Transcript Lecture 01
Lecture 1: Trace Theory
ADVANCED SYNTAX
MOVEMENT
We have seen that things move :
Arguments move out of the VP into subject position
Wh-phrases move out of IP into CP
Verbs move from V position to I and C
But this can’t be the whole story:
It isn’t the case that anything can move anywhere
Besides looking at what can move we also need to
look at what can’t
For a full picture, we also need to know why:
Things can and can’t move
THE THEORY OF MOVEMENT
In the next 3 weeks we will be looking at:
What
happens to positions that things move out of
What restrictions there are on movements
Why things move
STRUCTURAL PRESERVATION
There is a central idea, proposed in the 1970s,
that movements do not change structures:
If not:
• any structure
could be
produced by a
movement
• there would be
no theory of
structure
THE PROJECTION PRINCIPLE
Another idea is that movements do not alter
lexical properties:
If not:
• There would be
no lexical
restrictions on
structure
• Words could
change
categories or
subcategories
MOVEMENT DOES NOT ALTER LEXICAL
PROPERTIES
An intransitive verb cannot become transitive by
something moving into its object position
He smiled (a smile) at Mary
* He smiled Mary at
A transitive verb cannot become intransitive by
moving its object
He smiled a smile
(unergative)
There arrived a letter
(unaccusative)
Who did he meet
* Who did he meet a meet
* Who did there meet a man
OTHER THINGS MOVEMENT DOESN’T CHANGE
When a subject moves from one clause to another
(raising)
John seems [ to be intelligent]
the clause does not behave as though it has lost
its subject:
Clauses without subjects are ungrammatical
*
is intelligent
Only the subject of a clause can be the antecedent of a
reflexive pronoun in the object position of that clause
John
thinks [ Bill likes himself]
John seems [ to like himself]
OTHER THINGS MOVEMENT DOESN’T CHANGE
When
a verb moves out of V into I, the VP does not
behave as though it has lost its head:
The heat made [VP the ice melt]
The heat melt-ed [VP the ice]
Phrases
without heads are ungrammatical
The inflection can only take a VP complement
THE TRACE THEORY OF MOVEMENT
In the mid-1970s it was suggested that when
something moves, the position that it leaves does
not disappear and neither is it left empty
A ‘trace’ of the moved element is left behind
Traces have the same properties as the moved
element (category, reference, etc.)
But they are phonologically empty
The heat melt–ed [VP the ice [V t] ]
Who did he meet [DP t]
He seems [IP [DP t] to be intelligent ]
A QUESTION
If traces are invisible, how do we know they are
there?
There are three phenomena which seems to
support the supposition of traces:
‘Wanna’
contraction
Doubling
Resumption
‘WANNA’ CONTRACTION
When want is followed immediately by to, they
can be contracted to the form wanna in
informal spoken English:
I
want to hold your hand I wanna hold your hand
Obviously, this can’t happen if there is
something between want and to:
I
want you to hold my hand
*
I wanna you hold my hand
* I you wanna hold my hand
‘WANNA’ CONTRACTION
Now consider:
who
As want and to are adjacent, we might think
that they can contract – but they can’t:
*
do you want to hold your hand
who do you wanna hold your hand
This can be explained with trace theory: the
trace sits between want and to:
you
want who to hold your hand
who do you want t to hold your hand
WANNA CONTRACTION AND TRACE THEORY
If we did not suppose the presence of a trace in
these sentence, it would be difficult to account
for why wanna contraction can take place in
some cases but not others:
I
wanna hold your hand
* who do you wanna hold your hand
From the surface, both these cases look
identical.
DOUBLING
Doubling is a phenomena found in some
languages where a moved element is
pronounced twice:
Once
in the position it is moved to
Once in the position it is moved from
DOUBLING
For example, in some dialects of Dutch and
Italian, a moved wh-phrase can appear twice:
ci
alo
visto ci? (Italian dialect)
whom has-he seen whom
“who has he seen?”
wie
denk je wie ik gezien heb? (Dutch dialect)
who think you who I seen have
“who do you think I have seen?”
DOUBLING
Some languages do the same thing with verbs
that move:
In
Gungbe (Togo), to emphasise a verb it is moved
to the front of a clause – but it is also pronounced
in its normal position inside the clause too:
∂ù
Sená ∂ù ble∂ì lo
eat Sena eat bread DET
“Sena ATE the bread”
DOUBLING AND TRACE THEORY
Doubling is associated with movement
It
is not just the repetition of words or phrases
One part of the doubled element is pronounced
in the ‘extraction site’
Exactly
where the trace would be in cases with no
doubling
Doubling therefore appears to involve the
pronunciation of the trace
RESUMPTION
Resumptive pronouns are pronouns used in
positions from which movement has taken
place.
In English we find them in two contexts:
Left
dislocation
In constructions that would otherwise involve an
ungrammatical movement
LEFT DISLOCATION
Left dislocation is similar to topicalisation
Topicalisation
involves the movement of an
argument to the front of the clause:
(Usually,
he likes animals but)
those hamsters, he won’t go anywhere near
With
topicalisation the extraction site is left empty
LEFT DISLOCATION
With left dislocation the argument is moved to the front
of the clause, but the extraction site is not empty:
The pronoun in the extraction site is called a resumptive
pronoun
There has been much discussion of the structure of left
dislocation
That politician, I can’t stand him
Whether it involves a single clause
Whether it involves movement at all
If it is a single clause and it does involve movement,
then it seems that traces alternate with resumptive
pronouns
John, I despise (him)
RESCUING UNGRAMMATICAL MOVEMENTS
There are some constructions in which
movements produce ungrammaticalities
which
candidate do you know [Bill voted for]
* which candidate do you know [why Bill voted for]
The syntactic contexts (e.g. a clause which
begins with a wh-phrase) which prevent
movement are often called Islands
UNGRAMMATICAL RELATIVE CLAUSES
We know relative clauses begin with a wh-phrase (the
relative pronoun), though they are not always
pronounced
The movement of the relative pronoun is also blocked by
Islands
the man [(who) you gave the money to]
* the man who I wondered why you gave the money to
However, this ungrammaticality can often be improved
with a resumptive pronoun in the extraction position
the man who I wondered why you gave the money to him
RESUMPTIVE PRONOUNS AND TRACES
Resumption is a little like doubling, though:
Instead of the trace being pronounced as a full DP, a
pronoun is used instead
Resumption is a more common phenomena (English
doesn’t have doubling, but it does use resumptive
pronouns, for example)
It has been claimed that a resumptive pronoun is
a partial pronunciation of a trace
The pronoun realises the category and the reference of
the trace, but not its full lexical content
Again, resumptive pronouns are visible traces
MULTIPLE MOVEMENT = MULTIPLE TRACES
A sentence can contain several movement and
a single element can move several times
Each movement leaves behind a trace
So we need to keep track of which trace
belongs to which moved element
INDICIES
To do this we use indices:
[CP
- [IP - past [VP -en [VP who see]]]]
Movements:
Object moves to subject position
Wh-phrase moves to specifier of CP
Verb moves to passive morpheme
Auxiliary moves to C (after insertion to support tense)
S-structure
[CP
who1 was3 [IP t1 t3 [VP see2 -en [VP t1 t2]]]]
SUMMARY
Traces are (usually) unpronounced elements left
behind by movements
They preserve the structure of the sentence and
the lexical properties of the elements in the
sentence
We have phonological evidence of their existence
They can be pronounced
They block certain phonological processes
They are indexed with the moved element