T VP had ei V CP believed ei C TP that ei DP T' she ei T VP would 4 go to Mars Other trees where one clause is part of another clause are shown in (23) and (24). (23) TP qp CP T' ei ei C TP T VP that ei ei DP T' V AP she ei was A T VP nice did ei V' AP ei finally V DP win ei D N
c. The article was referred to (by me). Prepositional object (53) I gave some flowers to the man. Predicates say something about subjects, and contain the element (verb) that determines how many objects and other material the sentence will have. The VP will always be the predicate but APs, PPs, and DPs can also be subject or object predicates, depending on what they modify. A subject predicate appears in (54) and an object predicate in (55). (54) I am [a student with a lot of work]. (55) I found the students [hard-working]. Adverbials (or adjuncts or modifiers) are optional and tell you about when, where, how and why the action took place. Examples can be found in (56). (56) He talked to his conscience [condescendingly][for an hour][while driving home][because it had been a nuisance all day]. They also occur inside phrases and are then typically referred to as modifiers, as in (57). (57) The energetic, motivated students from Antarctica. Functions can be read off the tree, e.g. the sister of the V is its complement. The adverbial (modifier) can be read off from the tree as well, it is the sister of a bar-level category, as in (58). Many people refer to these two types as complements and modifiers respectively. (58) VP ep V' PP ei ei
ei DP V’ he ei V DP hurt whom To this, we add the T and have the subject he move to Spec TP and then add the C with question features, as in (10b). (10) b. CP ei DP C’ whom ei C TP Q ei did DP T’ he ei T VP do-insertion [past] ei DP V’ he ei V DP hurt whom That whom is object explains the –m for the accusative. This ending is rarely heard in spoken English, however. Since (9) is ambiguous, we need two trees, started in (11ab) and continued in (12ab). (11) a. CP b. CP
(14) I happened to be doing that anyway. (15) The elephants hope to paint again soon. Chapter 7 Features Up to now, we have explored what constitutes the clausal backbone of the English sentence. In the present chapter, we return to the general framework and some areas, such as features and affix-hop. Chapter 1 mentioned a considerable change in how generative linguists look at parameters currently, namely as choices the child makes about the features of the categories that it includes in its lexicon. These features will be helpful in the next chapter on the DP as well. This chapter spells out which kinds of features there are and how a child knows so much about categorization. It also explains what interpretable and uninterpretable features are and how these are used in the Affix Hop that we encountered in chapter 5. The outline is as follows. In section 1, I elaborate on the shift in generative grammar from Universal Grammar (UG) to more general principles that we saw in chapter 1. Section 2 explains the notion of (un)interpretable features and spells out which features are necessary. Section 3 speculates about where features come from. Section 4 uses features in one specific instance, affix-hop. Section 5 is a conclusion. 1 From Universal Grammar to cognitive constraints The Minimalist Program has shifted its emphasis from Universal Grammar to innate factors that are not specific to the language faculty. One of the reasons to deemphasize Universal Grammar is the evolutionary time it had to develop. If language arose in humans not so long ago, a very specific Universal Grammar would have not had the time to develop. The factors not specific to language are referred to as “third factors”, which we saw in the third section of chapter 1. Generative grammar has also shifted its emphasis from syntactic parameters, such as the three outlined in chapter 1, to ones relevant to the lexicon, i.e. features. The parameters are now, as (1).
This section on where features come from is, of necessity, speculative. We’ll now turn to a much more practical use of features. 4 Features and affix-hop This section will apply some of the knowledge we have about features and interpretable and uninterpretable features to one practical problem, namely Affix Hop. In chapter 5, we saw that auxiliaries choose the morphological type of verb on their right. In (4), the perfective have needs a past participle, as in (4a), not a present participle, as (4b) shows. (4) a. She has left. b. *She has leaving. Radford (2000) makes the argument that the features on the participle are the interpretable ones and I follow that. That means that, in (4), the uninterpretable aspect features of the functional head have check with the interpretable features on left. Tree (5a) shows the unvalued state and (5b) the valued one. The participle ending on left is therefore responsible for the (present) perfect meaning. (5) a. ASPP b. ASPP ei ei ASP VP > ASP VP have 5 have 5 [u-asp] she left [u-asp: perf] she left [i-perf] [i-perf]
wonderei whether TP ei DP T they ei T VP [fut] ei ’d they V’ ei V CP like 4 to go (2) TP ei DP T’ The monster ei T VP [past] ei DP V’ the monster ei V CP considered ei C TP ei them T’ ei T VP to ei them be nice