Transcript Head-movement

CAS LX 522
Syntax I
Week 8b. Head-movement
The puzzle so far.

Head-order and specifier-order parameters can
derive the some but not all types of language:






Relative verb-adverb position, French v. English:



SVO (spec-initial, head-initial) (English)
SOV (spec-initial, head-final) (Japanese)
VOS (spec-final, head-initial) (Malagasy)
OVS (spec-final, head-final) (Hixkaryana)
VSO (?) (Irish, Arabic)
French: Je mange souvent des pommes.
English: I often eat apples.
Auxiliary inversion in English yes-no questions:

Bill should eat his peas. Should Bill eat his peas?
Movement

We start with the question of where should is in:


There is one position in our sentence structures so
far that is to the left of the subject, the one where
the complementizer that goes (C):



Should Bill eat his peas?
I said that Bill should eat his peas.
This is not where we expect should to be, though. It
is, after all, a modal, of category I. It is not a
complementizer.
Also notice that if we embed this question, should
stays after the subject, and if is in C:

I wonder if Bill should eat his peas.
Movement

All of this suggests that the way to look at
this is that we start with the sentence…


Bill should eat his peas
…as usual, and if we’re forming a yes-no
question, we follow this up by moving
should to the position of C. If we can’t
move it (in an embedded question, there’s
already something in C: if), it stays put.
French
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
Jean mange souvent des
IP
pommes.
Jean eats often of.the apples
DP
I
‘Jean often eat apples.’
If we suppose that the French Jean
I
VP
sentence starts out just like the
[PRES]
English sentence, we have the
VP
AP
underlying representation
souvent
PP
V
shown here.
mange

What needs to happen to get
the correct surface word order?
des
pommes
French
Wait! But isn’t that
inexcusably Anglocentric? If you (or
 Jean mange souvent des
Chomsky)
were a
IP
pommes.
native speaker of
Jean eats often of.the apples
DP French,
I would the
‘Jean often eat apples.’
French sentence
 If we suppose that the French
Jean
structure
be
I
VPconsidered
sentence starts out just like the
[PRES]
to be basic?
English sentence, we have the
VP
AP
underlying representation
souvent
PP
V
shown here.
mange
des
 What needs to happen to get
pommes
the correct surface word order?
French
Wait! But isn’t that
inexcusably Anglocentric? If you (or
 Jean mange souvent des
Chomsky)
were a
IP
pommes.
native speaker of
Jean eats often of.the apples
DP French,
I would the
‘Jean often eat apples.’
French sentence
 If we suppose that the French
Jean
structure
be
I
VPconsidered
sentence starts out just like the
[PRES]
to be basic?
English sentence, we have the
VP
AP
Well, not necessarily.
The verb eat (mange) needs
to assign a
underlying
representation
souvent
q-role here.
to the object apples (des pommes). It is easierV(the PP
shown
theory is more elegant) if the assignment of q-rolesmange
happens
between sisters (as a result of Merge). That leads us to the des
 What
to happen
to word
get order is derived, thepommes
sameneeds
conclusion:
the French
English word
word order
is basic.
the correct surface
order?
French
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Jean mange souvent des pommes.
Jean eats often of.the apples
‘Jean often eat apples.’
Of course—the V (mange)
moves up to the I position.
This always happens in French
with a tensed/agreeing verb. This
generally doesn’t happen in
English.
Hence, the difference in “adverb
position” (really, of course, it’s
verb position)
IP
DP
I
Jean
V+I
VP
mange+[PRES]
VP
AP
souvent
PP
V
mange
des
pommes
What happens when
V moves to I?

To show that V attaches to I, but
that I remains primary, this is
drawn in the tree structure like
this.
IP
DP
I
I


We say that V head-adjoins
(adjoins, head-to-head) to I.
The head formed this way is
sometimes called a complex
head, (it’s an I with a V adjoined
to it).
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?
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We should also consider
what happens to the VP
from which the V moved.
It is still a VP, it must still
have a head.
We notate the original
location of the V by writing t
(standing for “trace” left
behind by the original V),
and we co-index the V and
trace to indicate their
relationship.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?
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Since the VP is still a VP, it still
gets a [V] category feature
projected up from its head.
So the trace is still a verb.
In fact, there’s no reason to
suppose that any of the features
of the original verb have been
removed given that [V] is still
there.
We write it as t, but its content
has not changed. The trace t is
really just another copy (or, well,
the original) of the verb.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?

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What has changed is that
the original verb is now
related to a higher position in
the tree, and for many
purposes, the top copy in the
tree is considered to be
primary.
What we have created by
moving the verb is a chain
of positions in the tree that
the verb has occupied.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?

When we think of moved
elements in tree structures,
we will often need to
consider the chain of
positions; this is usually
written like:
( Vi , ti )

referring to the two positions
held by Vi and ti in the
structure here.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?


Using indices like that is kind of
reminiscent of what we did when
talking about Binding Theory—
and it’s not a coincidence.
A fundamental property of
movement is that the moved
element must bind (c-command,
and be coindexed with) the trace
in the original position:
Movement is only upwards.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?
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Great.
So does Vi c-command ti?
IP
DP

X c-commands Y iff:
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(i) X excludes Y, and
(ii) Any node that
dominates X also
dominates Y.
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V excludes I.
V moves to I?
I is not
i
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Great.
So does Vi c-command ti?
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X c-commands Y iff:
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(i) X excludes Y, and
(ii) Any node that
dominates X also
dominates Y.
dominated by
IP any segment of
Vi.
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?
The only nodes that dominate Vi are
I and IP. I does not dominate Vi
because there is a segment of I that
not dominate Vi. Both IP and I
 does
Great.
dominate ti as well. So any node that
 So does
Vi c-command ti?
dominates Vi also dominates ti.
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X c-commands Y iff:

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(i) X excludes Y, and
(ii) Any node that
dominates X also
dominates Y.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
Auxiliaries
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English has two auxiliary (“helping”) verbs have
and be, which cannot serve as the main verbs of
a sentence but generally serve to indicate
differences in verbal aspect (progressive, past
perfect, …).
The auxiliary verbs often appear in I. Radford
has had us up until now drawing them as if they
exemplify the category I.
But really, these auxiliary verbs are verbs, they
just have special properties. Among these
properties: they can move to I.
Auxiliary verbs
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The reason we can’t assume the
auxiliaries have and be:
I am not singing.
 I will not be singing.
 I will not have been singing.
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Rather, it looks like the topmost one
moves to I, so long as nothing else is in I.
A word on auxiliaries
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The underlying structure
of a sentence with an
auxiliary verb would be
something like this,
where the auxiliary verb
heads a VP, and takes
the main verb’s VP as its
complement.
IP
DP
I
I
-ed
VP
V
have
VP
V
eaten
…
A word on auxiliaries

The underlying structure
of a sentence with an
auxiliary verb would be
something like this,
where the auxiliary verb
heads a VP, and takes
the main verb’s VP as its
complement.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
have
VP
I
[PAST]
V
ti
VP
V
eaten
…
Why does V move to I?

If there is something in I already, like a modal, then
even an auxiliary verb doesn’t move up to I.
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If there is more than one auxiliary, only the topmost
one seems to be move to I.
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
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John might not be eating apples.
John has not been eating apples.
Only the auxiliaries that make it to I are inflected
for tense (past, present).
This all suggests that the view this movement
happens to solve some problem that I has.

If I needs something, auxiliaries can help by moving to I,
but once the need is met, no other auxiliaries need to
move. (We’ll come back to this)
English yes-no questions
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Now, let’s go back and think about English yesno questions, which we took originally to be
motivation that movement occurs.
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Bill will buy cheese.
Will Bill buy cheese?
What’s happening here? It is reasonable to think
that the modal will, which starts out in I, moves
to C in questions.
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Willi Bill ti buy cheese?
English yes-no questions
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Why move I to C?
CP
Since it seems to happen in
C
IP
questions and not in statements,
and since C is often thought to Ii
C DP I
[+Q] Bill
will
be the part of the structure
I
VP
where “clause type” (question,
ti
statement, imperative, etc.) is
buy cheese
recorded, this movement seems
to be driven by the C we find in
questions.
We write this as C as being [+Q].
Ø+Q

Incidentally, lots of languages have an
audible question morpheme, which adds
plausibility to our assumption that English
has a question morpheme in C that is just
null.

Akira ga hon o
kaimasita ka?
(Japanese)
Akira top book acc bought
Q
‘Did Akira buy the book?’
English yes-no questions
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Also notice that if there is an overt question
morpheme there in English (which happens in
embedded questions), there is no need to move
I to C:
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I asked if Bill will buy cheese.
*I asked (if) will Bill buy cheese.
Incidentally, if is also [+Q]—this indicates
“interrogative”, and both Ø+Q and if mark
interrogative clauses. But if doesn’t cause I to
move to C.
I to C

In English, anything that would be in I
moves to C. So, modals and auxiliaries all
“invert” around the subject:
Will Bill buy cheese?
 Is Bill buying cheese?
 Has Bill bought cheese?
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But main verbs never raise to I in English.
Consider then:

Did Bill buy cheese?
I to C
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Did Bill buy cheese?
Why is there a do there? Before, we only saw do
in sentences with not, inserted because the
tense affix couldn’t “reach” the verb, blocked by
not.
What seems to be the case is that if I moves to
C (that is, the past tense suffix -ed in this case),
it also gets too far away from the verb (now Bill
is between the suffix and the verb), and Doinsertion is required for pronunciation.
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-edi Bill ti buy cheese?
Negation
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
We’ve used negation as a test to see if the
verb/auxiliary appears before it or after it as an
indication of whether the verb has raised or not.
We’ve also used adverbs (like often) this way.
Negation acts different from adverbs. For
example, negation keeps the tense affix from
being pronounced with a verb (in English), but
adverbs don’t:
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Bill did not buy cheese.
Bill never buys cheese.
Bill quickly bought cheese.
Yet, both come between I and V in the
underlying structure.
NegP
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
A common view of negation is that it has
its own projection, a NegP, headed by a
negative morpheme. For example,
something like this.
Interestingly, negation sometimes comes
“in two parts”, with two morphemes
implicated in negation. NegP has in
principle two positions available for
negative morphemes, its specifier and its
head.
Standard French ne…pas is an example
of this which we’ll look at now.
NegP
Neg
Neg
French negation

In standard French, the negation of a sentence
generally involves a morpheme ne placed before
the tensed verb and a morpheme pas placed after
it, as in:


Jean ne mange pas des pommes.
Jean NE eats NOT of.the apples
‘Jean doesn’t eat apples.’
However, English gives us reason to believe
(assuming NegP is in the same place in the tree
in both languages) that NegP comes between IP
and VP:

Bill will not eat apples.
French negation

A common view of how French
negation looks at DS is like this,
with ne being a morpheme of
category Neg, heading a NegP
with pas in its specifier.
IP
DP
I
I
[PRES]

For the moment, we won’t
concern ourselves with the
categorial status of pas; clearly it
must be an XP of some kind
itself, maybe also of category
Neg, but it never heads the main
NegP in a sentence. I’ll write it
just as pas in the specifier.
pas
NegP
Neg
Neg VP
ne
V
PP
French negation


How do we get the correct word
order?
We know that V needs to move to
I, but wouldn’t this yield:


Jean mange pas ne des pommes.
?
You’d think so, yet the facts tell
us that we actually get:

Jean ne mange pas des pommes.
IP
DP
I
I
[PRES]
pas
NegP
Neg
Neg VP
ne
V
PP
French negation

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Suppose, however, that the
verb moves first to Neg, and
then moves up to I…
What will happen first is that
the V will head-adjoin to
Neg, creating a complex
head…
IP
DP
I
I
[PRES]
pas
NegP
Neg
Neg VP
ne
V
PP
French negation

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Note that we take ne to be a
prefix (not a suffix), which
means when we create the
complex head, the verb
adjoins on the right.
Now, the verb still needs to
move to I, but it is attached
to the Neg now… so the Neg
moves to I.
Complex heads move as a
unit. You can’t “dis-attach” a
head from a complex head.
IP
DP
I
NegP
I
[PRES]
pas
Neg
Neg
Neg
ne
Vi t
i
VP
PP
French negation

This final movement ends
up with the verb close
enough to the tense suffix
to satisfy the requirement
that tense have a verbal
host, while at the same time
“taking ne along” to get us
the right word order.

Jean ne mange pas…
IP
DP
I
NegP
I
Negj
Neg
ne
I
[PRES]
Vi
pas Neg
tj
VP
ti
PP
French negation

So, we see that assuming that ne is the head of
NegP in French (with pas in the specifier), and
assuming that the verb “stops off” to attach to
Neg before moving (now as a part of the
complex Neg head) up to I, we get the right word
order.

Note that, since *Jean mange pas ne des
pommes is ungrammatical, we also know that
the verb has to stop off at Neg on the way up.
Head Movement Constraint

This is an example which motivated the
hypothesis that head movement is constrained
by the Head Movement Constraint (or HMC)
which says that when a head moves to another
head, it cannot “skip” over a head inbetween.
So, the reason the verb stops at Neg is because
Neg is between where V began and I.

Head Movement Constraint
A head cannot move over another head.
Colloquial French?


It turns out that the negation morpheme ne that
we suppose is the head of the NegP projection
is actually generally optional (or even
preferentially omitted in colloquial French)—yet
pas doesn’t act any differently (i.e. it doesn’t get
“picked up” by the verb on the way up to I
instead of ne).
What this suggests is that colloquial French has
a null morpheme which is the head of NegP—
that pas is still in SpecNegP, but the head is Ø
instead of ne.
English negation

A common view of English negation is actually an
extension of this: Many researchers consider not
to be in the specifier of NegP, with a null head.
 [IP
John I [NegP not ØNEG [VP is eating lunch]]]
 [IP
John I [NegP not ØNEG+isi [VP ti eating lunch]]]
 [IP
John [isi+ØNEG]j [NegP not tj [VP ti eating lunch]]]
English negation

[IP John [isi+ØNEG]j [NegP not tj [VP ti eating lunch]]]

However, sometimes English negation does
appear to be the head of NegP—when it’s
“contracted” as -n’t.
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Isn’t Bill hungry?
Cf. Is Bill not hungry?
Notice that when the verb moved to I and then to
C, it seems to have carried negation along.
The Italian DP

In Italian, in many cases, there is simply an
option (stylistically governed) as to whether
you say The Gianni or just Gianni:

Gianni mi ha telefonato.
Gianni me has telephoned
‘Gianni called me up.’

Il Gianni mi ha telefonato.
the Gianni me has telephoned
‘Gianni called me up.’
The Italian DP

However, there is a difference with respect
to the order of adjectives and the noun
depending on which one you use.
L’ antica Roma
the ancient Rome
‘Ancient Rome’
 *Antica Roma
ancient Rome
 Roma antica
Rome ancient

E’venuto il vecchio Cameresi.
came the older Cameresi
*E’venuto vecchio Cameresi.
came
older Cameresi
E’venuto Cameresi vecchio.
came
Cameresi older
The Italian DP

But this makes perfect sense, if what
is happening in the cases where
there is no determiner is that the N is
moving up to D (just like V moves up
DP
to I in the main clause), and when
there is a determiner, the N stays
D
put.
D+Ni NP
 L’ antica Roma
the ancient Rome
AdjP NP

Roma antica
Roma
Rome ancient
*Antica
ancient Rome
ti
…
Back to VSO




Now, let’s return to the question of VSO order in
languages like Irish (remember that?). Recall
that we started off with the observation that there
isn’t any way to “generate VSO order” at DS
using X-bar rules because V and O are sisters at
DS.
However, now that we have verb movement at
our disposal, we could certainly derive VSO like
this:
DS:
Subject
Verb Object
SS:
Verbi Subject
ti
Object
Irish



In support of verb movement, consider:

Phóg Máire an lucharachán.
kissed Mary the leprechaun
‘Mary kissed the leprechaun.’

Tá Máire ag-pógáil an lucharachán.
Is Mary ing-kiss the leprechaun
‘Mary is kissing the leprechaun.’
We find that if an auxiliary occupies the verb slot at
the beginning of the sentence, the main verb
appears between the subject and verb—it remains,
unmoved.
This suggests that deriving VSO from SVO is on the
VSO order in Irish


Where is the verb moving to, though?
The verb ends up to the left of the subject,
which in English we took to be movement
to C:


Will Bill buy cheese?
A natural thing to suppose is that the verb
moves to I and then to C in Irish to get
VSO order.
VSO order in Irish


Except, consider these:

An bhfaca tú an madra?
Q See you the dog
‘Did you see the dog?’

Duirt mé gur phóg Máire an lucharachán.
Said I that kissed Mary the leprechaun
‘I said that Mary kissed the leprechaun.’
If the verb moves to C, where are an and gur?
VSO order in Irish

In English (and German and other languages) if
there is something in C, the verb doesn’t move
there (it doesn’t need to):




Is Bill hungry?
Should Bill be hungry?
I wonder if Bill is hungry.
But in Irish, we see an overt complementizer
followed by VSO.
A VP-internal subject in Irish?

One possibility that this suggests
is that the verb is only moving to
T, but the subject is actually lower
than T—and we have a place in
our tree which hasn’t been used
yet, the specifier of VP.

But what about English? We expect
that DS looks pretty much the same
across languages, so why does the
subject seem to start in different
places in Irish and English?
CP
C
C
TP
T
T+Vi
VP
DP
V
ti
…
Wrapup



So, what we’ve seen is basically that there
is an operation of head movement which
can take the head of an XP and attach it
(head-adjoin) it to a higher head.
This kind of movement cannot skip over
intervening heads in the structure (HMC).
We’ve seen V-to-I movement, I-to-C
movement, and N-to-D movement as
examples of this.
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