LIN 434 Study Guide

1 Things you need to know for the exam

1. syntactic categories 2. tests for constituents and how to apply them to data 3. basic principles of Merge and selectional feature checking 4. thematic roles and how they relate to vP/VP structure For the rst two items, you should refer to the notes posted on Angel. The following notes supplement the material in Adger, and cover some things that we have done in class.

Semantic Categories

First, lets construct a small theory of meaning (semantics), i.e. a theory of our conceptualization of the world (either the real world or an imagined world). All of the categories in our theory of meaning will be semantic and not syntactic. 2.1 Semantics

Lets assume that the conceptual world contains the following types of things: Semantic Category EVENTS STATES ENTITIES LOCATIONS TIMES MANNERS PROPOSITIONS QUESTIONS Rough description actions; usually have starting and/or ending points hold over time; dont have clear beginning or ending points a person, place, thing or idea answers the question where answers the question when answers the question how an event situated in time and space; something that could be true or false a question

Now lets dene some further ways of describing ENTITIES with respect to the EVENTS that they participate in. These are called semantic roles or thematic roles.

Thematic Role Agent Cause Experiencer Patient or Theme Goal Source Instrument

Rough description entity which intentionally initiates the action entity which causes the action entity which experiences some psychological state from the action entity directly aected by the action entity at which the theme ends up entity that the theme comes from entity which is used to perform the action

Thematic Roles and Syntactic Structure

Thematic roles (-roles) are all assigned within the v P and VP structure Thematic role assignment obeys UTAH (Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis) i. Agent/Cause is only assigned in [Spec, v P ] ii. Theme is assigned as immediate daughter of VP iii. Goal is assigned as immediate daughter of V .

Examples Sentences vP 1. The glass broke. 2. John arrived. 3. The tree fell. v P Tree

v v V break arrive fall

VP DP the glass John the tree

Sentences vP 1. John laughed. 2. The man ate. 3. The people voted. DP John the man the people v v VP

v P Tree

V laugh eat vote vP

1. John broke the glass. 2. The man ate an apple. 3. The people elected Obama.

DP John the man the people v

VP V break eat elect DP the glass an apple Obama

vP

1. The book fell to the oor. 2. The package went to New York. 3. The rain poured into the barrel.

VP

DP the book the package the rain V fall go pour

PP to the oor to New York into the barrel

Sentences
vP

v P Tree

1. The man pushed the book onto the oor. 2. John sent the package to New York. 3. The waiter poured wine into the glass.

DP the man John the waiter

v v V push send pour v DP the book the package wine V push send pour PP onto the oor to New York into the glass V VP

C-command and constraints on reexives and NPIs

(1) C-command X c-commands Y i i. Y merged with X or ii. Y is contained in a phrase that merged with X

4.1

Reexives

(2) Reexive Pronoun generalization A reexive pronoun must be c-commanded by its antecedent. Examples (3) a. b. c. d. e. Johni likes himselfi * Johni s brother likes himselfi [Johns brother]i likes himselfi * The brother of Johni likes himselfi [The brother of John]i likes himselfi John c-commands John doesnt c-command Johns brother c-commands John doesnt c-command the brother of John c-commands himself himself himself himself himself

4.2

Negative Polarity Items

(4) Constraint on NPI licensing A Negative Polarity Item (NPI) must be c-commanded by a negative element.

Examples (5) a. b. c. d. e. Nobody saw anybody. John did not see anything. * Anybody did not leave. John left without anyone seeing him. * A man without at a hat saw anything. nobody c-commands anybody not c-commands anything not does not c-command anybody without c-commands anyone without doesnt c-command anyone

The structure of the Double Object Construction

The structure of double object constructions such as John gave Mary a book is a real problem for for UTAH. (6) a. John gave Mary a book. b. John sent Mary a package.

The UTAH problem is the following. If we assume that the Goal argument is always complement of V, then the tree should be something like the following: (7) DP John v V V give DP Mary VP DP a book vP v

Unfortunately, c-command relations dont seem to support this analysis, since it looks like the Goal ccommands the theme in these cases, and not vice versa. (8) a. b. c. d. John John * John * John gave nobody anything. showed Mary herself gave anybody nothing. showed herself Mary nobody c-commands anybody Mary c-commands herself

But if we take the c-command data seriously, then the structure should be the following (which violates UTAH.)

(9) DP John

vP v v DP Mary V give VP V DP a book

Now if we believe what the c-command facts tell us about the structure, and we believe UTAH, what is our way out? The answer is to say that the Goal in the double object construction is actually a dierent theta role which we might call Possessor-Goal, and that this role is introduced by a new functional head. Borrowing from work on African languages (which provide overt morphological evidence for this sort of head), this head is usually called an Applicative head. Perhaps then, the structure is the following: (10) DP John v DP Mary Appl V give VP DP a book ApplP Appl vP v

Now, before we sco at this and say were just inventing structure to make the data work out right, there is some data that points to the prepositional Goal forms of these verbs as being dierent from the hypothesized Possessor-Goal forms. Consider the following contrasts: (11) a. b. c. d. John John John * John sent sent sent sent a package to Mary. a package to New York. Mary a package. New York a package.

In (11a/b) the prepositional goal is ne whether or not it could be a possessor of the package or not, but in the double object construction, only a possessor goal is possible, which is why 11d) is ungrammatical. The next set of data is a bit more complicated, since we havent talked much about idioms in class. An idiom is a syntactic phrase that has a completely non-compositional meaning (i.e. you cant really gure out the meaning of the phrase by looking at the meaning of the parts.) A classic example from English

would be the phrase kick the bucket which means die, or The shit hit the fan. (which means the situation went from bad to worse). (12) a. b. John gave Mary shit/hell/grief Idiomatic or literal meaning * John gave shit/hell/grief to Mary.

Only literal meaning (or simply *)

If we assume that an idiom must be a constituent, then we have an explanation why only the double object version of (12) can have an idiomatic meaning. If the structure is as in (10) then give shit is a VP, whereas in the prepositional dative, (the tree we have used in class) give shit is not a constituent. We can also apply this analysis directly to verbs like receive : Since receive is a possessional goal, its basic structure will be as in (13) below: (13) v DP Mary Appl V receive VP DP a package vP ApplP Appl

This correctly predicts that sentences such as *New York received a package should be ungrammatical, which they are.