Syntax
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"Deeply informed, lucid and careful, this revision of theoutstanding original carries the student from core concepts totopics at the borders of inquiry. A most valuablecontribution." - Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor(retired), Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT "This truly excellent textbook competently guides students tounderstand not just the basics of generative syntax but alsorichness of universals and parametric variation in a clear andthought-provoking way." - Ken Hiraiwa, Department ofEnglish, Meiji Gakuin UniversityMore details
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Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
Part 1 Preliminaries 1
1 Generative Grammar 3
0. Preliminaries 3
1. Syntax as a Cognitive Science 5
2. Modeling Syntax 6
3. Syntax as Science - the Scientific Method 7
4. Where Do the Rules Come From? 18
5. Choosing among Theories about Syntax 29
6. The Scientific Method and the Structure of this Textbook 29
7. Conclusion 31
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 31
General Problem Sets 33
Challenge Problem Sets 36
2 Parts of Speech 43
0. Words and Why They Matter to Syntax 44
1. Determining Part of Speech 45
2. The Major Parts of Speech: N, V, Adj, and Adv 48
3. Open vs. Closed; Lexical vs. Functional 51
4. Subcategories and Features 54
5. Conclusion 61
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 61
General Problem Sets 62
Challenge Problem Sets 66
3 Constituency, Trees, and Rules 71
0. Introduction 71
1. Rules and Trees 74
2. How to Draw a Tree 90
3. Modification and Ambiguity 96
4. Constituency Tests 98
5. Constituency in Other Languages 100
6. Summary and Conclusion 106
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 106
General Problem Sets 107
Challenge Problem Sets 114
4 Structural Relations 117
0. Introduction 117
1. The Parts of a Tree 118
2. Domination 120
3. Precedence 125
4. C-command 127
5. Grammatical Relations 132
6. Summary and Conclusions 135
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 135
General Problem Sets 137
Challenge Problem Sets 144
5 Binding Theory 147
0. Introduction 147
1. The Notions Coindex and Antecedent 149
2. Binding 151
3. Locality Conditions on the Binding of Anaphors 153
4. The Distribution of Pronouns 155
5. The Distribution of R-expressions 156
6. Conclusion 156
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 157
General Problem Sets 158
Challenge Problem Sets 159
Part 2 The Base 163
6 X-bar Theory 165
0. Introduction 165
1. Bar-level Projections 167
2. Generalizing the Rules: The X-bar Schema 172
3. Complements, Adjuncts, and Specifiers 175
4. Some Definitional Housekeeping 185
5. Parameters of Word Order 186
6. Drawing Trees in X-bar Notation 189
7. X-bar Theory: A Summary 198
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 199
General Problem Sets 200
Challenge Problem Sets 204
7 Extending X-bar Theory to Functional Categories 207
0. Introduction 207
1. Determiner Phrases (DPs) 208
2. A Descriptive Tangent into Clause Types 211
3. Complementizer Phrases (CPs) 216
4. Tense Phrases (TPs) 219
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 221
General Problem Sets 222
Challenge Problem Sets 224
8 Constraining X-bar: Theta Theory 227
0. Introduction 227
1. Some Basic Terminology 228
2. Thematic Relations and Theta Roles 229
3. The Lexicon 236
4. Expletives and the Extended Projection Principle 237
5. Conclusion 239
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 240
General Problem Sets 241
Challenge Problem Sets 245
9 Auxiliaries and Functional Categories 249
0. Introduction 250
1. Complementizers 250
2. Determiners 254
3. Understanding Tense, Aspect, Voice, and Mood 258
4. Auxiliaries 263
5. Conclusion 278
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 279
General Problem Sets 281
Challenge Problem Sets 284
Part 3 Movement 287
10 Head-to-Head Movement 289
0. Introduction 289
1. Verb Movement (V ¿ T) 292
2. T Movement (T ¿ C) 308
3. Do-support 311
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 312
General Problem Sets 313
Challenge Problem Sets 318
11 DP Movement 323
0. Introduction 323
1. A Puzzle for the Theory of Theta Roles 324
2. Passives 330
3. Case 335
4. Raising: Reprise 339
5. Passives: Reprise 342
6. Tying Up a Loose End 344
7. Conclusion 346
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 346
General Problem Sets 347
Challenge Problem Sets 352
12 Wh-movement and Locality Constraints 357
0. Introduction 357
1. Movement in Wh-questions 359
2. Relative Clauses 369
3. Islands 374
4. The Minimal Link Condition 377
5. Echo Questions (Wh-in-situ) in English 382
6. Conclusion 383
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 384
General Problem Sets 385
Challenge Problem Sets 387
13 A Unified Theory of Movement 391
0. Introduction 391
1. Move 393
2. Explaining Cross-linguistic Differences 396
3. Scope, Covert Movement, and the MLC 401
4. Conclusion 405
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 405
General Problem Sets 406
Challenge Problem Sets 406
Part 4 Advanced Topics 409
14 Expanded VPs 411
0. Introduction 411
1. The Problem of Ditransitive Verbs 412
2. The Active Voice Head and Other Light Verbs 413
3. Object Shift 416
4. Ditransitives: Reprise 421
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 425
General Problem Sets 425
Challenge Problem Sets 427
15 Raising, Control, and Empty Categories 429
0. Introduction 430
1. Raising vs. Control 431
2. Two Kinds of Raising, Two Kinds of Control 439
3. Control Theory 445
4. Another Kind of Null Subject: "Little" pro 449
5. Conclusion 450
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 451
General Problem Sets 452
Challenge Problem Sets 454
16 Ellipsis 457
0. Ellipsis 457
1. LF-copying or PF-deletion 460
2. Antecedent-Contained Deletion and Pseudogapping 466
3. Conclusion 470
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 471
General Problem Sets 472
Challenge Problem Sets 475
17 Advanced Topics in Binding Theory 477
0. Introduction 477
1. Levels of Representation 478
2. The Definition of Binding Domain 480
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 486
General Problem Sets 487
Challenge Problem Sets 489
18 Polysynthesis, Incorporation, and Non-configurationality 491
0. Introduction 491
1. Polysynthesis 492
2. Incorporation 494
3. Scrambling and Non-configurationality 496
4. Conclusions 505
Ideas, Rules, and Constraints Introduced in this Chapter 505
General Problem Sets 506
Challenge Problem Sets 507
Conclusions and Directions for Further Study 509
References 511
Index 519
chapter 2
Parts of Speech
Learning Objectives After reading chapter 2 you should walk away having mastered the following ideas and skills: 1. Distinguish between distributional and semantic definitions of parts of speech. 2. Identify a part of speech by its distribution. 3. Identify cases of complementary distribution. 4. Know the difference between an open-class and a closed-class part of speech. 5. Explain the difference between lexical and functional categories. 6. Identify different subcategories using feature notations. 7. Identify plural nouns, mass nouns and count nouns and distinguish them with features. 8. Explain the difference between predicates and arguments. 9. Categorize verbs according to their argument structure (intransitive, transitive, ditransitive) and represent this using features.
0. Words and Why They Matter to Syntax
It goes without saying that sentences are made up of words, so before we get into the syntactic meat of this book, it’s worth looking carefully at different kinds of words.
What is most important to us here is the word’s part of speech (also known as syntactic category or word class). The most common parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions (we will also look at some other, less familiar parts of speech below). Parts of speech tell us how a word is going to function in the sentence. Consider the sentences in (1). Notice that we can substitute various words that are of the type noun for the second word in the sentence:
1) a) The man loved peanut butter cookies. b) The puppy loved peanut butter cookies. c) The king loved peanut butter cookies. However, we cannot substitute words that aren’t nouns:1 2) a) *The green loved peanut butter cookies. b) *The in loved peanut butter cookies. c) *The sing loved peanut butter cookies. The same holds true for larger groups of words (the square brackets [ … ] mark off the relevant groups of words). 3) a) [John] went to the store. b) [The man] went to the store. c) *[Quickly walks] went to the store. 4) a) [Norvel] kissed the Blarney stone. b) *[To the washroom] kissed the Blarney stone. If we have categories for words that can appear in certain positions and categories for those that don’t, we can make generalizations (scientific ones) about the behavior of different word types. This is why we need parts of speech in syntactic theory.1. Determining Part of Speech
1.1 The Problem of Traditional Definitions
If you were taught any grammar in school, you may have been told that a noun is a “person, place, or thing”, or that a verb is “an action, state, or state of being”. Alas, this is a very over-simplistic way to characterize various parts of speech. It also isn’t terribly scientific or accurate. The first thing to notice about definitions like this is that they are based on semantic criteria. It doesn’t take much effort to find counterexamples to these semantic definitions. Consider the following:
5) The destruction of the city bothered the Mongols. The meaning of destruction is not a “person, place, or thing”. It is an action. By semantic criteria, this word should be a verb. But in fact, native speakers unanimously identify it as a noun. Similar cases are seen in (6): 6) a) Sincerity is an important quality. b) the assassination of the president c) Tucson is a great place to live. Sincerity is an attribute, a property normally associated with adjectives. Yet in (6a), sincerity is a noun. Similarly in (6b) assassination, an action, is functioning as a noun. (6c) is more subtle. The semantic property of identifying a location is usually attributed to a preposition; in (6c) however, the noun Tucson refers to a location, but isn’t itself a preposition. It thus seems difficult (if not impossible) to rigorously define the parts of speech based solely on semantic criteria. This is made even clearer when we see that a word can change its part of speech depending upon where it appears in a sentence: 7) a) Gabrielle’s mother is an axe-murderer. (N) b) Anteaters mother attractive offspring. (V) c) Wendy’s mother country is Iceland. (Adj) The situation gets even muddier when we consider languages other than English. Consider the following data from Warlpiri: 8) Wita-ngku ka maliki wajilipinyi. small-SUBJ AUX dog chase.PRES “The small (one) is chasing the dog.” In this sentence, we have a thing we’d normally call an adjective (the word wita “small”) functioning like a noun (e.g., taking subject marking). Is this a noun or an adjective? It’s worth noting that some parts of speech don’t lend themselves to semantic definitions at all. Consider the sentence in (9). What is the meaning of the word that? 9) Mikaela said that parts of speech intrigued her. If parts of speech are based on the meaning of the word, how can we assign a part of speech to a word for which the meaning isn’t clear?2 Perhaps the most striking evidence that we can’t use semantic definitions for parts of speech comes from the fact that you can know the part of speech of a word without even knowing what it means: 10) The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically into the nindin with the pidibs. Every native speaker of English will tell you that yinkish is an adjective, dripner a noun, blorked a verb, quastofically an adverb, and nindin and pidibs both nouns, but they’d be very hard pressed to tell you what these words actually mean. How then can you know the part of speech of a word without knowing its meaning? The answer is simple: The various parts of speech are not semantically defined. Instead they depend on where the words appear in the sentence and what kinds of affixes they take. Nouns are things that appear in “noun positions” and take “noun suffixes” (endings). The same is true for verbs, adjectives, etc. Here are the criteria that we used to determine the parts of speech in sentence (10): 11) a) yinkish between the and a nountakes -ish adjective ending b) dripner after an adjective (and the)
takes -er noun ending
subject of the sentence c) blorked after subject noun
takes -ed verb ending d) quastofically after a verb
takes -ly adverb ending e) nindin after the and after a preposition f) pidibs after the and after a preposition
takes -s noun plural ending The part of speech of a word is determined by its place in the sentence and by its morphology, not by its meaning. In the next section, there is a list of rules and distributional criteria that you can use to determine the part of speech of a word.
1.2 Distributional Criteria
The criteria we use for determining part of speech then aren’t based on the meanings of the word, but on its distribution. We will use two kinds of distributional tests for determining part of speech: morphological distribution and syntactic distribution.
First we look at morphological distribution; this refers to the kinds of affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and other morphology that appear on a word. Let’s consider two different types of affixes. First, we have affixes that make words out of other words. We call these affixes derivational morphemes. These suffixes usually result in a different part of speech from the word they attach to. For example, if we take the word distribute we can add the derivational suffix -(t)ion and we get the noun distribution. The -(t)ion affix thus creates nouns. Any word ending in -(t)ion is a noun. This is an example of a morphological distribution. A similar example is found with the affix -al, which creates adjectives. If we take distribution, and add -al to it, we get the adjective distributional. The -al...
