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CAS LX 522 Syntax I Some History of Generative Grammar

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CAS LX 522 Syntax I Some History of Generative Grammar CAS LX 522 Some history of generative grammar Syntax I • Transformational Grammar – (Chomsky 1955, Chomsky 1957) • Standard Theory – (Chomsky 1965) Week 13. Loose ends, minimalism • Extended Standard Theory – (Chomsky 1970, …) we’ve mostly been in here • Government and Binding Theory somewhere… – (Chomsky 1981, 1986) • Minimalist Program – (Chomsky 1993) Transformational grammar Standard Theory • Grammar was a set of phrase structure rules • Introduced the idea of a lexicon. –S → NP VP NP → D N • Tied DS to meaning, SS to pronunciation. VP → V NP • Development of innateness argument and levels of D → the adequacy (descriptive, explanatory) N → man, dog, sandwich, … V → meet, see, … • Treated reflexivization as a transformation (beginnings of Binding Theory) – Start with S, apply rules until none left. – DS: Bill saw Bill • and transformations – SS: Bill saw himself → –Tpassive: NP1-Aux-V-NP2 NP2 + be + V+en by NP1 . Generative semantics vs. Extended Standard Theory interpretive semantics • In the late 60s there was a rift between those • Replaced phrase structure rules with X-bar theory. who thought meaning should be tied to DS • Gradually started replacing construction-specific and those who thought meaning should be rules with more general constraints (binding tied to SS. condition, complex NP constraint, wh-island • DS people were generative semanticists condition) and rules (NP movement, WH • SS people were interpretive semanticists movement). – The editor didn’t find many mistakes. – Many mistakes weren’t found by the editor. • Development of theta-theory. • The path we’re following took the SS side. 1 Government and Binding Minimalist Program • Grammar has a highly modular character. Separate modules govern separate things, all have to be satisfied • Since 1993, the syntactic paradigm has shifted to for a sentence to be grammatical. The logical extreme the Minimalist Program. of the increasing generality. – X-bar theory – Binding theory • The motivation behind the Minimalist Program is – Theta theory – Bounding theory – Case theory – Movement rules (NP, WH, head) that it was starting to seem like syntax was getting too complicated and that perhaps syntactic • Constraints began to refer to structural relations (c- command, m-command, government) machinery that was inherited from previous approaches was as complicated as the phenomena • The level of LF was introduced, and covert movement (like QR). that were being explained. • This it the model we have been using, basically. Minimalist Program Minimalist Program • The goal of MP was to sort of “start over” with • Practically speaking, what happened was a change syntax, now that we know what we do from the in the fundamental perspective on what is years of learning (vast amounts) about the happening in syntax, but it turned out to have little structure of language. effect on the day-to-day life of syntacticians. • There’s still Case to be assigned (checked), there • We start with only things that have to be true and are still theta-roles, the trees all look basically the then we carefully justify everything else that we same. need as we rebuild the system from scratch. • We’ll go through things in more detail in Syntax II Ways to think Ways to think • In GB theory, there were three kinds of movement rules – NP movement (movement of DPs, e.g., for Case) • So closeness seems to matter. – WH movement (movement of wh-words) • This evolved into the idea that lexical items (and – Head movement (movement of heads to heads) phrases) have features and they need to be close to • It was observed that each kind of movement served to get each other in order to be checked. two things close together. • So, with wh-movement, the [wh] feature of the – NP movement of the subject brings it into SpecTP wh-word needs to be checked against the [+WH] close to T so that it can get Case. feature of the interrogative C, and to do this it – WH movement brings wh-words into SpecCP needs to be close. SpecCP counts as close. Hence, to be close to [+Q, +WH] C. the wh-word needs to move to SpecCP. – Head movement brings V up close to T. 2 Ways to think Other changes • If we assume that all movement is driven by the requirement to check features, (and that all • There are various other changes in MP thinking features must be checked in a grammatical which we can’t really get into here, but they all derivation) then this has to be what happens in tend to have the result that we get basically the head-movement too. same (or simpler) structures out of a dramatically • The idea would be that, for example, interrogative simpler system. Q has a feature on it that needs to be checked with a feature of T. • Somewhat fundamental changes occurred in the • So what we say instead of there’s a rule that notion of DS and of X-bar theory, and even more moves T to C when C is [+Q] that when C is [+Q] recent work has even broken apart the distinction it is also [+T]. The feature checking system takes between overt and covert movement somewhat. care of the rest. VP shells VP shells VP • So far, so good. • Let’s go back and consider VP shells a bit V′ • Now, Bill melted the ice. • The ice is still Theme. The verb is still melt. • The ice melted. V DP melt the ice • Uniform Theta Assignment Hypothesis • The boat sank. (UTAH) (Baker 1988): Two arguments • The door closed. which fulfill the same thematic function with respect to a given predicate must • The ice, the boat, the door are all Themes, occupy the same underlying (DS) position in suggesting that the verbs are unaccusative—the the syntax. argument starts in “object” (complement of V) • So the ice must still be a complement of the position. verb at DS. VP shells VP shells VP vP • In Bill melted the ice what have we done? • Bill melted the ice. V′ • We’ve added a causer. DP v′ • Then, the main verb moves up to the • Bill caused [the ice to melt]. Bill light verb, yielding the surface order. V DP v VP melt the ice – Later, Bill will move to SpecTP for Case • We’ve already supposed that the light verb V′ and EPP reasons. assigns the Agent θ-role in ditransitives. • Why does V move to v? We’ll assume V DP that it does this for a reason analogous melt the ice • It isn’t much of a jump to think of it as to why V moves to T (for French having a meaning something like CAUSE. verbs, say). 3 VP shells VP shells • Warning. Even though v may carry a “causative” • Bill remarked that Patrick runs fast. meaning, this does not mean that it is synonymous • Bill remarked to her that Patrick runs fast. with the English word “cause”. • The water boiled. • Bill boiled the water • UTAH and the CP. – Billi T ti v+boil the water • “Cause” meaning a bit more general • Bill caused the water to boil – Bill cause TP VP shells VP shells • You must satisfy the jury that you’re innocent. • Object control predicates. • Ever try to draw the tree for They persuaded • The jury gets the same kind of theta role, Bill to leave ? Again, too many arguments, something like Experiencer (but no to). Also not not enough syntactic places available in a optional. binary branching tree. • It strikes me that Bill runs fast. • They persuaded me that I should leave. • It seems to me that our analysis needs more light verbs. VP shells VP shells • He sold me a camel. • Following along as before… • He lied. •Hei T ti v+sell me tv a camel. • Agent, no theme. • Suppose that Agents only come about by • Compare that to He gave Mary a book. Ah. virtue of a v. That is, if there’s an Agent, it’s in the specifier of a vP at DS. • Turns out this alternative to Larson is more crosslinguistically applicable (IO seems to start out • Compare He told a lie. The verb lie seems higher in the tree than DO across languages). It also to be denominal. Like dance… and others. means that Bill gave me a book is the more basic form, Bill gave a book to me is more derived. 4 Unergative verbs AgrSP • Hale & Keyser proposed that denominal verbs • They have probably all left. like lie involve head-movement of an N to to • *They have completely probably all left another a light (verbalizing) verb. • They probably all have left. • If we’re going to do that, perhaps we can deal with verb-particle constructions the same way. – Bill turned on the light. – Bill turned the light on. 5.
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