Syntax I

Ok, the grades have now been submitted to the registrar (and so they should now or relatively soon be visible on the Student Link). I’ve also posted them on the Courseinfo site, in the standard 4.0-based format (4.0 = A; 3.67 = A−; etc.).

I think this pretty much is the end of the activity on this blog now. Goodbye, trusty blog, you served us well.

So, congratulations on making it through the semester, I hope all of your other finals went well, and have a wonderfully restful break!

As you’re looking at the Courseinfo site, you may see columns labeled “BUCLD” and “EASY”—those are extra credits (the BUCLD writeups and the Trees are easy to draw extra credit problem). If you did them and I got them, you should have something recorded there, but otherwise, those columns will be blank. That’s ok, though, you don’t need anything in either column.

Ok, I’ve gotten through the grading, and the Courseinfo site has the scores.

As with the midterm, I don’t really look at these in terms of letter grades—they’re just numbers that go into the final computations, which I’m still doing (I have a few more extra credit assignments to grade before I’m finished with that). However, if you want to get a sense of what the number you see corresponds to, I would—if forced—probably assign letter grades to the final exam as follows: 60 and above out of 75 would be an A, and then down basically by 4s from there. So: 60-75 = A; 56-59 = A−; 52-55 = B+; 48-51 = B; 44-47 = B−; 40-43 = C+; 36-39 = C; 25-35 = C−.

For those keeping track at home, the total points were 75 (not 84) because the second part (identifying what made the sentences ungrammatical) was worth way too much the way I’d initially set it up, so I cut it back from being worth 18 points to being worth 9.

Also, I have created a key that I can email to you if you’d like to see it.

I hope to have the final grades up and submitted by tomorrow.

When you have an embedded clause, it could either be an embedded TP or an embedded CP. So, when do you have which?

First, if the embedded clause is finite, you have a CP, that much is guaranteed. Even if you can’t hear the C (since C for finite clauses can either be that or ∅). One example: Pat said [_CP (that) [_TP Chris left ] ].

If the embedded clause is non-finite, the answer is “it depends.” Sometimes you can hear the C, in which case, of course, there’s a CP. For example: Pat wants [_CP for [_TP Chris to leave ] ].

Another case where a non-finite clause is a CP is when its subject is PRO. If you have a PRO in an infinitive to-clause, there has to be a CP in order for PRO to get case. For example: Pat wants [_CP ∅_NULL [_TP PRO to leave ] ].

When the subject of the embedded non-finite clause gets case from the higher verb (ECM), then there is no CP, just a TP. For example: Pat wants [_TP me to leave ].

Those are, I think, the basic cases. So, it comes down to deciding whether there is a PRO in the embedded clause or not, to a large extent.

I’ve gotten some questions about a few things, so I’ll post some review notes about each. But don’t forget to read the relative extended review notes (and summary sheet) I wrote up for the last week of class. I think that they’ll help set the scene if there are things that you aren’t quite sure about. And don’t forget to read the blog, although I suppose there’s little point in my saying that here.

So, the first installment: What are islands and how do they work?

We have covered three kinds of islands, although Adger covers a fourth kind of island (subject islands) in the book as well. The three kinds of islands we have seen are adjunct islands, wh-islands, and DP islands (aka Complex Noun Phrase islands.

An island, somewhat pretheoretically, is a constituent that “traps” things from moving out of them. The idea is that something that is in (on) an island cannot escape, cannot be moved away.

So, adjuncts constitute one example of an island. If you have a complex clausal adjunct, such as if John buys a coffee, it will be adjoined to TP in a sentence like I will eat my hat if John buy a coffee. Suppose that you want to question what I’ll eat. So, you substitute what in for my hat, and use an interrogative complementizer, which will force what to move into SpecCP. The result is the perfectly well-formed question What will I eat if John buys a coffee?. (Or, if you started from If John buys a coffee I will eat my hat, with the clausal complement adjoined on the left, then turning it into a question results in the reasonably acceptable What if John buys a coffee will I eat?).

If you try to ask a question about something inside the clausal adjunct, however, the result is not well formed. So, suppose we want to ask a question about the thing John might buy that would result in a hat-eating by me. Replace a coffee with what, use an interrogative complementizer, and you wind up with *What will I eat my hat if John buys? (or *What if John buys will I eat my hat?).

So, the adjunct “traps” a wh-word from moving out of it. You can’t move a wh-word from a position inside an island to a position outside the island.

Another type of constituent that can trap a wh-phrase is a question (a wh-island). So, if you have a sentence with an embedded question, as in John wondered who brought chips to the party, you can’t then ask about something inside the embedded question, such as chips. If you replace chips with a wh-word, and use an interrogative complementizer, the result is *What did John wonder who brought to the party?—not so good.

The last type of constituent we looked at that can trap a wh-word is a definite DP. If you have a DP that is complex enough to contain something you can question, you can’t anyway (if it is definite). So, for example, John’s gift of granola to Mary. If you had a sentence with this DP (John’s gift of granola to Mary caused great offense), you couldn’t ask about the granola part: *What did John’s gift of to Mary cause great offense?. Other examples would be asking about poetry in John left his book of poetry on the T: *What did John leave his book of on the T?… or asking about cats in I watched the movie about cats yesterday: *What did you watch the movie about yesterday?.

There are a couple of auxiliary points that should be made about CNP islands. First, a DP is only an island if the DP is definite. Definite DPs are those that have the, or have something genitive in SpecDP (my book, the book, my destruction of the hard drive).

Another point about CNP islands is that they’ll often contain an adjunct anyway, such as when the CNP has a relative clause (the book (that) I gave Mary). This is basically a triple island—if you try to ask about Mary here by replacing it with who, the wh-phrase was already trapped inside the adjoined relative clause ((which/Op) (that) I gave who), whose SpecCP is full, and which is additionally inside the definite DP.

Our explanation of why an island “traps” wh-words like this has to do with the idea of phases. The sentence is built up in “chunks”, where each CP and each definite DP is a “chunk.” So, once a CP is complete, the only thing you can “see” in the CP from outside is whatever is in SpecCP. So, if a wh-word is going to move out of a CP and into a higher SpecCP, it needs to first get to the lower SpecCP so that it can be “seen” from outside.

A wh-island arises when the SpecCP in the middle is already full, either containing a wh-word that has moved there beforehand, or containing the invisible Op that one finds in SpecCP in yes/no questions. Since the wh-word that you’re trying to move out of the embedded question cannot be moved into SpecCP, it gets stuck. The CP phase completes, and the higher interrogative C can no longer “see” the wh-word because it’s inside a finished phrase.

The other islands work on essentially the same principle. In adjuncts, the idea is that you can’t see anything inside them, even something in SpecCP. So, whether the wh-word can make it to the edge of the adjunct or not, it’s still trapped once the adjunct has been built. For CNP islands, the idea is that it is not possible to move a wh-word into the specifier of a DP, and so if the DP is definite and therefore a phase, the wh-word will get stuck inside.

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.
(more…)

By accident, I seem to have left some references to sentence (18) in the statement of Task 6 on the extra credit problem about Trees are easy to draw. Those should refer to sentence (29)—that is, the question is about how himself in (29) satisfies Principle A, and refers at one point to for John, which is also in (29).

Sorry about the typo.

I intend to continue with my office hours on the same schedule as they were during the semester over the upcoming week (Monday 11-12, Tuesday 11-12, Thursday 3-4), although I also expect to be in my office much of the time next week and it’s no problem at all to arrange meetings outside of those time slots.

So, perhaps you’re trying out the Topicalization tests, and you may well be finding that the judgments are a bit harder to make than anticipated. Let me give you a couple of notes about judgments, if this helps.

Our theory is such that at this point we only have a way to distinguish “grammatical” from “ungrammatical”, but yet our intuitions on the “goodness” of a sentence are significantly more squishy than that. One problem is that there is kind of an unavoidable tendency to give a sentence the benefit of the doubt, grammatical until proven otherwise. It’s clear what the sentence means, so it is sometimes possible to overlook that it might not be a great sentence. Still, if you can only imagine it being said by Yoda, that doesn’t really qualify it as a good English sentence.

It’s also worth being aware that wh-islands are perhaps extra-squishy, and it’s relatively easy to find examples of a wh-island violation that sound pretty good. So, for example, (1) and (2) don’t really sound too bad, although they are wh-island violations.

(1) ?Which movie did you forget whether you returned to Blockbuster?
(2) ?What did you wonder who stole? 

On the other hand, (3) sounds gut-wrenchingly horrible.

Scenario: John stole a bunch of things. Your friend remembers almost all of the details, what he stole, how he stole them, but she says that there’s one method that he used that she’s now forgotten how he used it — that is, what he stole using that method. You wish to inquire what the method was.

(3) *How did you forget what John stole?

Given that, a good strategy might be to first consider how bad the wh-question version of your topicalization test sentence is. If you find that the wh-island violation doesn’t sound too bad in a wh-question, then it’s not going to be very surprising to find that the topicalization doesn’t sound too bad either, regardless of whether topicalization is constrained by islands or not. So, you want to try topicalization out on those sentences for which wh-questions sound worst when the wh-phrase comes out of an island.

This is true with most of the islands, some are worse than others. Also, don’t forget that when you are checking complex noun phrase islands, the complex noun phrase needs to be definite. So, with either the or my or something (3-5)—indefinite DPs don’t seem to act as islands (6-7).

(4) *What did John read the book about?
(5) *What did John read my book about?
(6)  What did John read a book about?
(7)  What did John read books about?

You might also try making the sentences a bit more complicated, that can exacerbate any slight ungrammaticality. So, (8) and (9) are both adjunct island violations with basically the same structure, but (9) sounds worse. Well, somewhat, anyway.

(8) ??What did John laugh before he told Mary?
(9) ?*What did John rapidly start feeling nauseous before he told his best friend?

What the exercise is really about is coming up with sentences that would tell you whether topicalization seems to be constrained by the same islands that wh-movement is constrained by. Your final conclusion is not that important, except insofar as it follows from the judgments you report, although—as with wh-movement—there’s kind of a canonically accepted answer out in the field.

The last question on homework 11 asks you to test whether Topicalization is subject to island constraints by constructing some test sentences. Let me just say a couple of words about this to get you on the right path, if you’re not sure exactly what this question is asking for.

First, as background, we have been looking at wh-movement, which is a process by which a wh-word moves from the position where its case is checked to SpecCP. Wh-movement happens because C has a [uwh*] feature, requiring that a phrase with a [wh] feature move into SpecCP. In the process, we’ve discovered that the movement can’t escape certain constituents—the islands. So, wh-movement is impossible to a SpecCP outside when the wh-word is inside an interrogative clause (wh-island), inside a definite DP (CNP island), or inside an adverbial clause (Adjunct island).

The idea of the question on the homework is to consider a different kind of movement operation, topicalization. In a sense, it’s very similar to wh-movement—there’s a feature on C ([utop*]), requiring that a constituent with a [top] feature move into SpecCP. The question is asking you to test to see if movement to SpecCP for the purposes of topicalization is also constrained by the three islands that constrain movement of wh-words to SpecCP in wh-movement.

To do the test, you basically try putting the thing that would be topicalized inside an island, and then try to form the topicalization.

To give an example without giving away the problem, I can show you what you’d do to show that a normal declarative CP is not an island…

First, it’s not an island for wh-movement, which is demonstrated by the following question:

(1) What did John say that Mary bought?

Here, what starts off inside the embedded CP (as the object of bought) and moves up to the main clause SpecCP (and, as we’ve discussed in class, stops off in the intermediate SpecCP on the way). But the point of the question above is that it is possible to move from within a declarative complement clause to a higher SpecCP.

To show the same thing with topicalization, you’d put the element to be topicalized in an embedded declarative clause, and then topicalize it, like:

(2) Cheese, John said Mary bought.

Topicalization usually sounds a little bit better with contrast, so you’d probably want to think of a sentence like that as being followed by a sentence like But wine, John said Mary didn’t buy.

The topicalization sentence is good, from which we can conclude that topicalization (like wh-movement) can escape an embedded declarative clause. An embedded declarative clause is not an island.

For the problem itself, the idea is to come up with sentences like (2), except where the topicalized element originates in a position inside an island. To fully answer the question, it is necessary to judge whether the resulting sentence is good or not, and that task might be a bit more demanding if English isn’t your native language. You could run the sentences by native speakers (again, if you provide a contrast with a second sentence, like I exemplified above, it will sound better) if you aren’t confident, but the main thing in the problem is the construction of the test sentences, regardless of whether you feel comfortable judging their status.