AY 2023-2024 Sem 2 EL2101 Notes

Lec 1 - Introduction
● Gloss - Word per word lexical and grammatical translation
● Person
○ 1 - Include speaker
○ 2 - Include addressee
○ 3 - Etc
● Number
○ SG - Singular
○ PL - Plural
● Gender - Noun classes
● Tense - time wrt speech event
○ Morphological tense - NON-PAST vs PAST in English, look/looked
● Aspect - shape, distribution or internal organization of the event in time
○ Only progressive aspect marked morphologically in EN, is/was working
○ PERFECTIVE vs IMPERFECTIVE - single whole vs steps (wrote vs is writing/writes)
○ PERFECT - Past event that continues to have an effect (has destroyed, still destroyed)
● Mood - declarative, imperative, interrogative
● Modality - speaker’s attitude towards the proposition being expressed or actor’s relationship to the
described situation, uses auxiliary verbs in English
Lec 2 - Word class, semantic roles, grammatical relations
● Word classes/parts of speech/lexical category - sets of words that share certain features
○ Distribution - similar environments
○ Form - morphological operations
● Verbs
○ Tests
■ “Lily wanted to _____” - Lily wanted to like a banana
■ Having a part tense form - Lily liked a banana
■ -s suffix to agree with 3rd person sing subj - Lily likes a banana/They like a banana
○ Argument - phrase expressing an obligatory participant in the
event/relation/situation/property denoted by the verb/predicate
■ Participant - the conceptual person/thing/place/time that plays a role in the
conceptual event
■ “Lily” and “a girl” are participants in “Lily saw a girl”
■ “a girl” is not a participant in “Lily is a girl”, it denotes a property of Lily
○ Complement - any non-subject phrase required syntactically by some head/word
■ “Lily is a girl” -> “a girl” is a complement but not a participant
■ “Lily saw a girl” -> “a girl” is both a complement and a participant
○ Adjunct - optional modifying phrases
■ Use omission test to identify
■ (Lily) -> optional, *(Lily) -> omission unacceptable, (*Lily) -> inclusion unacceptable
○ Transitivity - number of arguments of a verb
■ Intransitive/(mono)transitive/ditransitive - exactly 1/(exactly) 2/exactly 3 arguments
■ Ambitransitive - transitivity is context dependent (vase broke vs Lily broke the vase)
● Adjectives
○ Tests
 ■ really/too/very/quite _____
■ seems _____
■ as _____ as
■ so/less _____
■ _____-er, _____-est
○ Attributive vs predicative - “cute Lily” vs “Lily is cute”
● Adverbs
○ Ragbag category (etc)
○ Similar tests to adjectives
■ very/quite/most _____
■ as _____ as
■ -er and -est for some
○ Complementary with adjectives (cannot modify nouns)
● Prepositions
○ Tests
■ straight/right/well/just _____ (unreliable)
○ Transitive or intransitive - “of the stairs” vs aboard (can also be ambi)
○ PPs vs adverbs
■ Can modify nouns - *A tactfully manager / A manager with tact
■ Complement of main verb be - *Lily was enthusiastically / Meeting is on Tues
● Determiners vs Pronouns
○ Det occurs before (Adj) N to form NP
○ “Her pen” (D) vs “Meet her” (Pr)
○ “This house” (D) vs “I like this” (Pr)
○ *Treat proper nouns as pronouns
○ Nominative case (I you he she it we they) vs Accusative case (me you him her it is them)
● Subject
○ Usually the part before the verb
○ Subject verb agreement
○ Use nominative case (I you he she it we they)
● Object
○ Use accusative case (me you him her it us them)
○ Subject in passive clause (Lily sells products vs Products were sold by Lily)
○ Not all complements are objects (Lily is a girl)
Lec 3 - Sentences and Clauses
● Simple sentence - 1 clause/predicate
○ Predicate - element of meaning that expresses the event/relation/situation/property that
the clause is about
■ Usually but not always a verb such as in “Lily is cute”, called predicate complements
in this case
● Finite verb - can be marked for grammar such as tense, aspect, agreement, etc
○ Ex: Lily likes sushi/Lily liked sushi vs Lily tried to like sushi/*Lily tried to liked sushi
○ Usually have overt subjects
○ Simple sentences can only have one finite verb
○ Always comes first
● Auxiliary Verbs
 ○ Verbs that are not predicates
○ Bear tense, aspect, mood (TAM) info for the main verb
○ Modal auxiliary verbs - special class
■ Don’t take the 3SG.SUBJ.PRES -s inflection
■ Always in finite form (so always first and occurs with non-finite verbs)
■ The verb right after must always be in infinitival form
● Main verb
○ Typically the predicate (except when the predicate is not a verb)
○ Always occurs last in a sequence of verbs (in English)
● Non-finite verb
○ Not marked for tense, aspect, agreement (-s agreement or tense inflection)
○ Often no overt subjects (Lily wants Briget to sing vs Lily wants to sing)
○ Infinitives
■ Bare verb stem (in English)
■ After modals or auxiliary do (Lily should/did eat)
■ After infinitival to (Lily wants to eat)
○ Participles
■ Everywhere else where the verb is non-finite (complementary distrib with infinitives)
■ *Counterexample: Lily saw her blink(ing)
■ Must be a verb in the first place
● Killing of the dog -> The killing(s) of the dog -> killing is a nou
● The rotten apple -> the very rotten apple, seems rotten, as rotten as -> adj
● Being annoying -> same as rotten above -> adj
■ Present participle
● Lily is laughing. (progressive)
● Laughing loudly, Lily entered the room. (subordinate clause)
■ Past participle
● Lily has eaten the apple (perfect)
● The apple was eaten by Lily (passive)
● Complex sentences
○ Sentences with more than one clause
○ Clausal coordination
■ Each clause is independent and they have equal syntactic status (no dependency)
○ Clausal subordination
■ Not equal syntactic status
■ Subordinate/embedded clause is dependent on the matrix clause
■ Required by predicate in matrix clause (Lily knows it’s illegal.) or
unable to stand alone (The students laughed to annoy the teacher.)
■ Word introducing subordinate clause forms constituent with the subordinate clause
■ Complement clause - Required by the predicate in a matrix clause
■ Adjunct clause - Not required by any predicate, can typically be moved around
○ *Pronouns must find their antecedent outside of their own clause
Lec 4 - Dependencies: heads and their dependents
● Head - most important word in a phrase
○ Bears the central semantic information
○ Determines phrasal category (“word class of the phrase”)
 ○ Selects obligatory participants and imposes restrictions on dependents
○ Predicate is the head of a clause
● Dependents - all the words/phrases in some phrase that bear some relation to head
○ Complements
■ Typically obligatory
■ Close relationship with the head (usually appear closer)
○ Adjuncts
■ Always optional, provide extra info
● Four cross-linguistically common construction types
○ Clause
■ Head - Predicate
■ Dependents - Subject, complements, and adjuncts of the predicate
○ Adpositional Phrase (in the house)
■ Head - Adposition
■ Dependents - Complement
○ Possessive Phrase (Lily’s laptop)
■ Head - Possessed
■ Dependents - Possessor
○ Noun + Modifying Adjective Phrase
■ Head - Noun
■ Dependents - Adjective
● Head-initial vs Head-final
○ Head at the start or end of the clause
○ Ignore subject since subject tends to come first regardless
● Head-marking vs Dependent-marking
○ Special marking to indicate the relationship between head and dependents
○ Does not count markers not indicating the relationship
■ Ex: INAN-on 1SG-pants: 1SG is not considered (INAN = inanimate)
○ Head-marked languages can sometimes drop dependents without affecting interpretability
○ Dependent-marked languages can sometimes swap the order of dependents
○ Many languages mark both
○ PP Markings
■ Special form for dependents in English (ACC case for pronouns)
○ Clause Markings
■ SUBJ - marks head with subject of the clause
■ OBJ - marks head with object of a predicate
■ NOM - marks subject
■ ACC - marks object
○ Possessive Construction Markings
■ GEN - Marks possessor (Lily’s laptop)
■ POSS - Marks possessed (Lily’s laptop)
○ Noun + Modifying Adjective Construction Markings
■ MOD - Mark on the noun being modified
■ M/F - Marks the gender of the noun on the adjective
○ NOTE: Noun class/gender is an inherent property of a noun, so such a thing does not
count as head/dependent marking
Lec 5 - Constituents, trees & rules
● Phrase Structure Rules (XP -> X YP)
○ XP immediately dominates X, YP
○ XP is the mother of X, YP
○ X, YP are sisters
○ XP -> X,YP means that the order of X and YP can be swapped
○ Phrase gets phrasal category from head daughter
○ Phrase Structure Rules of English (Lec 5 Slide 7)
● Principle of Modification (PoM)
○ If a phrase YP modifies (is semantically related to) a head X, then X and YP must be sisters
Lec 6 - How do we identify constituents?
● Constituent - string of elements that behaves like a single unit
● Constituency Tests - Determine if something is a constituent
● Syntactic/Structural Ambiguity vs Lexical Ambiguity - from syntactic structure vs word with
multiple meanings
○ Constituency Tests solve syntactic ambiguity since they reveal syntactic structure
● Pronoun Replacement Test
○ Can be replaced by a pronoun -> is an NP
● Sentence Fragment Test
○ Answers a question -> is a constituent
○ Ex: “Lily decided on the train.”
Where did Lily decide? On the train
Kills off the other interpretation of choosing a train
● Echo-Question Test
○ Replace with wh word/phrase -> is a constituent
○ Ex: “She kissed the man in her PJs.”
She kissed who? The man in her PJs OR She kissed who in her PJs? The man
She kissed the man how? in her PJs
● Cleft Construction
○ It be ...[focus]... that/who(m) ...[rest of original sentence]
String of words into [focus] -> it is a constituent
○ Ex: “Leslie teaches linguistics at NUS.”
It is Leslie who teaches linguistics at NUS
It is linguistics that Leslie teaches at NUS
● Pseudocleft (wh-cleft) Construction
○ ...[focus]... be what/who/where... [rest of original sentence]
String of words into [focus] -> it is a constituent
○ Ex: “Leslie teaches linguistics at NUS.”
Teach linguistics is what Leslie does at NUS. (need to add do since it is a VP)
● Do So Test
○ Replace with do so -> is a VP
○ Ex: “Lily likes fish”
Lily does so.
Lily likes fish, and Bridget does so too.
○ Recursion: VP -> VP PP
○ Complements of the verb must also be replaced together with the verb in the do so test
 ○ A verb with its complements forms the smallest VP
● Coordination Test
○ Only constituents of the same category can be coordinated
● Transitive Phrasal Verbs
○ Not to be confused with prepositional verb (verb with a PP)
○ Turn in X, Bring up X, Ring up X / Turn X in, Bring X in, Turn Ring X up
○ Decide on X, Count on X
Lec 7 (Week 8) - X-Bar Theory
● Revised Principle of Modification (POM)
○ If A modifies B, then A must be the daughter of some projection of B (B’ or BP)
● Replacement Tests
○ One - Replaces N’s
■ Caveats in next lecture
○ Do So - Replaces V’s
○ So - Replaces Adj’s (Slide 25 of pdf)
● Complements must be inside X’, Adjuncts attach to X’ one by one
● Can only coordinate constituents of the same type (X CONJ X, X’ CONJ X’, XP CONJ XP)
● X-Bar Schema
○ X is in {N,V,Adj,Adv,P}
■ X’ -> X (WP)
■ X’ -> X’, YP
■ XP -> (ZP) X’
● Tree Theoretic Definitions
○ Complement - Sister of X and daughter of X’
■ All complements must attach at the same time
○ Adjunct - Sister of X’ and daughter of X’
○ Specifier - Sister of X’ and daughter of XP
●
Lec 8 (Week 9) - X-Bar Theory (Continued)
● 3 rules
○ X’ -> X, (complement)
○ X’ -> X’, adjunct
○ XP -> (specifier), X’
○ (plus CONJ rule)
● TP
○ T can be empty
○ VP is complement
○ NP/CP is specifier
● One replacement caveats
○ Does not work for bare nouns/nouns with a/an
○ a/an -> the/this/that/these/those
Lec 9 (Week 11) - Relationships Within the Clause
● Basic Constituent Order Tendencies
○ SOV > SVO > VSO > VOS > OVS > OSV
○ 80% are subject initial
○ OV adjacent in >90% of languages
 ○ VO tend to be head-initial, OV tend to be head-final
● Accusative vs Ergative Cases
○ Accusative
■ nominative - S,A
■ accusative - P
○ Ergative
■ absolutive - S,P
■ ergative - A

● Case vs Verbal Agreement

○ Case - marked on noun
○ Verbal - marked on verb
○ Accusative case + ergative agreement doesn’t exist
● Syncretism - same morphological form for different functions
● Morphological vs Syntactic Agreement
○ Morphological - case and verbal as above
○ Syntactic - syntactic phenomena that treat S,A (or S,P) differently from P (or A)
■ Ex: unexpressed argument in non-finite clause can be S,A but not P
■ Ex: unexpressed conjunct in 2nd conjunct can be S,P but not A
Lec 10 (Week 12) - Processes That Change Grammatical Relations
● Valence - number of core/direct arguments required by the predicate
○ core/direct arguments
■ express S/A/P
■ typically NPs
■ core case marking (NOM/ACC/ERG/ABS)
○ non-core/oblique arguments
■ non-core marking
■ typically PPs
■ case other than NOM/ACC/ERG/ABS
○ Direct Passive
■ Valence reducing
■ A -> OBL/∅
■ P -> S/A
 ■ *Tend to be in morphologically and syntactically accusative languages, not always
○ Indirect Passive
■ A -> OBL/∅
■ OBL -> S/A
○ Impersonal
■ S/A -> OBL/∅
■ *Languages tend to develop passive before impersonal
○ Antipassive
■ Valence reducing
■ P -> OBL/∅
■ A(ERG) -> S(ABS)
■ Only occurs in ergative languages by definition
■ c.f Conative alternation in EN (ACC) (She shot him -> she shot at him)
○ Applicative
■ OBL -> P (most important part)
■ P -> OBL/secondary object (not required)
■ Can also apply to intransitives
■ c.f. English dative construction (slide 26) (not counted since verb doesn’t change)
○ Causative
■ Usually valence increasing
■ New A cause former S/A to do the verb
■ Semantics of causation
■ Former S/A to V
Lec 11 (Week 13) - Filler-Gap Dependencies
● wh-questions (content/information questions)
○ “open questions” - set of possible answers is open (c.f. yes/no questions)
○ wh-in-situ - wh-expression occurs where replaced constituent is
○ wh-ex-situ - wh-expression replaces constituent and is fronted (filler), leaving a gap
■ Creates a filler-gap dependency
● Multiple wh-questions
○ all in-situ (JP)
○ 1 ex-situ, rest in-situ (EN)
○ all ex-situ (Bulgarian, slide 14)
○ some allow all 3 strategies
● Relative Clause
○ Subordinate clause in NP modifying the head noun
○ Modified noun is a participant (usu gapped) in the subordinate clause
○ c.f. noun-complement phrases (noun is not a participant)
○ Resumptive pronoun - pronoun put into the gap
● NP Accessibility Hierarchy
○ Subj > Obj > Obj of adposition > Poss > Obj of comparison
○ All languages allow relativization of subjects
○ Relativize X -> All above X can be relativized
○ Cannot relativize X -> All below X cannot be relativized
○ Resumptive Pronoun for X -> Resumptive pronoun for all relativizable below X
○ [Relativizable without resumptive] > [Relativizable with resumptive] > [Not relativizable]
Misc Notes
*that not included in subordinate clause
"clause" refers to TP, not CP
included in relative clause though

*(x) : cannot optional

(*x) : cannot include