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Email sent to the class Oct 19 2001 concerning homework 5: (A little bit of irrelevant information edited out) Greetings. Homework #5 has been graded, and the points posted. Since I was unable to incorporate my comments into the key as I did on previous keys, I'm emailing the general comments here. I do suggest you read through this message, since you won't be able to get your actual homework #5s back until just prior to the midterm itself. Also, don't forget to check out the "Questions & Answers" page on the course web site (the one with the blue border where the handouts and keys are) -- people have been asking me good questions, maybe questions you also have are answered there. You may want to read this message after having read through the key, or at the same time as you read through the key. On to the homework comments: Code: On all of the homeworks (at least since #2), I generally wrote more comments than I took off points. Points disappeared when there is either an "X" or a "/" mark -- the "X" means a whole point, the "/" means a half-point. Within each problem, the points are rounded up (so missing a half-point counts as getting the whole problem correct). On the key, I drew out the complex heads which arise from head movement, so for example in 8.1(a), have moves up to T and results in this structure: T
/\\
V T
have [pres]
Unfortunately, the double-line didn't show up on the key (it is there, but you can only see it in the PDF file if you zoom very far in, like 1200%, and you can't see it when you print it out). Concerning complex heads: While I think it's good to know what a complex head looks like, nobody lost points for writing "V+T" instead of drawing out the whole complex head. The same goes for the midterm, the "V+T" notation is fine. Problem 8.1: (Four sentences about peanut butter). Because all four sentences were very similar, if you made an error on one you tended to make the same error systematically on all four. So, the first instance of such an error got a point off, and any additional instances of the same error got a half-point off. Just a reminder: Pronouns are "pure" D's, there is no NP in a pronoun. The official way to draw pronouns and proper names is like this: DP DP
| |
D' D'
| / \
D D NP
we 0 |
N'
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N
Mary
Concerning peanut butter: After some discussion over email, I have opted to accept it if you treated peanutbutter as all one noun. However, what I had in mind was as it was on the key, which was like linguistics book. In that case, peanut is a complement to the head noun, which almost everybody who drew it this way seemed to have noticed. (There were quite a lot of people who just drew triangles for peanut butter, however!) Also, concerning the category of peanut, I called it an Adj in this context, but it could as easily be a N (that is an NP complement of the N butter). It's hard to make a clear argument either way. There were a number of people who did not draw the auxiliaries in the official way, either putting the auxiliary in T at DS or using a single VP with two heads to house both the auxiliary and main verb. The textbook will often draw the auxiliaries (be, have) as if they are base-generated in T. We, however, believe that the auxiliaries head their own VP. The DS of John has eaten lunch should look like this (I'm not drawing John or lunch out all the way): TP
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T'
/ \
T VP <== this is the VP headed by have
[pres] |
V'
/ \
V VP <== notice in particular that this is a new
have / \ VP. This is the VP headed by eaten.
DP V'
John / \
V DP
eaten lunch
Although you didn't need to draw the DS with the subject inside the VP, it was fine if you did -- and you should draw them there on the midterm. Also, notice that the subject is inside the VP for eaten above -- eaten assigns the external (Agent) theta-role to the DP John so it has to be in the same VP as eaten. The subject is not in the specifier of the VP headed by the auxiliary. Part (b): I do not love peanut butter: There is an error on the key: The T node should contain "[pres]" (-s) not "[past]". I accidentally drew the tree for I did not love peanut butter. Similarly, in part (c) I wrote "-ed" as the realization of "[pres]" but it should of course be "-0" if it is anything. A number of people drew negation like this: ...
* NegP
/ \
Neg VP
not ...
which is not a valid X-bar structure: You need a Neg' node for this to be a valid X-bar structure. Also, in the textbook, not was treated as the head of NegP, but in class the official version has not in the specifier of NegP, which looks like this: ...
NegP
/ \
not Neg'
/ \
Neg VP
0 ...
No points were taken off if you drew not as the head of NegP (which most people actually did). However, if you drew an invalid X-bar structure, then I took off a point. Part (c): Have you always hated peanut butter?: The verb hated here is not actually past tense; consider it with the verb eat and it will be clearer (Have you always eaten peanut butter?). It is the perfect participle, which we draw as in the tree above for John has eaten lunch. Same goes for had in problem 8.2(c-d). Concerning the extra credit VP deletion problem. The problem asked about the sentence John does not like football, but Bill does, and a number of people who did this problem observed that the T node in both subsentences contains do and concluded that for VP deletion to work, the two T nodes had to match. However, that's not actually the case -- VP deletion requires that the VP matches between the prior sentence and the sentence from which you delete the VP, but the T nodes need not match. So, consider: John has not taken the test, but he will. John likes football, but Bill does not. John will take the test, but Bill refuses to. In each of these cases, we successfully delete the VP in the second sentence (under the condition that it is just like the VP in the first sentence), but the T node holds different material in the two sentences. If the VP had an auxiliary which moved to T before the VP was deleted, then the auxiliary survives. If the VP had a main verb which does not move to T, then the tense/agreement affix in T will be "stranded" when the VP is deleted and so (just like in the case "Mary did not eat lunch") do needs to be inserted to save the stranded affix. This part is outlined in the key as well. Those are the main comments I wanted to pass along about the homeworks, many of which you will find are replicated in purple ink on your own homeworks when you get them back. I had one more thing which I wanted to clarify, although this goes a little bit beyond what we did in class and should not be crucial in order to successfully take the midterm. It concerns what counts as being "skipped over" for the Head Movement Constraint. What the HMC says is that you cannot use head-movement to move a head over another head that it could possibly have moved to. So, in this structure: CP
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C'
/ \
C TP
/ \
DP T'
Bill / \
T VP
will /\
t V' <== "t" is the trace of the DP "Bill"
|
V
leave
...you cannot move V directly to C (skipping T) because T is a head which is inbetween. However, you can move T to C, despite the fact that it is moving over Bill. The simplest way to think about this is just that specifiers (and adjuncts) do not block head movement. The reason you can skip over specifiers is that you can only move to a position which c-commands the original position. C c-commands T, so T can move to C; T c-commands V , so V can move to T. There is no head between C and T which c-commands T, meaning that there is no closer position to which the head T could move. To state the HMC more explicitly than we had before, you would say: HMC: For two heads, X and Y, where X c-commands Y,
you can only move Y to X if there is no third head Z
such that X c-commands Z and Z c-commands Y.
That's complicated, but if you look at the tree, you can see this will prohibit V from moving to C (there is a head, namely T, which c-commands V and which is c-commanded by C), but it will allow T to move to C (there is no head which C c-commands that also c-commands T). That's all I have for now. Thanks for taking the time to read through this message, and I hope that you will find it helpful. If there is something which is still confusing you, please don't hesitate to email me about it and I will try to answer as soon as possible, and again let me point out that I've been trying to stay up-to-date with the questions and answers I have already dealt with over email on the course web page, so that you can benefit from the questions other people have asked as well.
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