Syntax I

I’ve been asked if I can clarify just a bit the “hint” of the previous post. So, as indicated, aus Frankreich isn’t a complement of the noun Frau, but is rather an adjunct—pretty much the only thing that would be a complement of a noun would be a von ‘of’ PP. So, for the same reasons that you can say A can of beer on the table but not *A can on the table of beer, you’d expect to be able to say die noun von X auf Y, but not *die noun auf Y von X.

When thinking about adjuncts to NPs, adjectives are generally adjoined on the left, as in:

      NP
     /  \
  AdjP   NP
 tasty   bagel

…and PPs are generally adjoined on the right…

      NP
     /  \
   NP    PP
 bagel  /  \
       P    DP
    from   /  \
          D    NP
      ∅proper  Montréal

So, if you think about how you might do tasty bagel from Montréal, it’ll be quite parallel to the German example.

It also might be useful to consider that it might either be a bagel from Montréal that is tasty, or a tasty bagel that is from Montréal. They’re subtly different—either you’re considering bagels from Montréal and saying this is a tasty one, or you’re considering tasty bagels and saying that this one is from Montréal.

Here ends the hint clarification, for the moment.

On the homework, a couple of notes. First, problem 2 seems to be riddled with typos. Of course, liebte should be how the verb is spelled in both (f) and (h), Prinzessin should always appear with both ns, etc. Sorry about that.

Second, just what is being asked for? First, do not fail to read the two statements under the heading Assume the following things. Your answers to the questions in problem 2 can’t contradict those things.

Question 1 asks you to describe and explain the process, but skip that momentarily and jump straight to the bolded question: What English phenomenon is this similar to? We talked about it in class. The answer to this question is the title of at least one of the slides. So, identify the phenomenon in English that is like what we’re seeing in German first, and then it should be relatively straightforward to say what is going on (that is, to “describe and explain the process”).

Question 2 about the different structures. People are finding this to be a little bit tricky. The two different structures are really not very different at all. I’ll give you a hint about this here: Think about building up the DP Die schlanke Frau aus Frankreich. You have a PP, aus Frankreich, a noun Frau, and an adjective schlanke, all of which you combine first, before merging the resulting NP with the D Die to get a DP. Frau doesn’t itself have any strong features to check. Moreover, aus Frankreich can’t be a complement of Frau—it simply wouldn’t mean the right thing. Pretty much the only kinds of PP that can be an N-complement are those PPs that have of (or von) as the head. So, Frau is “complete”, it is “happy”, it has no strong uninterpretable features to check—it is an NP. So you have to attach both the adjective schlanke and the PP aus Frankreich to the NP, and you can’t use Merge to do it because there are no strong uninterpretable features to check. If you think about this from the bottom up (”First, I have Frau, which is an NP. Then, I take…”), it might become fairly evident at which point you have to make a choice that could have as easily been made the other way. And it would result in structures that each interact with the phenomenon discussed in Question 1 in a slightly different way.

Ok, enough hinting for now.

Just a couple more notes about the previous homework. Some of you might have the word “linearization” written on your homework. If you see that, it means that one or more of your trees were drawn in such a way that the words wouldn’t be in the right order if you pronounce the structure as it was drawn. Remember, whenever a node has two daughter nodes, you draw the one that is pronounced first to the left of the one that is pronounced second.

A trickier point, that was brought to my attention earlier today, concerns the interaction of case and the “floating quantifier” all. Let me say at the outset here, there is—to my knowledge—no fully satisfying account of floating quantifiers. Some things you get for free, some things you have to stipulate. (Also, I’ll call all a D, rather than an N, since that’s what we’re considering it to be now).

The analysis that the book/handouts promotes is one in which all is a D that is unusual in that it takes a DP complement. So, it has the features [D] (because it is a D) and [uD*] (because it takes a DP complement). Here’s the sticky point: We also believe now that each and every D has a [ucase: ] feature that must be valued and checked. So, since they all is a DP with a DP inside, two different things need case checked. At this point, there are two routes we could take. One is to assume that the [ucase:nom] feature of T can check them both (given that neither of they all and all is closer to T than the other). The other is to assume that all (and both) is special not only in that it is a D with a [uD*] feature, but that it is a D without a [ucase: ] feature. It’s a tough call which is better. Out in the wider world of syntax, it is standardly assumed that there is a one-to-one relationship between case checkers and DPs (that is, the case checkers—T, v, P, etc.—each only ever value and check case on a single DP), which might sway us toward Route 2. At this point, we don’t derive this directly, although it will almost always turn out be one-to-one anyway. On the other hand, it is not clear that any harm will come to us if we take Route 1. In our system, already-checked features can check still-to-be-checked features (see recent blog note about this), and Route 1 allows us to keep the generalization that all Ds need case (that is, have a [ucase: ] feature) without exceptions.

I think I’ll leave it without a definitive resolution, but with maybe a hint of a preference for Route 1 in the context of this class. Until/unless there is a stated policy about which is the approach to use in this class, either one is fine. If you can at least see the issues involved here, that’s probably the important thing.

One thing I want to remind you of, even if it is perhaps a bit late in the day: Proper names are now DPs. Anything that can get a θ-role is a DP. But the name part itself is actually just an NP—see the handout and/or p. 260 in the Adger textbook.

The practical upshot of this is that pretty much any time you have occasion to draw a proper name, it will now have a structure like these:

       DP                DP                       DP
      /  \              /  \                     /  \
    D      NP          D     NP                D      NP
 ∅proper   Pat      ∅proper  New Jersey      ∅proper   Qdoba

As you think about the structure of a can of beer, you might also think about the following facts (at least facts about my own judgments):

(1)  I left a can of beer on the table near the phone.
(2)  I left a can of beer near the phone on the table.
(3) *I left a can on the table of beer near the phone.
(4) *I left a can near the phone of beer on the table.
(5) *I left a can on the table near the phone of beer.
(6) *I left a can near the phone on the table of beer.

And this might remind you-all of poetry.
And it matters when drawing, you know, a tree.

Ok, bad poetry, maybe.

I observe that there is an inconsistency between what Adger says on p. 262 and what I said in the recent blog entry about how the interpretable φ-features of an N can be used twice (once to check the uninterpretable φ-features on a D, and again to check the uninterpretable φ-features on T).

Adger suggests that the φ-features of N value and check the [uφ: ] feature of D, and then that checked feature of D values the [uφ: ] feature of T.

Adger’s claim is a little bit non-standard in the broader world of minimalist syntax, which is why I didn’t initially follow it. But here’s why he said that, and upon reflection, why I think we need to adopt Adger’s view of this. (With respect to the trees you’ve drawn so far, even on this homework, it isn’t going to make them look any different.)

We have already implicitly adopted the view that a checked uninterpretable feature can value another unchecked uninterpretable feature. The place we did that is in the mechanism for subject agreement. The way subject agreement works is that T has a [uφ: ] feature, and when T is merged, it sees the φ-features of the subject and is valued and thereby checked. But the second step is that this now-valued-and-checked [uφ:3sg] (for example) feature of T then turns around and (along with the interpretable [tense] feature on T) values the next [uInfl: ] feature down. So, we already do have a case where an already-checked feature checks another feature.

Given that, Adger’s approach on p. 262 is the most consistent way to think about how the [uφ: ] feature of T is valued. The φ-features of the N are not in fact used twice, they are used once to value and check the [uφ: ] feature of D, and the checked [uφ:…] feature of D then values and checks the [uφ: ] feature of T.

There was a miscommunication with the grader about how to treat the all in the problem in homework 6 where you needed to draw a structure for the sentence with they all in it. You may have gotten notes written on your homework that contradict what we’ve done in class and on the handouts (and in the book). The way we were treating it then, all is a N that takes an NP complement (so, it has the features [N, uN*] among others), not an adjunct. Now, we’d treat it as a D that takes a DP complement (see p. 263 in the book).

I’ve been assured that this by itself didn’t move anyone’s homework score up or down a level, but I’ll still look over that part of your homework if you’d like, just bring it with you to class.

In the textbook (e.g., p. 261), Adger suggests a feature [unum: ] goes on Ds, which is how we ensure that the determiner agrees in number with the noun it takes as a complement.

In class (and earlier on the blog), I’ve been using [uφ: ] to accomplish essentially the same thing. Since number is one of the features included in the φ-features (person, number, gender), the use of [uφ: ] is more general (and, indeed, doesn’t refer to anything new).

The prediction I make (again, recall the light box) is that it would at least be possible for gender or person to make a difference in how a determiner is pronounced—at least in some languages. And, in fact, in Romance languages (for example), gender and number do both play a role in determining the pronunciation of the determiners.

So, use [uφ: ] and when you read the textbook and see Adger writing [unum: ], think “[uφ: ]” to yourself.

As for where [uφ: ] goes, the answer is essentially: on every D except pronouns. On any D that takes an NP complement, it will agree in φ-features, even you don’t see/hear it reflected in the pronunciation.

Just to clarify, since I’ve talked to a couple of people so far that have had some (perhaps momentary) confusion on terminology: Agreement features (person, number, gender) are often referred to as φ-features—that is, “phi features.” The role a DP plays in an event is determined by the θ-role it gets (that is, “theta role”). And ∅ represents something silent, which we will often call “null” or “zero”.

Just to be clear, even though each of these (∅, φ, θ) is drawn as a circle with a line through it, they have distinct names (null, phi, theta) and meanings, and you want to keep clear which one is which.

Don’t forget that there are 7180 minutes between this past Thursday’s class and this coming Tuesday’s class, rather than the usual 7120 minutes. You may feel free to take a break from the homework for an hour starting just after 12:59am tonight, because you’ll get a second chance at that hour immediately after it’s over.