattent with a broken arm and one with a broken leg (adjunct), but nouns with true complements do not allow one-replacement, so that *a patient of the doctor and one of the chiropractor is not well-formed. Here are four exam- ples of complements and four of adjuncts. Apply the one-replacement test to determine which is which: a, the man with the golden arm b, a voter for proposition eighteen ¢. my cousin’s arrival at his home d. the construction of a retaining wall . the boat in the river f. the ocean white with foam g. the desecration of the temple hh. the betrayal of Julius Caesar Challenge research exercise: X-bar theory demands binary branching and that a head may have one and only one complement. Ditransitive verbs such as write and give. (they are numerous) pose problems insofar as fitting into the strict (are we say “Procrustean”) requirements of X-bar. This research project asks you to examine the work that has been done to accommodate the facts of ditransitive verbs with X-bar theory.