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Categories: Lexical vs. functional CAS LX 522 • Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs: These are Syntax I lexical categories. They carry significant and arbitrary meaning, and they are open-class (new ones can be invented). • But not all words are of this kind (except Morphosyntactic features, part II maybe those on telegrams).† (2.4.2-) 3 †Telegram (n.): An ancient form of texting. Functional categories/ syntactic “glue” Determiners Determiners generally come before a noun, and come Sentences are held together by little “function • • in a few different types. There are differences between words” as well. These are functional categories. the types, though for now we’ll lump them together. 1) I expect that the CEO will want to retire. Category: [D]. Articles: the, an • Determiners: the, a(n), some, every, that, ... • • Pronouns: you, him, they, my, your, ... • Quantificational determiners: some, most • Infinitival to: to • Interrogative determiner: which • Auxiliaries/modals: have, be, do, can, should, ... • Demonstratives: that, this • Complementizers: that, for, if, ... • Possessive pronouns: my, your, their “Pre-noun things” vs. Determiners vs. adjectives determiners, adjectives 1) The big fluffy pink rabbit To properly • Can we lump determiners together with 2) *The my rabbit describe the adjectives? 3) *The that rabbit distribution of these elements, we They both come before nouns. 4) *Every my rabbit • really need to They both seem to “modify” the noun. • • Determiners cannot co- separate them into If we didn’t need both categories (if they don’t occur with other • matter for syntax/distribution), we’d have a two classes. simpler theory putting them together. determiners, must precede Lumping them any adjectives. • Tall building, that building, a building, my building. together will not • Adjectives can occur with give us a simpler other adjectives. descriptive systems. Pronouns Pronouns are Ds. • Pronouns differ from nouns in a couple of ways (example: case marking), and should be considered a functional category. • We’ll come back to this again later on, but • The pronouns of English express person, we will treat pronouns as having category number, and gender. [D], like, say, the or which. • 1st person: I, me, we, us 1) We linguists must stick together. • 2nd person: you • 3rd person: he, she, him, her, they, them, it. Auxiliaries and modals Auxiliaries and modals • Different from verbs: have, be, do, will, can, • Auxiliaries occur before not, verbs don’t might, must, should, could, would, ... • You will not leave. You did not leave. • In questions, auxiliaries “invert” with the *You left not. subject, verbs don’t. • Notice the extra do— “do-support” • Will you leave? Can you leave? Do you leave often? • Auxiliaries are responsible for things like tense, *Leave you often? mood, modality, aspect, voice. • We abbreviate their category as [T] (“tense”). Infinitival to Infinitival to 1) I like to go to the movies. • Kind of looks like a preposition, but it’s not. Prepositions take nouns, to as a P has a kind of 1) I like that John can pick up his own dry- contentful meaning (endpoint of a path). Infinitival to cleaning. takes (bare) verbs only, means nothing (apart from 2) I’d like for John to pick up his own dry- “untensed”). cleaning. • It might be more like a modal: To and modals (can, might, should) seem to appear in the same place (between the subject and a bare verb form). Complementizers The P for v. the C for 1) Pat will leave. • For is of course a preposition (I looked for you for 2) I heard that Pat will leave. three hours), but not when it is introducing clauses. 3) I wonder if Pat will leave. He headed right for the back row. 4) I am anxious for Pat to leave. • *He’d like right for the class to be over. • It is perfectly possible to embed a sentence • inside another one. When we do this, it is • *He expressed interest in the class to be over. indicated with a complementizer (introducing a Who would you vote for in the election? complement clause). Category: [C]. • • *Who are you anxious for to win the election? The D that v. the C that Regrouping Lexical categories: • Same kind of thing holds for that. • N: noun, V: verb, 1) I liked that movie. • A: adjective, P: preposition 2) I heard that movie involved guinea pigs. • We started a feature decomposition of • Sometimes you can replace for clauses with these by proposing that they are labels for that clauses. feature bundles like [±N, ±V], which can characterize certain natural classes across 1) It is important that Pat votes. categories. 2) It is important for Pat to vote. Regrouping Lexical items • Recall that part of our language knowledge is • But there are many more than four categories. the knowledge of the lexicon. • Aux: auxiliary, C: complementizer, Adv: adverb, • The lexicon is a list of the “words” D: determiner, PRN: pronoun, T: modals?, ... • More accurately, it is a list of the things • So, we would need more features to make all sentences are made of. of the distinctions. We won’t pursue that, • It is traditionally considered to be where however—we’ll just use the labels like N, V, A, “unpredictable” information is stored. The P, D, T, C, etc.) sound, the meaning, the grammatical category, and other features. Features of lexical items Features of lexical items • Any given lexical item has: • A lexical item is a bundle of properties. It is a. Semantic features a meaning, linked with instructions for b. Phonological features pronunciation, linked with syntactic c. Syntactic features properties like category. • When it comes to syntax, syntactic features certainly • We represent these properties as features. matter. But no language seems to arrange its sentences such that words that start with t are first. • Hypothesis: Syntax can only “see” syntactic features. English pronouns English pronouns • The English pronouns make several distinctions over and above a singular/plural distinction. We could model person with [1], [2], and One distinction is person, which is sensitive to who is • • [3]—except that that predicts eight talking and to whom. distinctions, and we have only three. • English (and most languages) distinguish three persons. singular plural singular plural first person I we first person [1] I we second person you you second person [2] you you third person he/she/it they third person [3] he/she/it they English pronouns English pronouns • Rather, we want to use two features, which only • What about [1,2]? There’s no special pronoun predict four. Slightly better. form, but what would it mean? • By eliminating [3], we predict a system like that • Well, [1] is the speaker, [2] is the person being below—as well as a [1,2] combination that is not spoken to. So [1,2,pl] would be we (including morphologically distinguished in English. you). Not the same as [1,pl], we (excluding you). singular plural singular plural first person [1] I we first person [1] I we second person [2] you you second person [2] you you third person [3] he/she/it they third person [3] he/she/it they English pronouns Gender • Some languages distinguish inclusive and exclusive • Many languages distinguish nouns on the we morphologically, e.g., Dakota. basis of “gender” as well. • No languages seem to distinguish 8 persons. • English: she/he/it (3rd person pronouns) • Gender often comes in 2-3 flavors singular plural (masculine, feminine, neuter) which often corresponds roughly to biological gender first person [1] I we where applicable. second person [2] you you third person [3] he/she/it they Phi-features Case features ( -features) • English pronouns change form also depending on • Collectively, person, number, and gender where they are in the sentence. features are referred to as -features. 1) He left. I saw him. He saw me. • These are the features that are generally • The information about syntactic position is encoded involved in subject-verb agreement. by case features. • We group them together because they ‣ In English, case is only visible on pronouns. seem to have their effects together (that is, not separately). ‣ In many other languages, case is visible on all nouns (and sometimes on words modifying nouns, like adjectives or determiners). Case names Features & pronunciation • In English, we distinguish nominative (on subjects), genitive (on possessors), and • Lexical items are • At the A-P interface accusative (elsewhere) bundles of features. [Acc, 1, sg, PRN] is Like [Acc, 1, sg, PRN]. interpreted as “me” Singular Plural The syntactic system Singular Plural Nom Acc Gen Nom Acc Gen • arranges these lexical Nom Acc Gen Nom Acc Gen I me my we us our items into sentences, I me my we us our you you your you you your and then hands the you you your you you your he him his they them their result off to the A-P he him his they them their she her her they them their and C-I systems (at she her her they them their the interfaces) it it its they them their it it its they them their Features & pronunciation Verbal features • Not every distinction: The structure of the paradigm can give us clues as to how Some features are specific to verbs. Only 3rd person • ‣ singular distinguishes the interface rules work. gender. • [past], for example, differentiating write Singular Plural 2nd person does not from wrote, kick from kicked. This is a tense ‣ distinguish number or Nom Acc Gen Nom Acc Gen feature. between Nom and I me my we us our Acc. Some languages have a special form of the you you your you you your • 3rd person singular verb for the future as well; [future].
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