Syntax I

I didn’t provide much detail on the key for the practice final about the answer to the Glishen problem, and I was asked if I could elaborate. So, I will. To read this elaboration, click on the “(more…)” link below.

So, Glishen is like English except the [uwh] feature of interrogative C is not strong and heads follow complements. That is to say, it is an SOV language, and wh-words don’t move to SpecCP. In effect, this is really just Japanese, or Korean, or Turkish.

So, for What will Pat buy?, we have a wh-word, but because the [uwh] feature of C is not strong, we expect that it will not move to SpecCP. Because heads follow complements in Glishen, we expect the object (what) to appear before the verb. We also have a modal, which will presumably move up to T. But heads are final, so T should be after anything within vP. And we get: Pat what buy will?

             CP
           /    \
         TP    M+T+C
        /  \  will [Q, uwh]
      DP    T′
     Pat   /  \
         MP  <M+T>
        /  \
      vP   <M>
     /  \
   <DP>  v′
        /  \
      VP    V+v
     /  \    buy
   DP    <V>
  what

[Note: I edited the tree above after the original post. T should move up to C in a question, presumably, as in English. I’d left this movement out of the original tree.]

As for Pat wants to give a book to me, there are no wh-words, so it’s really just the head-finality that is relevant. Complements precede heads, and specifiers precede both. There is an embedded clause here, of course, with a PRO and therefore the ∅_NULL C. I’ll draw the tree from TP down:

                    TP
                   /  \
                 DP    T′
                Pat   /  \
                    vP    T
                   /  \
                <DP>   v′
                      /  \
                    VP    V+v
                   /  \   wants
                 CP    <V>
                /  \
              TP    C
             /  \   ∅NULL
           DP    T′
          PRO   /  \
              MP    T
             /  \   [inf]
           vP    M
          /  \   to
       <DP>   v′
            /   \
         VP       V+v
       /    \     give
    DP        V′
   /  \      /  \
 nP    D    PP   <V>
 book  a   /  \
         DP    P
         me    to

Hard to keep track of, but in the end, it comes out as Pat book a me to give to wants.