University:
Boston University
Course:
CAS LX 790 | Intermediate Topics in Linguistics
Academic year:

2020
Views:

153

Pages:

8
Author:

larbiwxcvbn

• Syntax I • Typology of verb/aux raising Interestingly, there don’t seem to be languages that raise main verbs but not auxiliaries. • This double-binary distinction predicts there would be. • It overgenerates a smidge. This is a pattern that we would like to explain someday, another mystery about Aux to file away. • Sorry, we won’t have any satisfying explanation for this gap this semester. Irish • • • We may also be able to distinguish other languages (OVS, VOS) by a parameter of specifier order. • But no combination of these two parameters can give us VSO. SVO to VSO • Irish appears to be essentially an SVO language, like French. • • Verbs and auxiliaries raise past the subject to yield VSO. • We can analyze the Irish pattern as being minimally different from our existing analysis of French— just one difference, which we hypothesize is another parametric difference between languages. V and Aux both raise to T (when tense values the [uInfl:] feature of either one, [uInfl:] is strong) in Irish, just as in French. English Strong Weak French Strong Strong Swedish Weak Weak Unattested Weak Strong But look at auxiliary verbs in Irish: 1) Tá Máire ag-pógáil an lucharachán. is Mary ing-kiss the leprechaun ‘Mary is kissing the leprechaun.’ 1) Phóg Máire an lucharachán. kissed Mary the leprechaun ‘Mary kissed the leprechaun.’ We distinguish SVO from SOV by supposing that the headcomplement order can vary from language to language (heads precede complements in English, heads follow complements in Japanese). T values [uInfl:] on v Irish In Irish, the basic word order is VSO (other languages have this property too, e.g., Arabic) • T values [uInfl:] on Aux • We find that if an auxiliary occupies the verb slot at the beginning of the sentence, the main verb appears between the subject and verb: Aux S V O. • What does this suggest about • • The head-parameter setting in Irish? How VSO order arises? French vs. Irish • Remember this step in the French derivation before? (I’ve omitted negation to make it simpler.) • What if we stopped here? • • • In French it would crash (why?). But what if it didn’t crash in Irish? T![tense:pres, T, uN*, . . . ] What would have to be different? T v vP T V v aime [uInfl:pres*] NP v! Zinédine VP NP Marco Parametric differences • We could analyze Irish as being just like French except without the strong [uN*] feature on T. • • • Without that feature, the subject doesn’t need to move to SpecTP. The order would be VSO, or AuxSVO. So, languages can vary in, at least: • • • • • do-support • In French, verbs move to T. In English, they don’t move to T. • • Head-complement order That’s because in French, when [tense:past] values [uInfl:] on v, it is strong, and in English, it is weak. What this doesn’t explain is why do appears sometimes in English, seemingly doing nothing but carrying the tense (and subject agreement). • (Head-specifier order) Whether [uInfl:] on Aux is strong or weak when valued by T Whether [uInfl:] on v is strong or weak when valued by T Whether T has a [uN*] feature or not. (Later, when we look at German, we’ll suggest a different analysis of Irish, but this will work for now.) do-support The environments are complicated: 1) Tom did not commit the crime. 2) Tom did not commit the crime, but someone did. 3) Zoe and Danny vowed to prove Tom innocent, and prove Tom innocent they did. 4) Tom (has) never committed that crime. • When not separates T and v, do appears in T to carry the tense morphology. • When T is stranded due to VP ellipsis or VP fronting, do appears in T to carry the tense morphology. • When never (or any adverb) separates T and v, tense morphology appears on the verb (v). • So, do appears when T is separated from the verb, but adverbs like never aren’t “visible”, they aren’t in the way. • Technical difficulties How do we generally know to pronounce V+v as a past tense verb? • T values the [uInfl:] feature of v. The presumption is that eat +v[uInfl:past] sounds like “ate.” And T doesn’t sound like anything. • But this happens whether or not v is right next to T. v still has a [uInfl:] feature that has to be checked. • • Technical difficulties • The connection between T and v is that (when there are no auxiliaries), T values the [uInfl:] feature of v. • This sets up a relationship between the two heads. • The environments are complicated: 1) Tom did not commit the crime. 2) Tom did not commit the crime, but someone did. 3) Zoe and Danny vowed to prove Tom innocent, and prove Tom innocent they did. 4) Tom (has) never committed that crime. So, the questions are, how do we: • Keep from pronouncing the verb based on v’s [uInfl:] feature if T isn’t right next to it? • Keep from pronouncing do at T if v is right next to it? We need to connect T and v somehow. Technical difficulties • Let’s be creative: Suppose that the tense features on v (the value of the [uInfl:] feature) “refer back” to the tense features on T. • We want to ensure that tense features are pronounced in exactly one place in this chain. Agree can see relatively far (so T can value the [uInfl:] feature of v, even if it has to look past negation). • • But “referring back” is more limited, basically only available to features that are sisters. Negation will get in the way for this. • So if you try to pronounce tense on v but T is too far away, the back-reference fails, and v is pronounced as a bare verb. But the tense features have to be pronounced somewhere, so they’re pronounced on T (as do). • Adger calls this relationship a chain. If the ends of the chain are not close enough together, tense is pronounced on T (as do). If they are close enough together, tense is pronounced on v+V. PTR • • Adger’s proposal: • TP NP Pat NegP, if there, will be the sister of T (HoP), but Neg has no [uInfl:] feature. do will be inserted. • Adverbs adjoin to vP, resulting in a vP. v has a [uInfl:] valued by T and adverbs don’t get in the way of vP being the sister of T. Tense is pronounced on the verb (v). T [tense:past] v NP Pat • If there is an adverb like never, PTR still allows tense to be pronounced on v (so T doesn’t have any pronunciation of its own at all). TP NP Pat T [tense:past] VP V v call [uInfl:past] v NP Chris Historical interlude The subject NP Pat was in the specifier of “IP” (what we call “TP”), and the VP contained only the verb charm and the object NP snakes. Pat got an Agent !-role by being in SpecIP, even though the fact that there is an Agent !-role to be had is determined by the verb down in the VP. vP AdvP vP never < Pat > v! Neg vP not < Pat > v! Back in the days of yore, people hypothesized that Pat will charm snakes had a structure like this. T! T [tense:past] NegP v • NP Chris Pat never called Chris T! did VP V v call [uInfl:past] Do-support comes to the rescue. What this means is just that T is pronounced as do with the tense specifications on T. According to PTR, we don’t pronounce them on v. The tree doesn’t change. • NegP Neg vP not < Pat > v! TP • T! If vP is gone altogether, do is inserted. Pat did not call Chris • So, here, T and v form a chain because [tense:past] valued [uInfl:past]. But v is not the head of T’s sister. Pronouncing Tense Rule (PTR) In a chain (T[tense], v[uInfl:tense]), pronounce the tense features on v only if v is the head of T’s sister. • • Pat did not call Chris V v call [uInfl:past] • IP NP Pat VP V charm • NP snakes The students will all... No big deal, syntax works in strange and mysterious ways. At a certain point, someone started thinking about sentences like these: 1) All the students will take the exam. 2) The students will all take the exam. • NP Chris This predicts the normal word order pretty well, and so it was hypothesized that the verb simply assigned one of its !-roles directly to SpecIP. • I! I will VP It’s fairly clear here that all the students is an NP, that it forms a coherent unit, a coherent concept. All really belongs with the students. IP NP Pat I! I will VP V charm NP snakes Only some quantifiers float Floating quantifiers • 1) All the students will take the exam. 2) The students will all take the exam. • • NP Pat I! I will The Quantifier Float rule would move all over to the right, next to the VP. • 1) 2) 3) 4) IP Back in the even older days, the hypothesis was that there was a special rule that turned the first sentence into the second. VP V charm NP snakes Quantifiers: every, some, all, most, several, many, both, four, … • Upon further reflection, some enterprising syntacticians hit upon the idea that rather than floating all to its position next to VP, all might instead have been “left behind” by a subject that had moved. • • • • will [all [the students]] take the exam. I! I will VP V charm NP snakes • And why would all the students have been down there? Well, that would simplify assignment of !-roles. The VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis • • For us, we’ve supposed from the beginning that assignment of !-roles is necessarily local. This may not seem like a very surprising hypothesis. But it was at the time a rather unintuitive idea, and so various people set out to see if some of the predictions this makes are borne out in the grammatical data. • IP NP Pat VP V charm NP snakes V! V charm NP snakes IP NP Pat I! I will VP V! ti This idea became known as the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis. V charm It turns out that as people looked, there were reasons to believe this. VP ti The verb (head of VP) can assign !-roles to other things within the VP, which is a natural explanation for how the choice of verb controls whether an Agent !-role is assigned or not. NP snakes The VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis • I! I will I will What’s a difference between every, some, several, many, and both, all? • NP Pat [the students]i will [all ti] take the exam. I! The VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis IP [all [the students]]i will ti take the exam. NP Pat 5) The students will both take the exam. 6) The students will all take the exam. Leaving all behind • IP It works for both and all: • all NP … VP " NP … all + VP Every student will take the exam. *Student will every take the exam. Several students will take the exam. *Students will several take the exam. The new analysis of Quantifier Float no longer relies on an idiosyncratic rule of English, but more general principles. • The assignment of !-roles can now be more directly related to the properties of the verb. • And we can make sense of there constructions in a more straightforward way. IP NP Pat I! I will VP V! ti V charm NP snakes Back to the present • The basic components of the quantifier “stranding” phenomenon are: • All the students is a constituent. The students is an NP inside all the students. • • [all [NP the students]] r ifie ill ant is st o as u Q ing ed t to and rr at” h str refe r flo houg r t ge en fie t f o uanti , even lon “q day e no the s thi e nam ects is. th refl nalys a All the students will take... • We start by building our vP. • • • • Merge the NP the exam and the V take (checks [uN*] on V) Merge v and VP (HoP) Move V to v (checks [uV*] on v) Merge the N all and the NP the students (checks [uN*] on all) vP Either all the students or just the students can move to SpecTP, to satisfy the [uN*] feature of T. • NP So all the students and the students are both NPs. • • So all is essentially a noun, but one that takes an NP complement (all: [N, uN*, …]). • NP [NP all [NP the students]] N all We’re assuming here that all is not an adjunct, but in fact a head, taking the NP as a complement. Why? This values [uInfl:] on v as [uInfl:M]. All the students will take... • We Merge the T with MP (HoP) • This values [uInfl:] on M as [uInfl:pres*] (strong). T! MP M will T [tns:pres, uN*] vP NP N all v +V VP take NP the exam We Merge the M will with vP (HoP) • NP the students the students All the students will take... • N all NP v! M will v! NP the students MP vP NP v +V VP take NP N all v! NP the students v +V VP take NP the exam the exam All the students will take... • We move M up to T • All theNow,students will take... there are two possibilities: • a) Move the NP all the students. b) Move the NP the students. This checks the strong [uInfl:pres*] on M. T! M+T will [uN*] T! MP vP NP N all M+T will [uN*] MP v! NP the students vP NP v +V VP take NP the exam N all v! NP the students Is all the students closer to T than the students is? Not if we define “closer” as we did, in terms of ccommand. Where X c-command s Y and Z, Y is closer to X than Z is if Y c-commands Z. v +V VP take NP the exam All the students will take... The students will all take... a) Move the NP all the students. TP b) Move the NP the students. TP NP N all T! NP the students M+T will [uN*] NP MP T! the students M+T will [uN*] vP < NP > MP v! vP NP v +V VP take NP N all v! < NP > v +V VP take NP the exam Expletive constructions the exam Expletive constructions 1) There were fans rioting on Comm Ave. 2) Fans were rioting on Comm Ave. TP • An expletive is an element that can be in subject position without having received a !role from anywhere. • • fans TP T! there T+Prog ProgP be < Prog > v P It had been raining. There were fans rioting on Comm Ave. < NP > V+v riot Now that we’ve gotten some idea of how the system works, let’s back up a bit to remind ourselves a bit about why we’re doing what we’re doing. • People have (unconscious) knowledge of the grammar of their native language (at least). They can judge whether sentences are good examples of the language or not. • Two questions: • • What is it that we know? How is it that we came to know what we know? T+Prog ProgP be < Prog > v P NP fans v! v! V+v riot History The Big Picture • T! Phrase Structure Rules S " NP (Aux) VP NP " (Det) (Adj+) N Aux " (Tns) (Modal) (Perf) (Prog) N " Pat, lunch, … Tns " Past, Present Perf " have -en • VP " V (NP) (PP) PP " P NP P " at, in, to, … Modal " can, should, … Prog " be -ing In trying to model what we know (since it isn’t conscious knowledge) some of the first attempts looked like the phrase structure rules above (Chomsky 1957). • An S can be rewritten as an NP, optionally an Aux, and a VP. An NP can be rewritten as, optionally a determiner, optionally one or more adjectives, and a noun. … • What we know is that an S has an NP, a VP, and sometimes an Aux between them, and that NPs can have a determiner, some number of adjectives, and a noun. Phrase Structure Rules S " NP (Aux) VP NP " (Det) (Adj+) N Aux " (Tns) (Modal) (Perf) (Prog) N " Pat, lunch, … Tns " Past, Present Perf " have -en VP " V (NP) (PP) PP " P NP P " at, in, to, … Modal " can, should, … Prog " be -ing In this way, many sentences can be derived, starting from S. ! The tree-style structure is a way to record the history of the derivation from S to the words in the sentence. ! We model our knowledge of English as a machine that (ideally, when it’s finished) will generate all of the sentences of English and no others. ! S NP Aux VP N Modal V NP Pat might eat N NP Aux N Tns Pat Past Affix Hopping ! ! ! S Aux N Tns Pat Perf VP Prog V NP Past have+-ed be+-en eat+-ing Affix Hopping SD: afx verb SC: verb+afx The affixes all “hop to the right” and attach to the following word. An ancestor to the kinds of movement rules and of course the Agree operation we’ve been talking about. If drawn out as a tree, you may recognize the kind of structures this proposal entails. These are structures based on the “X-bar schema”. • • XP ! YP X" X" ! X" WP X" ! X ZP YP being the “specifier”, WP being an “adjunct”, ZP being the “complement”. Adjuncts were considered to have a slightly different configuration then. Prog have -en be -ing Why is this better? The types of rules are much more constrained. AND it also makes predictions about structure and constituency that turn out to be more accurate. XP YP X ! X! X WP ZP V NP eat N lunch • Through the 60s there were good people working hard, figuring out what kinds of phrase structure rules and transformations are needed for a comprehensive description on English. • As things developed, two things became clear: lunch • Perf ! Empirically, tense, perfect have, and progressive be each control the form of the verbal element to their right. History continues N X-bar theory If you build a sentence this way, things aren’t in the right order, but there’s a simple transformation that can be done to the structure to get it right. VP -ed Phrase Structure Rules S " NP (Aux) VP NP " (Det) (Adj+) N Aux " (Tns) (Modal) (Perf) (Prog) N " Pat, lunch, … Tns " Past, Present Perf " have -en VP " V (NP) (PP) PP " P NP P " at, in, to, … Modal " can, should, … Prog " be -ing ! S lunch NP Affix Hopping Phrase Structure Rules S " NP (Aux) VP NP " (Det) (Adj+) N Aux " (Tns) (Modal) (Perf) (Prog) N " Pat, lunch, … Tns " Past, Present Perf " have -en VP " V (NP) (PP) PP " P NP P " at, in, to, … Modal " can, should, … Prog " be -ing History • • A lot of the PSRs look pretty similar. • There’s no way a kid acquiring language can be learning these rules. GB Around 1981, the view shifted from thinking of the system as constructing all and only structures with PSRs and transformations to a view in which structures and transformations could apply freely, but the grammatical structures were those that satisfied constraints on (various stages of) the representation. ! ! Chomsky (1970) proposed that there actually is only a limited set of phrase structure rule types. ! For any categories X, Y, Z, W, there are only rules like: XP ! YP X" X" ! X" WP X" ! X ZP First, a “deep structure” (DS) tree is built, however you like but Selectional restrictions must be satisfied #-roles must be assigned ! Etc. ! ! ! Then, adjustments are made to get the “surface structure” (SS) Things more or less like Affix Hopping, or moving V to v, or moving the subject to SpecTP. ! Further constraints are verified here: Is there a subject in SpecTP? Etc. ! ! Finally, the result is assigned a pronunciation (PF), and, possibly after some further adjustments, an interpretation (LF). Why is this better? Most of the construction-specific rules were made to follow from more general principles interacting. AND again, it caused us to look for predictions, which were better met. Which brings us to 1993 • • The most recent change in viewpoint was to the system we’re working with now (arising from the Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory). The constraints that applied to the structures in GB were getting to be rather esoteric and numerous, to the extent that it seemed we were missing generalizations. ! ! Features and technology The goal of MPLT was to “start over” in a sense, to try to make the constraints follow from some more natural assumptions that we would need to make anyway. • This new view has the computational system working at a very basic level, forcing structures to obey the constraints of GB by enforcing them locally as we assemble the structure from the bottom up. • Why is this better? It’s a further reduction to even more general principles. The idea is that you need a few things to construct a language-like system—and there’s nothing else. We can think of this initially as the same kind of model as this: f =G • m 1 m2 r2 The Earth and the Moon don’t compute this. But if we write it this way, we can predict where the Moon will be. ! Saying lexical items have uninterpretable features that need to be checked, and hypothesizing mechanisms (matching, valuing) by which they might be checked is similarly a way to formalize the behavior of the computational system underlying language in a way that allows us deeper understanding of the system and what it predicts about language. What the system is designed to do is assemble grammatical structures where possible, given a set of lexical items to start with. ! ! A comment about the technology here: The operations of Merge, Adjoin, Agree, and feature checking, the idea that features can be interpretable or not (or, strong or weak) are all formalizations of an underlying system, used so that we can describe the system precisely enough to understand its predictions about our language knowledge. The “Minimalist Program” Features and the moon • The use of features to drive the system (uninterpretable features force Merge, because if they are not checked, the resulting structure will be itself uninterpretable) is a way to encode the notion that lexical items need other lexical items. • • The analogy with the gravitational force equation isn’t quite accurate, given the underlying philosophy of the MP. ! Suppose that we have a cognitive system for language, which has to interact with at least two other cognitive systems, the conceptual-intensional and the articulatory-perceptual. ! Whatever it produces needs to be interpretable (in the vernacular of) each of these cognitive systems for the representation to be of any use. ! Suppose that the properties of these external systems are your boundary conditions, your specifications. The Minimalist Program in fact is trying to do this: ! The hypothesis of the MPLT is that the computational system underlying language is an optimal solution to those design specifications. So everything is thought of in terms of the creation of interpretable representations.