Transcript GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory

CAS LX 522
Syntax I
Week 8a. Adjunction and
head-movement
Our model of grammar

Recall our model of grammar: we select items
from the lexicon, put them on the workbench,
pick them up and Merge them until we have a
single object, then pronounce and interpret the
result.
pronounce
Lexicon
Merge
Workbench
interpret
Adjoin


In addition to Merge, there is another thing
that we can do with two objects we pick up
from the workbench.
The new operation is Adjoin, and it will
enable us finally to draw proper structures
for sentences with adjectives, adverbs,
and modifying PPs:

John quickly ate the scrumptious cake on the
lawn.
Adjoin



The operations Merge and Adjoin are two
different ways to combine two objects from the
workbench.
Merge takes two objects and creates a new
object (with the label inherited from one of
them).
Adjoin attaches one object to the top of another
VP
one.
VP
V
eat
DP
it
AP
quickly
VP
V
eat
DP
it
Adjoin



I generally indicate adjunction with a “double branch” to keep
it clear what is adjoined and what is not.
The concept here is that the VP node has been “stretched
out” and the AP has been hooked into it.
The AP occupies a strange position in the tree. It is not a
sister, nor a daughter of VP. It is sort of in-between. It’s not
fully dominated by VP, it’s only dominated by part of VP.

AP c-commands the VP, but the VP doesn’t c-command the AP, though
we won’t dwell on that here. Merge establishes a mutual c-command
relation between two objects, Adjoin establishes an asymmetrical ccommand relation.
VP
VP
V
eat
DP
it
AP
quickly
VP
V
eat
DP
it
Good, more terminology

Adjoining an object to another results in a multisegment node. So, there are two VP segments
below, making up together the VP node.

Often you will also see these called “multi-segment
categories”, but we’ll continue to call them segments
and nodes.
IP
VP
I
AP
quickly
VP
V
eat
DP
it
Good, more terminology
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X dominates Y in just the same conditions as before,
except if X is a multi-segment node, all segments of X
must dominate Y for X to dominate Y.
X excludes Y if no segment of X dominates Y.
AP is dominated by one segment of VP but not by the
other. AP is not dominated by VP. AP is not excluded
by VP.
X c-commands Y iff:
IP
 (i) X excludes Y, and



(ii) Any node that
dominates X also
dominates Y.
AP c-commands VP.
VP does not c-command AP.
VP
I
AP
quickly
VP
V
eat
DP
it
Adjunction

The main intuitive idea: adjuncts are “loosely connected”
and general serve as modifiers.



Adjuncts are generally optional (no q-roles in any q-grids).
They seem to be able to attach either to the right or the left.
They seem to attach to maximal projections.
IP
VP
I
AP
quickly
VP
V
eat
DP
it
Adverbs

Adverbs (at least many adverbs, we’ll look at
more later) generally are adjoined to the VP.


Pat quickly ate the sandwich.
Pat ate the sandwich quickly.
IP
DP
Pat
IP
DP
Pat
I
I
[+Past]
AP
quickly
VP
VP
V
eat
DP
the
sandwich
I
I
[+Past]
V
eat
VP
VP
AP
quickly
DP
the
sandwich
Adjectives

Similarly, adjectives seem to adjoin to the NP.

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the tasty sandwich.
Pat’s tasty sandwich.
DP
DP
D
the
NP
AP
tasty
NP
sandwich
DP
Pat
D
D
’s
NP
AP
tasty
NP
sandwich
Mysteries to live with…
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(In English, anyway) adverbs can often
appear on the right; adjectives seem to be
restricted to the left.
Adjectives seem to have a fixed order:
The big red fluffy sock.
 *The fluffy red big sock.

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Adverbs do too.
Pat often happily eats a tasty sandwich.
 ?Pat happily often eats a tasty sandwich.
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PPs serve the same function

PPs often serve to modify the event like
adverbs, and are adjoined in the same way (on
the right).

Pat ate the sandwich on the hill in the rain.
IP
DP
Pat
I
I
[+Past]
VP
V
eat
VP
PP
in the rain
VP
PP
on the hill
DP
the sandwich
PPs serve the same function

PPs can also modify nouns, like adjectives
(again on the right).

Pat bought the book with the shiny cover.
DP
NP
D
the
NP
book
PP
with the shiny cover
Motivation
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One difference between Merge and Adjoin is that
Merge happens because it has to, Adjoin
happens because it can.
We can think of Merge as always happening to
check some kind of complement or specifier
features.

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Verb and object merge to satisfy a q-role (which we
could cast as a complement feature)
I merges with VP to check [Inf] (or maybe just [V])
complement feature.
C merges with IP to check an [I] feature (how we can
encode the fact that C takes IP)
Complements vs. adjuncts

PPs in particular seem to be freely reorderable
when they are adjuncts.

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The book with a red cover by Radford from CUP
The book with a red cover from CUP by Radford
The book from CUP with a red cover by Radford
The book from CUP by Radford with a red cover
etc…
But consider book of poems.

Here, of poems is a fundamental property of the book, it’s
not optional. A book of poems is a different sort of thing
than a book of cartoons.
Complements vs. adjuncts

And notice that of books cannot reorder with
other PPs, it always has to be first.
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You also can’t have two of this kind of PP:
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the book of poems by Radford with a red cover
*the book by Radford of poems with a red cover
*the book with a red cover of poems by Radford
*the book with a red cover by Radford of poems.
*the book of poems of cartoons with a red cover
So how might we handle this?
Complements vs. adjuncts

Easy: Suppose that of poems is a complement.
That puts it close to the noun (structurally, and
thus semantically), and there’s only one
complement.
DP
D
the
NP
N
book
NP
PP
with a red cover
NP
PP
by Radford
PP
of poems
One-replacement

Pat bought the book of poems by Radford with the
red cover, and Tracy bought…
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

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the one with the blue cover
the (book of poems by Radford) with the blue cover
the one by Chomsky with the blue cover
the (book of poems) by Chomsky with the blue cover
*the one of cartoons by Chomsky with the blue cover
*the (book) of cartoons by Chomsky with the blue cover
So, what can one replace?
One-replacement
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So, one can stand in for any maximal NP.
Notice that this gives us evidence for:
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Of poems as a complement vs. with a red cover as an
adjunct
The structural reality of the segments.
DP
D
the
NP
N
book
NP
PP
with a red cover
NP
PP
by Radford
PP
of poems
Another mystery to live with…
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You can also say:
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And you can’t say

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the linguistics book, the poetry book.
*I want the linguistics book not the poetry one.
Linguistics and poetry here are acting like the
complements were. How might we think of these?
Right. But how could we build that structure?
Tricky. We’ll have to wait and ponder that a little
while later.
X-bar parameters
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Many (most? all?) languages of the world have
something like a basic word order, an order in
which words come in in “neutral” sentences.
English: SVO
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Akira ate an apple.
Japanese: SOV
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John wa ringo o tabeta.
John top apple acc ate
‘John ate an apple.’
X-bar parameters
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These two word
orders work nicely
IP
with X-bar theory
DP
as it stands; the
I
difference can be
I
VP
stated in terms of a Akira -ed
simple parameter
DP
V
which differentiates
eat
an apple
languages as to
whether they are
head-initial or
head-final.
IP
DP
John VP
DP
ringo o
I
I
-ta
V
tabe
X-bar parameters
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Notice that in English,
both V and I are headIP
initial, and in
I
Japanese, both V and DP
I are head-final. In
Akira I
VP
fact, languages tend
-ed
to be consistent in
DP
V
eat
their headedness:
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Japanese has
postpositions, C comes
after IP in embedded
clauses…
English has
prepositions; C comes
before IP in embedded
clauses…
an apple
IP
DP
John VP
DP
ringo o
I
I
-ta
V
tabe
X-bar parameters
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There are also languages in which the
basic word order is VOS, although they
are few in number.
Malagasy: VOS
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
Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavay.
saw the student the woman
‘The woman saw the student.’
See how we might generate an X-bar
structure of this?
X-bar parameters

By changing the order of the
specifier and the X, we can get
VOS order, and by changing the
order of both (with respect to
English) we can get OVS order. I
IP
[PAST]

Malagasy: VOS


Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavay.
saw the student the woman
‘The woman saw the student.’
DP
I
VP ny vehivavay
V
nahita
DP
ny mpianatra
Kana yanïmno bïryekomo
Fish caught boy
‘The boy caught a fish’
DP
kana
DP
I
VP
Hixkaryana: OVS
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IP
I
[PAST]
bïryekomo
V
yanïmno
X-bar parameters
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So by changing the parameters of headcomplement order and specifier-X
order we can generate the following
basic word orders:
SVO (spec-initial, head-initial) (English)
 SOV (spec-initial, head-final) (Japanese)
 VOS (spec-final, head-initial) (Malagasy)
 OVS (spec-final, head-final) (Hixkaryana)
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And that’s all…
The problem of VSO
languages
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There are quite a number of languages,
however, for which the basic word order is
VSO. Irish, Welsh, and Arabic are among
them.
Try as we might, there is no way to set the
X-bar parameters to get VSO order—we
have a specifier (the subject) between the
verb and its complement.
French

French presents a
similar problem;
consider the English
sentence
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
I often eat apples.
The adverb often is an
adjunct, attached at
VP, as seen here.
IP
DP
I
I
I
[PRES]
VP
VP
AP
often
V
eat
DP
apples
French

In French the sentence is

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
Je mange souvent des pommes.
I eat
often of.the apples
‘I often eat apples.’
The adverb souvent appears
between the verb and its
complement; there is no place
to put it in this tree.
Moreover, it should be basically
in the same place as in English,
given the structural similarity
and the sameness of meaning.
IP
DP
I
I
I
[PRES]
VP
VP
AP
often
V
eat
DP
apples
Movement
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Consider English yes-no questions…
To form a question from a statement like:
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We prepose the modal should to the front
of the sentence, before the subject.
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
Bill should eat his peas.
Should Bill eat his peas?
Where is should in this sentence?
Movement
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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):
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

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:
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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…
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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.
Movement
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Given that things do seem to move around
in the sentence (that is, they start where
we’d expect them to but we hear them
somewhere else), this gives us a way we
might “save X-bar theory” from Irish and
French.
Let’s go back and look at French with this
in mind…
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
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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.
This too 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.
IP
DP
I
I
Vi
mange
VP
I
[PRES]
AP
V
ti
VP
PP
What happens when
V moves to I?


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?


Great.
So does Vi c-command ti?
IP
DP

X c-commands Y iff:


(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
Auxiliaries



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

The reason we can’t assume the
auxiliaries have and be are objects of
category I is simple:
I am not singing.
 I will not be singing.
 I will not have been singing.


Rather, it looks like the topmost one
moves to I, so long as nothing else is in I.
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
-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?





Notice that if there is something in I already, like a
modal, then even an auxiliary verb doesn’t move
up to I.
John might not be eating apples.
And moreover, the verb has no tense inflection.
This all suggests that the view that it is the affix in I
which causes V to move to I. The verb is happy not
to move, but will move when it can in order to help
I out.
The movement is a requirement on I, not on V.
English yes-no questions

Now, let’s go back and think about English yesno questions, which we took originally to be
motivation that movement occurs.



Bill will buy cheese.
Will Bill buy cheese?
What’s happening here? Well, we saw earlier
that it is reasonable to think that the modal will,
which starts out in I, moves to C in questions.

Willi Bill ti buy cheese?
English yes-no questions

Why does this movement
happen?

By analogy with the motivation
CP
for V-to-I movement, we will
take C to hold a special (this
Ii+C
IP
will+Ø+Q
time silent, or perhaps
DP
I
prosodic) affix that must be
Bill
joined up with I. This affix is the
I
VP
“question” morpheme, of
ti
category C, which we can write
buy cheese
as Ø+Q.
Ø+Q

Incidentally, lots of languages have an
overt 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

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:
I asked if Bill will buy cheese.
 *I asked (if) will Bill buy cheese.

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?


But main verbs never raise to I in English.
Consider then:

Did Bill buy cheese?
I to C



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.
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