Syntax I - The DP

• • The class that includes the, every, that, and so forth are called the determiners. They come in several subtypes, but they form a category, which we designate with the category feature [D]. • Cf. the [V] feature of verbs, the [T] feature of T. can be only one D in a noun phrase, • There and it must come first. • • • • • • Adjectives come after D and before N, and can iterate. D vs. N Also, notice that D doesn’t stand alone. • • The feels incomplete. It needs a noun. Student does not feel similarly incomplete. Like (the prepositions) to, beside, or with feel incomplete, they also need something. Or (the verbs) sink, kick, dance. All of these are sort of “completed” by nouns. For P and V, we understand how: They select for a noun as their complement. (They have a [uN*] feature.) So, maybe D is something like a P, selecting for a noun phrase complement… There are a number of things that can come before nouns in a noun phrase: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) Syntax I Determiners Determiners vs. adjectives 11) *fluffy the bunny fluffy bunny 12) *that the bunny that bunny the bunny 13) *a the bunny a bunny 14) *every the bunny every bunny 15) *fluffy every bunny big fluffy bunny 16) *a every bunny that fluffy bunny 17) *the every bunny the fluffy bunny 18) *that every bunny a fluffy bunny There seem to be two classes, things every fluffy bunny. like fluffy that can iterate, and things like the that must be first and must be unique. Adjective iteration • We’ve seen the iteration property elsewhere (PP adjuncts, for example): 1) Pat ate lunch on the hill by the tree in the rain. • Or adverbs (vP adjuncts): 2) Pat deliberately completely ate the sandwich. • So, it makes sense to suppose that adjectives are also adjuncts. But to what? 3) The big fluffy bunny. • Notice that if big and fluffy are adjoined to NP, it suggests that the must also be, if the whole thing is an NP. But then why can there be only one, and why must it be first? The students is a DP • • • • • • • Perhaps the students is not an NP, but rather a DP. • The NP can be modified by (iterating) adjectives: big fluffy pink bunny. It’s head-initial, like English is everywhere else. D selects for N ([uN*]), accounting for the inability to “stand alone” the inability to have more than one (it selects for N, not D) the fact that it must come before adjectives (adjoined to NP) Since D forces the Merge, it is D that projects. • • Ah, but there’s a problem. Why is The students arrived grammatical? • • • • Arrive is unaccusative, which we’ve formalized as a V with a single [uN*] feature and associated with a special “inert” v. T also has a strong [uN*] feature (the EPP feature), bringing the subject to SpecTP. How can either of those be satisfied? • If we suppose arrive has a [uD*] feature instead, why isn’t it *Students arrived the? • Are there two different versions of arrive, one for the students arrived, and one for students arrived? Students arrived • They were always DPs The students arrived Having taken that step, we have (the specter at least) of the opposite problem: If arrive has a [uD*] feature and T has a [uD*] feature, how come Students arrived is grammatical? How are those features checked? • Stand firm, brave syntacticians. grit our teeth, and conclude what we must: • We Students in Students arrived is in fact a DP. It has a determiner, which heads the DP. That determiner just happens to be silent. • We can bring a degree of order to this chaos if we shift our thinking about “noun phrases”: Those things we called “noun phrases” before were always actually DPs. • So, T doesn’t have a [uN*] feature— rather, it has a [uD*] feature. • Prepositions don’t have a [uN*] feature, they have a [uD*] feature. • No “version” of arrive has a [uN*] feature, it’s just the one arrive, but it has a [uD*] feature. The basic form of a “noun phrase” is not students, but rather a student, the students. A determiner phrase. [DP Ø students ] arrived • The silent D (null determiner) “shows up” with certain kinds of nouns, most notably the bare plurals (Ø books, Ø students) or mass nouns (Ø lunch) that we’ve mostly been using up until now. • There are no “bare singulars” in English: you can’t use Ø book or Ø student (as in *Ø student arrived). The null determiner seems to be incompatible with singular nouns— it shows a kind of number agreement. The related singular form would use the indefinite article a: A student arrived. There is still an NP But those were DPs we’re doing now suggests that all • What of those places in previous trees where we’re doing now suggests that all • What of those places in previous trees where we wrote “NP”, we should have written “DP” instead. • • • But there still is a category N, and there still are phrasal NPs, of course. We just find them in the complement of D, rather than on their own. That is, “N comes with D.” Hierarchy of Projections (relevant to nouns): D>N we wrote “NP”, we should have written “DP” instead. Just to be clear on When you draw strthat point: the very same sente uctures for drew structures for nces that we structures should in the past, those no not just NPs. Keep w contain DPs, tha you review past ha t in mind as ndouts. one-replacement Proliferating PPs 1) This book or that one 2) This book or the one about cats • 1) The book of poetry on my desk in the corner under the coffee It appears that in English, the word one can replace something smaller than the DP (hence evidence for the DP having an NP inside it.) 2) The book of poetry in the corner on my desk under the coffee 3) The book of poetry under the coffee in the corner on my desk 3) The big green book of poetry on the shelf 4) *The book under the coffee of poetry in the corner on my desk 4) This one on my desk 5) This small one on my desk 6) This small red one on my desk • Any number of PPs can appear here, in any order, except of poetry seems to need to be first. 7) *This small red one of riddles on my desk one-replacement again 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) • • This book of poetry on my desk *This book on my desk of poetry. *This book of poetry of riddles. That one on the floor. *That one of riddles on the floor. This book on my desk by the coffee. This book by the coffee on my desk. That one by the pencils. PP adjuncts • The fact that we can have any number of PPs and they can come in any order (momentarily ignoring of poetry type PPs), suggest that they are adjuncts. Just like with vP. So what does one stand in for? What’s the pattern? Whence the pattern? • • • Of the PP’s, one kind (of poetry) seems to have to come first. There cannot be more than one of the of poetry type PPs. One seems to replace N and any number of PPs— but must replace the of poetry type PP if it is there. Differentiating poetry from pencils PP adjuncts What kind of explanation can we offer for the facts about of poetry type PPs that… • • • Must be closer to the noun than the other PPs, and Of which there can be only one, and Get replaced by one? • It’s somewhat tricky to pin down a good diagnostic for which kinds of PP count as of poetry type PPs and which count as by the pencils type PPs. • Of poetry PPs generally start with of. 1) The book of great importance by the pencils. 2) The book by the pencils of great importance. • Of poetry PPs generally describe a fairly intrinsic property of the N. 3) The student of physics in the hall. 4) The student in the hall of physics. Of poetry PPs aren’t obligatory • UTAH • NPs don’t necessarily have an of poetry type PP, but they can. 1) The book of poetry on the table. 1) #The room learned Chinese. 2) The book on the table. • 2) #I sent Chicago letters. We’ll analyze this essentially like Adger analyzed letters to Peter on p. 109 (though we may revise this slightly next week). An N has the option of having a [uP*] feature, and if it does, the PP that satisfies it must have this “intrinsic property” characteristic (and will generally be an of-PP). • Here, there’s something about being an Agent or a possessor that requires cognitive capacity. There’s an intrinsic property of the role assigned. • If intrinsic property can be thought of as a !-role, N can optionally assign this role. • PP sister of N: Property The category of pronouns pned book of poetry with the red cover would look • So something like this. One can replace any NP. Adger does treat this as such (actually, he doesn’t treat this at all), but we can understand the restriction to “intrinsic properties” in somewhat the same way we treat the oddity of these: • We said that bare plurals like students in Students arrived are really DPs, and have a null determiner. [DP Ø students ] arrived. • • How about pronouns, like we in We arrived? • You can say things like We linguists should stick together. Or You syntacticians are a crazy lot. That is, a pronoun followed by a noun. Although you can say The students arrived, you can’t say *The we arrived. This only seems to work with we and you, though. The category of pronouns • • • We linguists looks rather like The linguists. Also noteworthy: Pronouns reflect case distinctions. If pronouns are just Ds, then case must be a property of D. • Case is actually a property of D (not of N). Consider the genitive (possessive) ’s in English: 1) 2) 3) 4) We looks rather like a D. 1) The media always disparages us linguists. • • • Possessors John’s hat The student’s sandwich The man from Australia’s book The man on the hill by the tree’s binoculars • • The possessor can be a full DP (inside another DP). • This is not a noun suffix. It seems more like a little word that signals possession, standing between the possessor and the possessee. (it’s a clitic). The ’s attaches to the whole possessor phrase—it’s the man’s book and binoculars, not Australia’s or the tree’s, after all. • • • Possessors • • • *The building’s the roof The roof of the building • Determiners like the and the possession marker ’s seem to be in complementary distribution—if one appears, the other cannot. Compare: 1) The big fluffy pink rabbit This suggests a structure like this for possession phrases: • The possessed NP is the complement of D. The possessor DP is in the specifier of DP. And of course, this can be as complex a DP as we like, e.g., the very hungry student of linguistics by the tree with the purple flowers over there... ...’s book 3) *The my rabbit 4) *Every my rabbit Possessors and the null D The king’s every whim But what then to do about DPs like his book? Or their book? Here the possessor DP is the genitive case pronoun, and there’s no ’s. 1) A whim 1) *Their’s book 2) *Them’s book 3) *They’s book 3) The king’s every whim Accordingly, we will instead suppose that there is a null D, Øgen, that checks genitive case. The genitive case form of a nonpronominal DP is audible in English, as DP’s. Checking genitive case • • • *The hurricane’s the eye 2) *The that rabbit • • Possessors? It seems to be impossible to have both a ’s and a determiner. The checking of genitive case in the DP works exactly like the checking on nominative case in the TP does. 2) The king’s whim • • To the extent that every is a D, this indicates two things: • The king is to the left of the D; really, the specifier of DP is the only place it could be. • The genitive case ’s isn’t always incompatible with an overt D (hence, better to think of ’s not as a D but rather as a case marker on the possessor DP). We take this (marked) use of every to be an exceptional overt determiner that can still check [gen]. Checking genitive case The checking of genitive case in the DP works exactly like the checking on nominative case in the TP does. I don’t mean to preclude the possibility that the possessor actually moves from somewhere into SpecDP—we’ll explore that next week, but that need not happen for this to work. • A couple of null Ds Recursion So we have at this point a couple of different null determiners. They are as different as the is from a or from that, they just happen to be pronounced the same way (like this: “ ”). • Another noteworthy aspect of the • One is Øgen, which has a [gen] feature and in whose specifier we find possessors. • The possessor is a DP in the specifier of • Another is Øindef, which is a nonsingular indefinite article, in whose complement we find plurals and mass nouns. possessor phrase is its recursive property. DP. That means that the DP possessor could have a possessor too… 1) The student’s father’s book [Øindef Milk] spilled. [Øindef People] cried. • 2) The student’s mother’s brother’s roommate Mass vs. count: Some nouns indicate countable things (chairs) others indicate stuff (milk). Singular/plural distinctions don’t apply with mass nouns. Recursion Proper names • As for proper names like Pat, we will assume that they have a structure something like students. 1) The Pat we respect came to the party. 2) O Giorgos ephuge the George left ‘George left.’ Number agreement on D • What is wrong with *[ students] and *[DP student]? It’s a lack of agreement in number. It’s like *Students eats lunch. DP A • We can encode this in the same way: The indefinite determiner has a [u":] feature, and the N has "-features as always (including a num feature). • The [u":] feature is valued and checked by the "-features of the N. • Øproper (names are not indefinite; this is probably mostly the same as the, but silent). • Implementation: Øproper has a [uproper] feature, Pat has a [proper] feature. • Number agreement This means a and Øindef are in fact pronunciations of the same D (Like me and I are). • • A(n) is the pronunciation when it has a [u":sg] feature Ø is the pronunciation otherwise [DP Øindef students]!! ! ! ! ! [DP a student]