Transcript Class 12 Notes

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CLASS 12, Feb 13, 2007
LIN 1310B
Introduction to Linguistics
Prof: Nikolay Slavkov
TA: Qinghua Tang
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Today
• Announcements and Reminders:
-Continue reading chapter 5.
-DGDs resume as of this week (Feb 13).
-Test results are posted on the web site
• Today’s Lecture:
- Finish going over Test 1
- Continue with Syntax
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Review from last time
• Lexicon, computational system, move, merge
• Sentence structure is hierarchical
• Words combine to form phrases and phrases
combine to produce larger phrases and sentences
• Syntactic trees represent the hierarchical
organization of sentence structure.
• Syntactic categories: lexical vs non-lexical
(functional).
• Criteria for determining syntactic categories:
meaning, inflection, distribution.
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Auxiliaries: Modal and Non Modal
• Non-modal auxiliaries are: be, have
• Modals include: will, can, may, must,
should, could, etc.
How are these different from verbs? What are
the properties of modal and non-modal
auxiliaries?
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Modals: Meaning
Consider the following data:
I may go
must
can
should
could
will
What can we say about the meaning of modals?
=> Modals express: possibility, obligation, choice,
ability, duty, necessity, possibility, intention.
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Modals: Inflectional Properties
Consider the following data:
I may go.
vs.
I go.
He may go.
He goes.
He will eat
He eats.
He should leave
He leaves
*They mayed play
They played.
What can we say about the modals and inflection?
=> Modals do not take inflection.
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Modals: Distributional Properties
Consider the following data:
He will eat. He may eat.
=> (co-occurrence):
Yes he can… (do this).
=>(order): modal precedes the verb. *He eat
may; Cannot have more than one modal.
*He will may eat.
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Modals: Distributional Properties
*We are maying. vs. We are walking.
=>You cannot replace a verb with a modal.
We should be eating. vs. *We want be eating.
=> Nor can you replace a modal with a verb.
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Modals: Distributional Properties
• Modals can co-occur with perfect aux ‘have’.
He may have eaten.
• Modals can co-occur with progressive aux ‘be’.
He may be eating.
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Modal or (main) Verb?
Using distributional properties, determine if
the following are modals or (main) verbs
might, enjoy, posses, shall, like, could.
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Non Modal Auxiliaries
progressive be
perfect have
Consider the following data:
I am happy
vs. I am walking
I have an apple
vs. I have seen this film.
main/regular verb
auxiliary
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Non modal auxiliaries: distribution
He may have eaten. He may be eating.
vs.
* He be may eating. *He have may eaten
=>Non modal auxiliaries follow modals.
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Modals vs. Non modal Auxiliaries
How do we distinguish between the two?
-Modal comes first and non modal follows.
I may have eaten.
-Modals cannot co-occur with one another
*I may will go.
-A modal and a non-modal auxiliary can co-occur.
I may have gone.
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Phrases
• Now that we have discussed both lexical and non lexical
categories in some detail, we can go on to the issue of how
they combine with one another.
• Recall that phrases are syntactic units:
He went to the store last week
the store=phrase, to the store=phrase
store last≠phrase
• Phrases combine to produce larger phrases and ultimately
sentences.
• Note that we find remarkably similar syntactic phrases
(especially based on lexical categories) across languages.
This lends support to the idea of Universal Grammar.
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Phrase Structure
• It is generally assumed that phrases across
languages have a common structure (or a blueprint
into which the different items from our mental
lexicon are plugged in).
• This common structure is known as X’
(pronounced X-bar)
(Note that X-bar has recently become controversial
and it has been proposed that syntactic theory
should dispense with it)
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X’ schema
XP
(Specifier)
X
Head
1. All phrases have a three level
structure
2. All phrases must contain a head, X
X’
3. An optional compliment may be
attached at the X’ level (sister of X)
4. An optional specifier may be attached
at the XP level.
(Complement)
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X’ schema: Heads
• The head (X) is the obligatory nucleus of the
phrase.
• The most common (lexical) heads are nouns,
verbs, adjectives and prepositions.
• The phrase is named after its head:
Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Adjective Phrase and
Perpositional Phrase
NP, VP, AP, PP
(draw trees for books, eat, certain, in)
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X’ schema: Specifiers
• Specifiers are optional elements in phrase
structure.
• They ‘specify’ or make more precise the
meaning of the head.
• They typically mark the phrase boundary.
• They attach at the XP level.
• The type of specifier depends on the
category of the head (table 5.4, p. 137)
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X’ schema: Specifiers
Table 5.4 Some specifiers
Category
Determiner (Det)
Adverb (Adv)
Degree word (Deg)
Typical funcion
specifier of N
specifier of V
specifier of A or P
(add specifiers to the trees on the board)
Examples
the, a, this those, no
never, perhaps, often, always
very, quite, more, almost
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X’ schema: Complements
• Complements are optional items in a phrase
• They provide further information about the
head.
• They are phrases themselves.
• They attach at the X’ level (sister to the
head).
(add complements to the trees on the board)