Transcript Adding Pronoun Constraints to a Grammar

Adding Pronoun Constraints to a Grammar:
Verbs and Pronouns
• Present tense verbs occur in two forms:
– singular: ‘eats’
– plural: ‘eat’
– only exception is ‘be’, which has a third form, ‘I am’
• Pronouns differ in person, number, and case:
1st person
2nd person
3rd person
singular
nominative accusative
I
me
you
you
he, she, it him, her, it
plural
nominative accusative
we
us
you
you
they
them
Constraints to be Captured
• 3rd person singular pronouns in subject position
occur with singular verb forms
– He eats. *He eat.
• other pronouns in subject position occur with plural verb forms
– I eat. *I eats. They eat. *They eats.
– ignore special case of ‘be’
– J&M treats ‘do’ as aux, so must include number agreement for aux
• nominative pronouns occur in subject position
– I eat. *Me eat.
• accusative pronouns occur in object position and in PPs
– Fred met him. *Fred met he.
– Fred gave a letter to him. *Fred gave a letter to he.
Split NP
NP  Pronoun | …
becomes
NP-nom-sing  Pron-nom-sing | …
Pron-nom-sing  he | she | it
NP-nom-pl
 Pron-nom-pl | …
Pron-nom-pl  I | you | we | they
NP-acc
 Pron-acc | …
Pron-acc
 me | you | him | her | it | us | them
(ignore number agreement for nouns)
Split VP
VP
 Verb | Verb NP |
Verb NP PP | Verb PP |
Verb S | Verb to VP | VP and VP
becomes
VP-sing  Verb-sing | Verb-sing NP-acc |
Verb-sing NP-acc PP | Verb-sing PP |
Verb-sing S | Verb-sing to VP |
VP-sing and VP-sing
VP-pl  Verb-pl | Verb-pl NP-acc |
Verb-pl NP-acc PP | Verb-pl PP |
Verb-pl S | Verb-pl to VP | VP-pl and VP-pl
VP
 VP-sing | VP-pl
Require Accusative in other Object Positions
PP
 Preposition NP-acc
GerundVP  GerundV | GerundV NP-acc |
GerundV PP | GerundV NP-acc PP
Enforce Number Agreement
S  NP VP | Aux NP VP | Wh-NP Aux NP VP | ...
becomes
S  NP-nom-sing VP-sing |
NP-nom-pl VP-pl |
Aux-sing NP-nom-sing VP |
Aux-pl NP-nom-pl VP |
Wh-NP Aux-sing NP-sing VP |
Wh-NP Aux-pl NP-pl VP | ...