Syntax Lecture Note A Word About Interpretation

A word about interpretation Syntax I  Let’s think for a moment about what a wh-question means:  Who did Pat meet? [CP [DP who]i Ij+C [IP Pat meet ti]]  Something like (a ‘logical form’): Tell me an x such that Pat met x is true. Pronouncing & interpreting  There are two things we need to do with the lexical items we assemble on the workbench:   Our model of grammar  Pronounce the sentence Interpret the sentence Here again is the little picture of our model of grammar. The structure we end up with is used both to express the logical relations between participants and to pronounce the structure.  (And of course it has to be that way, since how a sentence sounds is tied to what it means). pronounce  We’ve mainly been concentrating on the pronunciation part (getting the words into the order we hear them), but the structure is also assumed to be the basis for interpreting the sentence as well. Lexicon Workbench   Who did Pat meet? [CP [DP who]i Ij+C [IP Pat meet ti]] Tell me a (person) x such that Pat met x. If we need to get to a logical structure like Tell me a (person) x such that Pat met x is true, then it may well be that this is what wh-movement is for. The (original case-checked) trace serves as the x variable, the moved wh-phrase sets the domain. Suppose that moving a wh-phrase (leaving a case-checked trace) is necessary for interpretation as a wh-question. interpret Wh-movement and interpretation A word about interpretation  Merge, Adjoin, Copy/Move      Who bought what? Tell me a (person) x and tell me a (thing) y such that x bought y. Who gave what to whom? Tell me a (person) x and tell me a (thing) y and tell me a (person) z such that x gave y to z. How do we interpret those other wh-words? 1 The wh-typology  What did Bill give to whom? Japanese: No wh-words move to the front.    English: One wh-phrase moves to the front.   The wh-typology  Taroo-ga dare-ni nani-o ageta no? T-nom who-to what-acc gave Q ‘What did Taroo give to whom?’  Bulgarian: All wh-words move to the front.  Kakvo na kogo Ivan dade? what to whom Ivan gave ‘What did Ivan give to whom?’ Yet in all of these languages, the meaning of What did Bill give to whom? is the same… Tell me a (thing) x and tell me a (person) y such that Bill gave x to y. So, if the ‘tell me an x…such that…x…’ meaning arises from wh-movement (and, in fact, we can see the wh-movement in Bulgarian), it stands to reason that even in English and Japanese there is wh-movement for each wh-word—we just can’t always hear it. ¿Qué? Derivations  Wh-movement… that you can’t hear…  The next topic (quantifiers) will give us pretty good evidence that there is such a thing as “movement you can’t hear.” Adopting it here allows for a uniform view of meaning and structure across languages, even in the face of the (superficial) differences in whmovement behavior. So, let’s provisionally accept it and see where it leads.  move first wh-word Derivations  move second wh-word move second wh-word LF Spellout The last step, prior to interpretation, goes by the name LF (stands for “Logical Form”). At the LF structure, all of the movements have been accomplished and its ready to be interpreted. move first wh-word The structures are built in steps, Merging things together, Adjoining things to other things, “Moving” (copying and Merging) things from within things. Some things happen before other things. LF  On this view, languages can differ on which step of the derivation they focus on for interpretation. The point in the derivation that a language focuses on is the point of Spellout. move first wh-word move second wh-word LF 2 Spellout    Spellout Bulgarian: All wh-words move to the front.  Japanese: No wh-words move to the front. Kakvo na kogo Ivan dade? what to whom Ivan gave ‘What did Ivan give to whom?’  So, in Bulgarian, Spellout is relatively late.  And, in Japanese, Spellout is relatively early. Bulgarian move first wh-word move second wh-word LF move first wh-word   What did Pat give to whom? And, in English, Spellout is sort of in-between. Japanese move first wh-word  Bulgarian move second wh-word Pick the x, pick the y, such that Ivan gave x to y.  We see the wh-phrases moving in Bulgarian. But we know from the meaning that all of these movements have to happen in all languages. LF    We conclude then that languages differ not in whether they move all of the whwords to the front of the sentence—they all do—but rather in when they move them there (relative to Spellout). Bulgarian: All before Spellout. Japanese: All after Spellout. English: One before Spellout, the rest after Spellout. Kakvo na kogo Ivan dade? what to whom Ivan gave ‘What did Ivan give to whom?’  The wh-typology  LF Thought of this way, Bulgarian shows all of its wh-movement. Bulgarian: All wh-words move to the front.  English move second wh-word The wh-typology English: Just one wh-word moves to the front.  Bulgarian Japanese Spellout  Taroo-ga dare-ni nani-o ageta no? T-nom who-to what-acc gave Q ‘What did Taroo give to whom?’ The wh-typology  A common terminology for this is “overt” and “covert” movement:  Bulgarian: All wh-movement is overt. Japanese: All wh-movement is covert. English: One wh-phrase moves overtly, the rest move covertly.   3 Derivations      This allows us a fairly uniform view of languages. Across languages, the underlying structure is basically the same (theta requirements, functional projections). Across languages, the LF is basically the same (meanings, scope, etc.). This means that across languages, the movements that happen between DS and LF are basically the same. What differs is the timing of Spellout—whether the movements happen before or after Spellout. Selection and scope   Something of an aside: There are many verbs that can take CP complements. Some can take only declaratives (regret, depend on)    Some can take only questions… (wonder, ask)    We can think of this in terms of complement features of the V (the verb “selects” for certain kinds of complements).   Regret has a [-Q] complement feature. Wonder has a [+Q] complement feature  Know has neither.    Scope  A wh-word can only take scope at a [+WH] clause, and at least one wh-word must take scope at each [+WH] clause.  *I regret [CP whoi C [IP ti left ]]  [CP whoi ti said [CP whatj Pat bought tj]]   LF: [CP whoi what j ti said [CP tj’ Pat bought t j]] When we move a wh-word into SpecCP, we say that it “takes scope” at that clause. What this means is that its domain of influence (its c-command domain) is limited to that CP. I know what Pat said she bought. I know [CP whati C [IP Pat said [CP t’i C [IP she bought ti]]]] Pair-list readings  When you have two wh-words that take the same scope, you generally have an interpretation of a “list of pairs”:   I know [CP whoi ti bought what ] LF: I know [CP whoi whatj [IP ti bought tj]]  Whoi ti knows [CP whatj Pat bought tj] [CP whoi ti said [CP Pat bought what]]  I know who left. I know that Pat left. Scope   I wonder who left. *I wonder that Pat left. Many can take either… (guess, know, hear, say) Selection  *I regret who left. I regret that Pat left. *Whatj do you wonder [CP tj’ Pat bought tj] 4 Superiority  Who did Bill persuade to buy what?    (Bill persuaded Mary to buy a book, he persuaded Larry to buy a coffee table, he persuaded Sue to buy a futon, …) Pick the x, pick the y, such that Bill persuaded x to buy y. So both wh-words (who and what) take scope at the matrix clause SpecCP. Superiority    Who did Bill persuade to buy what? *What did Bill persuade who to buy? It seems that we can’t just choose just any wh-word to move to SpecCP—one works, one doesn’t. What’s the difference between the two? Superiority Superiority   Superiority: The shortest wh-movements have to happen first. (Wh-movement isn’t possible if there was a shorter one).  Whoi did Bill persuade ti to buy what?  *Whati did Bill persuade who to buy ti ? There is often also a strict ordering for languages where all wh-words move to the front. We take this to also be due to Superiority:    cine ce a vazut who whom has seen ‘Who saw whom?’ *ce cine a vazut whom who has seen ‘Whom did who see?’ The higher wh-word has to move first (by Superiority) and shows up first. Where have all the wh-words gone?  This brings up an interesting question which we haven’t addressed yet—if all of the wh-words are moving (in all languages, some overtly like in Bulgarian and Romanian), where are they going?  English moves its one wh-word to SpecCP. There is only one SpecCP. Are the other wh-words not moving to SpecCP?   Romanian Where have all the wh-words gone?  Following an influential proposal by Rudin (1988), many people assume that the other wh-phrases move up and adjoin to the wh-phrase already in the specifier. CP CP C′ DP 1 who C DP 1 … DP 2 what DP 1 who DP 2 what C′ C 5 Where have all the wh-words gone?  Subjacency revisited  This way, there is still one specifier of SpecCP, but the whwords are still all in the specifier of SpecCP, attached to one another. (Note: right-adjoined, cf. Bulgarian)  (Bill does—he knows all about things bought and places those things were bought from).  (Bill knows where we bought the coffee table, Mary knows where we bought the futon, …)  (Things are actually more complicated than this, but this is a good approximation of how one class of languages works—cf. Syntax II!)  CP CP C′ DP 1 who C DP 1 … DP 2 what DP 1 who DP 2 what C′     The second reading presents a problem. Both who and what are paired up together in the main clause’s SpecCP. What’s the problem? C Subjacency revisited  Who knows where we bought what? The same as the problem with ??Whati does Bill know where we bought ti ? Moving what here to the matrix SpecCP violates Subjacency, so the sentence sounds somewhat off. Yet: Who knows where we bought what? …sounds fine, even on the “list” reading. Subjacency revisited  What’s different? Why is the reading with what associated with (moved to) the matrix SpecCP allowed in one case and not the other?  ??Whati does Bill know where we bought ti ? Who knows where we bought what?  Subjacency revisited  These sentences would suggest that covert whmovement is not sensitive to wh-islands. A very widely adopted assumption about Subjacency is made to explain this:  Subjacency only holds for overt movement.  Because what in Who knows where we bought what? moves covertly, it is no longer subject to Subjacency and can just move directly into the matrix SpecCP. Wh-in-situ languages  Ni xiang-zhidao [shei mai-le sheme]? you wonder who bought what ‘What do you wonder who bought?’  Mary-wa [John-ni nani-o ageta hito]-ni atta no? M-top J-to what-acc gave man-to met Q ‘What did Mary meet [the man who gave t to John]?’  These are sentences which are possible in Chinese, Japanese, but not in English. They have wh-words inside islands. 6 WCO      WCO  There is an interesting property of the kind of operator-variable formation that we can see in wh-movement. Who likes his roommate? Pick the x such that x likes x’s roommate. Whoi [TP ti likes hisi roommate] Notice that it is possible to have a pronoun bound by a wh-word.      WCO     *Whoi does hisi roommate like ti ? Whoi ti likes hisi roommate? The difference lies in the fact that the wh-phrase had to cross over the coindexed pronoun on its way to SpecCP. This appears to be impossible, and we can state this as follows: Weak Crossover (WCO): A coindexed pronoun cannot intervene between an operator and its variable. But now consider this: Who does his roommate like? Can this mean the same thing as Whose roommate likes him? *Whoi does hisi roommate like ti ? How is this different from Whoi ti likes hisi roommate? WCO  We can also see this effect with wh-in-situ:  Who introduced her advisor to whom? Who introduced whom to her advisor?    Which girl told his parents to visit which boy? Which girl told whose parents to visit him? To recap     Derivations go from the underlying (initially Merged) representation in steps up to the LF representation (where the structure is interpreted). Spellout focuses on a particular step in the derivation for pronunciation, differs between languages. All wh-words have moved to their scope position by LF. Wh-movement that occurs beyond the point of Spellout seems to be immune to islands. 7