The English Noun Phrase
in its Sentential Asp ect
by
Steven Paul Abney
B A Indiana University
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS
at the
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
June
c
Steven Paul Abney
The author herebygrants to M I T p ermission to repro duce and to
distribute copies of this thesis do cument in whole or in part
Signature of Author
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
May
Certi ed by
Richard Larson
Thesis Sup ervisor
Accepted by
Wayne O Neil
Chairman Departmental Committee
The English Noun Phrase
In Its Sentential Asp ect
by
Steven Paul Abney
Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophyon May
in partial ful llment of the requirements for the Degree of Do ctor of
Philosophy in Linguistics
ABSTRACT
This dissertation is a defense of the hyp othesis that the noun phrase is
headed byafunctional element i e non lexical category D identi ed
with the determiner In this way the structure of the noun phrase parallels
that of the sentence which is headed by In ection under assumptions
now standard within the Government Binding GB framework
The central empirical problem addressed is the question of the prop er
analysis of the so called Poss ing gerund in English This construction
p ossesses simultaneously many prop erties of sentences and many prop erties
of noun phrases The problem of capturing this dual asp ect of the Poss
ing construction is heightened by current restrictive views of X bar theory
which in particular rule out the obvious structure for Poss ing NP
NP
VP by virtue of its exo centricity
ing
Consideration of languages in which nouns even the most basic concrete
nouns show agreement AGR with their p ossessors p oints to an analysis
of the noun phrase as headed by an element similar to In which provides a
p osition for AGR I call this In like element D D and In b elong to the
class of non lexical categories which I prefer to call functional categories
The analysis in which D heads the noun phrase I call the DP analysis
Imp orting the DP analysis into English yields an immediate solution for
the problem of the Poss ing gerund Poss ing gerunds and by extension
noun phrases generally have a more sentence like structure than hitherto
thought namely DP s D VP In non gerundive noun phrases
DP ing
VP is replaced by a pro jection of N This pro jection of N despite b eing
a maximal X bar pro jection corresp onds to N bar in the standard analysis
Current trends in the treatment of minor categories so called non
lexical categories lead us to a similar conclusion Until recently minor
categories like complementizers and mo dals had b een treated as syncate
gorematic Under current assumptions however they participate fully in
the X bar schema Inthisway two simpli cations are achieved simulta
neously we eliminate syncategorematic elements and we acquire an endo
centric analysis of the sentence which had b een exceptional in b eing the
only exo centric ma jor category To make these results fully general we are
led to treat the remaining syncategorematic elements in particular deter
miners in noun phrases and degree words in adjective phrases as heads
of full phrases The analogy with complementizers and mo dals indicates
that determiners and degree words should head noun phrases and adjective
phrases resp ectively In other words determiners are lexical instantiations
of D in the same way that mo dals are lexical instantiations of In
However despite the conceptual links the question of the existence of
a functional head of the noun phrase the DP analysis and the question
of the place of the determiner are indep endent questions and I treat them
separately Chapters One through Three are concerned predominately with
the former question Chapter Four with the latter
Chapter One provides a brief intro duction In Chapter Two I present
the DP analysis motivating it by examining languages with agreementbe
tween noun and p ossessor I also discuss issues raised by the DP analysis
with emphasis on the parallelism b etween noun phrase and sentence hyp oth
esized under the DP analysis In particular I treat the question of PRO
in the noun phrase and I show that the numerous di erences b etween
sentence and noun phrase do not invalidate the parallelism of structure
prop osed under the DP analysis In Chapter Three I apply the analysis to
the three gerundive constructions Acc ing Poss ing and Ing of Finally
in Chapter Four I turn to the question of whether the determiner is the
lexical instantiation of D the functional head of the noun phrase
Thesis Sup ervisor Dr Richard K Larson Title Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Acknowledgements
Iwould liketoacknowledge rst of all mydebttomymany teachers and
mentors these last four years to my thesis advisor Rich Larson for his
guidance in matters syntactic and semantic as well as for sound advice in
the mechanics of thesis writing To the other members of my committee
Noam Chomsky Ken Hale and Richie Kayne To Jim Higginb otham with
whom I haveworked closely since coming to MIT unfortunately for me he
is in Pisa this semester Thanks also to Jay Keyser b oth for guidance in
linguistics and encouragementinmy computational interests and to Morris
Halle for encouragement and direction and for keeping me aware of the
b eauties of phonology
Though none of mywork in parsing has found its wayinto this the
sis nonetheless a very imp ortantpartofmyintellectual developmentas
a graduate student has b een in the area of computation I am esp ecially
indebted to Sam Epstein mymentor at Bell Communications Research
for providing me with a golden opp ortunitytodevelop my ideas in parsing
and for his indisp ensable guidance and encouragement At MIT thanks to
Bob Berwick for much help and direction to Carl Hewitt for the opp or
tunitytowork with the Apiary Pro ject to Gul Agha for endless supp ort
and advice to Jennifer Cole who I had the go o d fortune to collab orate
with in the summer and fall of in work on parsing to Tom Reinhart
my Lispm guru and to Beth Levin for her guidance during the summer I
worked for the Lexicon Pro ject
Iwould like to thank the others with whom I worked at Bellcore alpha
b etically George Collier Stu Feldman Mike Lesk Maria Slowiaczek Don
Walker I would also like to thank Don Hindle Mitch Marcus and Richard
Sproat of AT T Bell Lab oratories and Bob Ingria of Bolt Beranek
Newman
In psycholinguistics sp ecial thanks to Merrill Garrett and Janet Fo dor
My studies at MIT were partially funded by a Mellon Graduate Fellow
ship in the Humanities I gratefully acknowledge their supp ort
Among fellow students present and past the eightwithwhomIhave
b een together since will always b e very sp ecial to me I consider myself
very lucky to haveworked together with these p eople I only wish it weren t
over so so on They are Hyon So ok Cho e Jennifer Cole John Lumsden
Doug Saddy Ur Shlonsky Michele Sigler Carol Tenny Loren Trigo Still
amemb er of the group in spirit though he left us for warm and sunny
Palo Alto is Steve Neale There are also two uno cial memb ers of our
class who havebeenvery imp ortant to me Betsy Ritter and Kyoko Ma
sunaga Among my other colleagues I would esp ecially liketomention Di
ana Archangeli and husband Dante Mark Baker Andy Barss Ed Barton
Maggie Browning Viviane Deprez Naoki Fukui Alicja Gorecka Mohamed
Guerssel Ewa Higgins Kyle Johnson Mike Kashket Mary Laughren Juli
ette Levin Anne Lob eck Dinette Massam Katie McCreight Janis Melvold
Janet Nicol Tova Rap op ort Malka Rappap ort Marc Ryser Gab e Segal
Kelly Sloan Peggy Sp eas Tim Stowell Catherine Womack
Thanks to the sta in the Linguistics department esp ecially Maggie
Caracino and Nancy Peters
For my sanity and emotional well b eing I owe a great debt to Carol
Tenny and her parents as well as to Mushka and Freddy the Weasel to
Marc and Ilana Amrani Cohen and b oss man Edan to my family to Betsy
Ritter and to the incomparable Capitol Theatre in Arlington My deep est
debt however is to my wife Nina for encouraging ca joling for love It is
to her that this work is dedicated
To Nina
Contents in Brief
I Intro duction
A Puzzle and Its Solution
Overview
II Noun Phrase and Sentence
General Similarities
In in the Noun Phrase
The DP Analysis
PRO in the Noun Phrase
Di erences Between Noun Phrase and Sentence
III Gerunds
Intro duction
Noun Phrase Asp ects of Poss ing
Sentential Asp ects of Poss ing
Analyses I Finding the Seams
Analyses I I The Morphological Angle
Conclusion Syntactic A xation
IV Lexical determiners
Determiner As Head
The Adjective Phrase
The Position of Prenominal Adjectives Conclusion
Contents
Intro duction
A Puzzle and Its Solution
The Puzzle
An Apparently Unrelated Fact
The Solution
The IdentityofX
Sentence and Noun Phrase
Overview
Noun Phrase and Sentence
General Similarities
In in the Noun Phrase
Yup ik
Mayan
Hungarian
Digression Comp in the Noun Phrase
Turkish
The DP Analysis
Concepts and Terminology
Functional Selection
Two Notions of Command
Det as Head
The Position of s
App endix Selection of DP
PRO in the Noun Phrase
PRObook
theory
Control Theory
Binding theory
Arguments Against PRO in the Noun Phrase
CONTENTS
Di erences Between Noun Phrase and Sentence
Predication in the Noun Phrase
Catalog of Di erences
App endix Reducing the Di erences
The Gerund
Intro duction
The Range of Gerund Constructions
Reuland s Analysis of Acc ing
Noun Phrase Asp ects of Poss ing
External evidence
Internal evidence
Sentential Asp ects of Poss ing
VP in Poss ing
PRO in the Gerund
N bar Deletion
Analyses I Finding the Seams
Schachter
Horn
The D VP Analysis
The D IP Analysis
Analyses I I The Morphological Angle
Jackendo
Pesetsky Leb eaux
Baker
Conclusion Syntactic A xation
A Final Analysis
A xes in the Syntax
Verbal and Adjectival Passive
Lexical Determiners
Determiner As Head
Arguments for the Standard Analysis
Sundry Evidence For Det As Head
The Range of Sp eci ers
The Adjective Phrase
Deg as Head
Adjective Adverb and Quanti er
The Sub ject of Deg
Extent Clauses
Two Sp eci ers in the Adjective Phrase
Overview of Structures
CONTENTS
The Position of Prenominal Adjectives
Two Hyp otheses
Adjective as Head of NP
Two More Hyp otheses
Conclusion
CONTENTS
Chapter
Intro duction
A Puzzle and Its Solution
The Puzzle
One of the most p erplexing structures in English is the so called Poss ing
gerundive construction An example is
John s building a spaceship
What makes this construction so p erplexing is that it seems to b e neither
sh nor fowl so to sp eak On the one hand it is obviously a sentence but
on the other hand it is obviously a noun phrase
Considered with regard to its external distribution the Poss ing gerun
dive b ehaves exactly like a noun phrase It app ears in noun phrase p ositions
and particularly in noun phrase p ositions from which sentences are ex
cluded such as sub ject p osition under Sub ject Aux Inversion emb edded
sub ject p osition or ob ject of prep osition
a did that John built a spaceship upset you
did John upset you
did John s building a spaceship upset you
b I wondered if that John built a spaceship had upset you
Iwondered if John had upset you
Iwondered if John s building a spaceship had upset you
c I told you ab out that John built a spaceship
I told you ab out John
I told you ab out John s building a spaceship
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
Likewise the sub ject of the gerundive i e John s b ehaves like the
sub ject of a noun phrase the p ossessor not the sub ject of a sentence
This is most evident in the fact that it receives genitive case not nominative
case
John destroyed the spaceship
John s destruction of the spaceship
John s destroying the spaceship
It is clear that externally and with resp ect to the sub ject the gerundive
is a noun phrase Wehave this piece of structure then
NP
NP
John s
On the other hand it is equally clear that the remainder of the gerun
dive i e building a spaceship constitutes a VP ing is a fully pro ductive
verbal a x anyverb can app ear in the gerundive construction In this
way it di ers from clear cases of derived nouns which are quite sp oradic in
their pro ductivity in English wehave destruction for example but not
debunktion referral but not interral More imp ortantly there is quite a
long list of pro cesses and constructions which app ear in the verb phrase but
not in the noun phrase including case assignment to the ob ject raising
Exceptional Case Marking Raising to Ob ject double ob jects particles
and particle movement and numerous others All of these constructions
are to b e found in the gerundive
A PUZZLE AND ITS SOLUTION
a John s destruction the spaceship
John destroyed the spaceship
John s destroying the spaceship
b John s app earance to b e dead
John app eared to b e dead
John s app earing to b e dead
c John s b elief Bill to b e Caesar Augustus
John b elieved Bill to b e Caesar Augustus
John s b elieving Bill to b e Caesar Augustus
d John s gift rental of Mary of a Fiat
John gave rented Mary a Fiat
John s giving renting Mary a Fiat
e John s explanation away of the problem away
John explained away the problem away
John s explaining away the problem away
This gives us another piece of the structure
VP
V NP
building a spaceship
The puzzle is how to t these two pieces together and without
doing violence to the principles which constrain phrase structure The ob
vious way of putting them together as in do es not satisfy this criterion
NP
NP VP
John s V NP
building a spaceship
The structure violates widely assumed conditions on phrase structure
in that the highest NP lacks a head VP cannot b e the missing head
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
b ecause it do es not have the same syntactic category as NP If is not
the correct structure what is To date no fully satisfactory solution has
b een given
It is my goal in the presentwork to solve the puzzle of the Poss ing
gerundive construction and more generally to defend the novel analysis
of noun phrase structure up on whichmy solution dep ends the so called
DP analysis With agrant disregard for the principles of go o d mystery
writing then I sketch out my solution here in the intro duction The rest
of the thesis is a denouement in whichIwork out the details
An Apparently Unrelated Fact
There are a large numb er of languages in whichanovert agreement element
app ears in the noun phrase Consider for example this paradigm from
Hungarian from Szab olcsi
az en kalap om
the I NOM hat sg
my hat
a te kalap o d
the you NOM hat sg
your hat
a Peter kalap ja
the Peter NOM hat sg
Peter s hat
Kalap is a simple noun not a verbal form it could b e replaced in this
paradigm byany noun at all Yet kalap agrees with its p ossessor marking
its p erson and numb er with an agreement marker AGR The p ossessor in
turn b ears nominative case as do es the sub ject of the sentence It is gen
erally assumed in the Government Binding paradigm which I implicitly
adopt throughout that nominative case in the sentence is assigned under
governmentbyAGR hence the co o ccurence of agreement and nominative
case The minimal assumption is that nominative case in the noun phrase
in Hungarian is also assigned under governmentbyAGR As in the sen
tence the sub ject of the noun phrase i e the p ossessor and AGR are
mutually dep endent A nominative p ossessor can only app ear when AGR
is present and AGR only app ears when there is a p ossessor though that
p ossessor may at times b e non overt
In the sentence AGR is assumed to o ccupy an In ectional p osition out
side the maximal syntactic pro jection of V The obvious hyp othesis con
cerning AGR in the noun phrase is that it o ccupies a similar In ectional
A PUZZLE AND ITS SOLUTION
p osition i e that the structure of noun phrase and sentence are parallel in
Hungarian
Sentence I Noun Phrase X
SUBJ I POSSR X
I V X N
I AGR X AGR
It is not clear what the category X is b eyond saying it is a nominal In
ectional category We cannot say it is In as wewould then b e unable
to distinguish Sentence and Noun Phrase as syntactic categories but it is
more like In than anything else
A batch of questions arise immediately What is the category X Is the
pro jection of N which is sister to X maximal If so what consequences do es
that have for the relation b etween noun and p ossessor What consequences
do es the contemplated structure have for binding theory predication and
theory with resp ect to the p ossessor What consequences do es it have
for extraction from the noun phrase
Instead of facing this phalanx of questions it may seem preferable to
supp ose that AGR in the noun phrase do es not app ear in the same sort of
p osition structurally asAGR in the sentence An alternative is that AGR
is simply adjoined to N
NP
POSSR N
N
N AGR
But there are questions that this hyp othesis raises as well Whydoes
AGR coindex only with the p ossessor and never with e g an ob ject noun
phrase WhydoAGR in the noun phrase and in the sentence o ccupy
di erent p ositions This latter question is made esp ecially p ointed by the
fact that the form of sentential AGR and nominal AGR are frequently very
similar In Central Alaskan Yup ik for example they are identical
Yup ik data drawn from Reed et al
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
kiputaa he b oughtit
kiputaa t they dual b oughtit
kiputaa k they plural b ought it
kuiga his river
kuiga t their dual river
kuiga k their plural river
Also AGR in the sentence and AGR in the noun phrase frequently assign
the same case Nominative in Hungarian ergative in Yup ik or Mayan
Clearly the structure given in for the noun phrase in Hungarian
and similar languages is the minimalhyp othesis and if the questions it
raises can b e satisfactorily answered as I b elieve they can it is eminently
preferable to the alternatives
The Solution
The relevance of the structure of the Hungarian noun phrase to the puzzle
of the English gerund b ecomes clear if it is not clear already when we
examine the Turkish gerund Languages which p ossess a gerundive con
struction of the Poss ing typ e are very rare in fact English and Turkish
are the only twoIhave found Turkish di ers from English in that it also
happ ens to b e a language with overt AGR in the noun phrase
el
the a hand
sen in el in
you GEN hand sg
your hand
on un el i
he GEN hand sg
his hand
Similar arguments as were forwarded concerning Hungarian lead us to the
conclusion that the noun phrase in Turkish is headed by an In ectional
element which hosts AGR as in The only di erence b etween Turkish
and Hungarian is that the nominal AGR in Turkish assigns genitive case
not nominative case
The Turkish gerund is constructed by adding dIg to a verb stem
Turkish data drawn from Underhill
A PUZZLE AND ITS SOLUTION
Halil in kedi ye yemek ver me di g i
Halil GEN cat DAT fo o d ACC give NEG ING sg
Halil s not giving fo o d to the cat
As in English the Turkish gerund b ehaves like a noun phrase in its distribu
tion and in showing genitive case on the sub ject On the other hand again
as in English kediye yemek vermedi gi clearly constitutes a verb phrase
Nouns do not take accusative complements in Turkish for example any
more than in English
But if we analyze the noun phrase in Turkish as in an extraordinarily
simple account for the gerund falls into our lap under analysis the noun
phrase and sentence involve In ectional elements taking pro jections of N
and V resp ectively The exceptionality of the gerund consists therein that
the nominal In ectional element exceptionally takes VP as a complement
instead of a pro jection of N a gives the structure of a non gerundive
noun phrase in Turkish b that of a gerund
a XP b XP
GEN X GEN X
X N X VP
The source of the gerund construction under this analysis is a selectional
quirk of X in the gerundive X exceptionally takes a verbal rather than
nominal complement
In English we need only supp ose that there is an empty nominal AGR
assigning Genitive case exactly corresp onding to the nominal AGR we see
overtly in Turkish With that we can imp ort into English the analysis we
just sketched for gerunds in Turkish giving us a remarkably simple and
principled solution for the puzzle of the gerund The pieces t together this
way
XP Noun Phrase
XP X
John s X VP
AGR V XP
building a spaceship
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
The IdentityofX
The most imp ortant lo ose end in my solution is the identity of the category
X One answer would b e that it is a new previously unrecognized category
it is simply the noun phrase correlate of In and the only memb er of cate
gory X is the invisible AGR which assigns genitive case One might ob ject
that it would b e imp ossible for a language learner to learn of the existence
of X if there is never anyovert word of that category For this reason we
would have to assume that X as the category of the noun phrase is supplied
by Universal Grammar and not learned
If the absence of overt memb ers of category X do es not necessarily
render the hyp othesis of the existence of X untenable it would nonetheless
be much preferable if we could identify a class of lexical elements of category
X The lexical class of category In is the class of mo dals The question
is then What is the noun phrase equivalent of the mo dal And the only
real candidate as far as I can see is the determiner There is some a
priori plausibility to taking Determiner to b e our mystery category Itis
generally assumed that every word pro jects a phrasal no de If there is a
DetP though under standard assumptions ab out the structure of the noun
phrase it never contains any material except the determiner Where are
the complements and sp eci ers of the determiner If weassumethatX
Determiner we kill two birds with one stone weprovide category X
with lexical instantiations and we provide determiners with sp eci ers the
p ossessor and complements a pro jection of N
DP DP DP
DP D DP D D
John s D NP John s D NP D NP
every N AGR N the N
moment book book
On the basis of this sp eculation I will use D to denote the mystery
category X throughout and I will call the hyp othesis that there is an In
ectional head of the noun phrase the DP analysis
It is imp ortant to note though that there are really two questions here
that turn out to b e partially indep endent Is there an In ectional head
Ihave b een somewhat misleading in in that every is the sole determiner which
co o ccurs with a p ossessor All other determiners are ill formed in this context e g
John s the book I discuss this in some detail in Chapter Four
A PUZZLE AND ITS SOLUTION
of the noun phrase and If there is an in ectional head of the noun
phrase is the determiner its lexical instantiation In the rst part of the
thesis though I use the symb ol D to denote the mystery category X I
am for the most part only concerned with the rst question In Chapter
Four I turn to the second question whether in fact Determiner D
Sentence and Noun Phrase
The solution I have prop osed is in e ect to assign a more sentence like
structure to the English noun phrase than is commonly assumed This is
attractive for conceptual reasons in addition to the empirical advantages it
provides Verb versus noun is the most fundamental opp osition in grammar
and it is app ealing to b e able to assign the phrases built on them sentence
and noun phrase resp ectively parallel structure
Similarities b etween noun phrase and sentence are a recurrent theme in
grammatical study Sentence and noun phrase play a distinguished role in
many asp ects of grammar they were the two cyclic no des for instance in
earlier versions of transformational grammar they are also the two cate
gories whichfreelycontain sub jects
On the other hand there are very substantial di erences in noun phrase
and sentence structure which cannot b e ignored A recurring theme of the
thesis is noun phrase sentence similarities and di erences I compare noun
phrase sentence structure in a general way brie y for completeness sake
Iamchie y concerned however with a single sentential asp ect of the noun
phrase the existence of an In ectional head of the noun phrase
Finally while we are on the topic of noun phrase sentence parallels it
is p erhaps relevant to note that the puzzle of howtoputthetwo pieces of
the Poss ing gerund together is actually the same problem as led to the IP
analysis of the sentence In earlier generative grammar the no de S sto o d
out as an exception to a restrictiveversion of X bar theory that requires
all phrases to b e headed The solution prop osed for tting the pieces of
the sentence together was to raise the status of a minor category mo dal to
head of the sentence and to p ostulate an entirely abstract head in sentences
which lacked mo dals I have simply imp orted this solution into the noun
phrase to solve the puzzle of the gerund
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
Overview
The organization of the thesis is as follows Chapter Two is titled Noun
Phrase and Sentence I b egin with a general discussion of parallels that
have b een seen b etween sentence and noun phrase historically and parallels
in their structure within current theory In section I fo cus on the question
of In and AGR in the noun phrase presenting a survey of languages in
which nouns show agreement with their p ossessors After considering the
evidence for an In ectional head of the noun phrase I consider how this
prop osal should b e sp elled out in section In section I discuss an
issue raised in a new form by the In in NP analysis which is of particular
relevance to noun phrase sentence parallelism the question of PRO in the
noun phrase Finally in section I treat some of the di erences b etween
noun phrase and sentence
Chapter Three is devoted to the English gerund I present in detail the
evidence whichshows that it is accurate to characterize the gerund as a
creature which is half noun phrase half verb phrase I discuss previous
attempts to solve this riddle and incorp orate asp ects of several of these
analyses esp ecially that of Jackendo into myown solution An
idea that plays a central role in my solution is that phonologically dep en
dent a xes can b ehave as indep endentwords syntactically Here I rely
esp ecially on Baker b
In Chapter Four I turn to the question whether determiners are the
lexical elements that o ccupy the D p osition I argue that a ma jor motivation
for assuming so is that it provides us with enough p ositions in a Two Bar
X bar theory to account for the quite complex range of distinctions to b e
found in the structure of the noun phrase sp eci er Again I rely heavily
on Jackendo I also discuss the adjective phrase at some length
arguing for parallel analyses of adjective phrase and noun phrase
Chapter
Noun Phrase and
Sentence
General Similarities
The similarities b etween noun phrase and sentence have received much
attention in Generative Grammar In this section I will consider a few of
those similarities in a general way
Lees the rst do ctoral dissertation to come from MIT in linguis
tics considered the similarities b etween sentences and noun phrases He
noted rst that sentences and noun phrases are similar in their external
distribution Both sentence and noun phrase o ccur as sub ject or direct
ob ject b oth sentence and noun phrase undergo Passive
a John surprised me
That John came surprised me
b Iknow John
Iknow that John came
c John was known t bymany linguists
That John came was known t by many linguists
For this reason Lees assumed that emb edded sentences were dominated
by an NP no de For him nominalization included not only derived nom
inal and gerund but all categories with sentence likeinternal semantics
which app ear in an argument p osition This was a common view in early
generative grammar At least in some contexts emb edded sentences were
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
dominated by noun phrases sometimes including noun heads whichwere
deleted b efore surface structure
Of course b ecause two phrases share the same distribution and are
sub ject to the same transformations do es not mean that they are necessar
ily the same category Anobvious alternative is that the pro cesses which
treat NP and S the same are stated so as to op erate on a class of categories
of whichNPandS are memb ers This is the current view NP and S are
the arguments
NP and S are not only distinguished in b eing arguments they were also
distinguished as b eing the two cyclic no des in earlier generative grammar
That NP and S should b e so distinguished is not surprising Noun and
verb are the two most basic categories they play a centralroleinevery
language NP and S are their maximal pro jections in an intuitive sense
which I will make precise b elow This do es not explain why NP and S
have precisely the prop erties they have but it do es lead us to exp ect them
to play a sp ecial role in the grammar
Another waythatsentences b ehave rather like noun phrases is in par
ticipating in binding relations Consider the following examples
a that words are meaningless refutes itself
i i
b that words are meaningless refutes it
i i
that John is dead means that he do esn t knowit
i i
c it proves that Bill thinks that words are meaningful
i i
illustrates sentences participating in binding relations that are sub ject
to the binding conditions a b and c illustrate binding conditions
A B and C resp ectively
Lees also noted that certain noun phrases namely derived nominals
were similar to sentences in their internal structure and he accounted for
these similarities by deriving the noun phrases transformationally from sen
tences The internal similarities b etween sentence and noun phrase will b e
of much more concern for us than the similarities in their distribution The
most imp ortant reason for deriving noun phrases from sentences was to
account for the near synonymy in pairs like the following
a Nero s destruction of Rome dismayed the Senate
b That Nero destroyed Rome dismayed the Senate
No accountwas given of the interpretation of either sentences or noun
phrases but it was considered that simplex sentences were the domain of
interpretation Hence to account for the synomymy of the noun phrase
GENERAL SIMILARITIES
in a and the sentential sub ject of b it was necessary to derive
them b oth from the same simplex sentence viz Nero destroyedRome
The relevant part of the interpretation of simplex sentences is represented
in the current theory by grids by assuming destroy and destruction have
the same grid we can disp ense with the transformational account of
Sentences and noun phrases are also similar with resp ect to pro cesses
likecontrol and binding The basic binding facts are the same in sentence
and noun phrase
John p ortrayed himself
i i
John s protrayal of himself
i i
himself p ortrayed John him
i i i
his own p ortrayal of John him
i i i
John recommended for himself to p ortray himself
i i
John recommended his own p ortrayal of himself
i i
John recommended for himself to p ortrayhim
i i
John recommended his own p ortrayal of him
i i
Control facts are also similar in noun phrase and sentence Adjunct
clauses can only b e controlled by the sub ject not the ob ject
a John criticized Bill after his talk
j j
b John s criticism of Bill after his talk
j j
c John criticized Bill after PRO talking
j j
d John s criticism of Bill after PRO talking
j j
Both c and d are ne where John controls PRO
When Chomsky intro duced a non transformational account of the the
matic similarities b etween sentence and noun phrase Chomsky he
also considered the fact that a structural sub ject ob ject distinction was
necessary in the noun phrase as well as sentence and intro duced the no de
N and X theory precisely for this reason If we de ne c command as fol
lows c commands if neither dominates the other and the rst branch
ing no de dominating dominates then with the intro duction of N bar
the noun phrase and sentence are similar enough in structure to account
for the facts of and The sub jects of b oth noun phrase and
sentence assymetrically c command the ob jects allowing us to capture the
assymetry in binding and control facts
A p ointonwhichsentence and noun phrase remain dissimilar under
Chomsky s account which has b ecome the standard account is Case
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
and assignment to the sub ject In the noun phrase the head s external
role is assigned internal to its maximal pro jection In the sentence the
verb s external role is assigned externally To distinguish internal and
external assignment then it seems wemust again use the relation c
command with the rst branching no de de nition Actually we cannot say
rst branching no de but rst no de otherwise wewould incorrectly char
acterize the role assigned to John in John s graduation for example as
an internal role If lack of c command by the head is the relation which
de nes external assignment wemust characterize the relation b etween
the no de which assigns the external role and the recipient ofthatroleas
something di erent Namely VP do es not c command the sub ject of the
sentence The relation b etween VP and the sub ject is one of m command
m for maximal the term is from Chomsky a m commands
i neither dominates the other and the rst maximal pro jection dom
inating dominates Of course the relation is actually tighter than
simply m command namely government Government is a sp ecial case of
m command
The other p oint of dissimilaritybetween sentence and noun phrase is
Case assignment to the sub ject In recentwork Chomsky b assumes
that the Case assigner of the sub ject of the noun phrase is the noun head
The Case assigner of the sub ject of the sentence on the other hand is
not the verb but AGR in In In either case the relation b etween the
Case assigner and the sub ject is again one of m command not c command
I will return to the c command m command distinction in section
I will argue that the distinction is only necessary b ecause the structural
p ositions standardly assigned to sub ject of noun phrase and sub ject of
sentence are not su ciently parallel to account for the similarities in their
b ehavior in a simpler manner What is of greater interest at the moment
however is Case assignment to the sub ject of the noun phrase There is
evidence that if taking the noun to b e the assigner of genitivecaseisnot
obviously inadequate in English it is not adequate as a universal solution
Namely there are numerous languages in which Case assignment to the
sub ject of the noun phrase is much more similar to Case assignmenttothe
sub ject of the sentence than it is in English This will lead us to a di erent
structure for the noun phrase in these other languages a structure which
is much more similar to the structure of the sentence The question which
then arises is whether this other structure the DP analysis is adequate
as a universal characterization of noun phrase structure if the standard
analysis is not I will show that it is adequate in fact highly desirable for English
INFL IN THE NOUN PHRASE
In in the Noun Phrase
There are numerous languages in which the noun phrase is much more like
the sentence than it is in English in that the noun phrase in these languages
has one or b oth or the following prop erties a p ossessed noun agrees
with its sub ject in the same way that the verb agrees with its sub ject
and the p ossessor receives the same case as the sub ject of the sentence
rather than a sp ecial genitive case Schematically
NP nom erg N agr
NP i i
Both of these phenomena p oint to the existence of an AGR in the noun
phrase we see it overtly and we see its e ects in the case assigned to the
p ossessor If there is an AGR then the minimal assumption is that there is
an In like p osition which it o ccupies If not wemust nd an explanation
for whyAGR o ccupies di erent p ositions in the sentence and noun phrase
The only alternative to p ostulating a noun phrase In which suggests
itself is that AGR is adjoined to N
NP
NP N
N
N AGR
Not only is this less desirable a priori b ecause it makes it more di cult
to account for the constraints on the p ositions in whichAGR app ears
but it is also empirically inadequate Namely it is reasonable to supp ose
that the con guration illustrated in with V substituted for N is
the structure of ob ject agreement markers sub ject agreement markers are
generated in In ob ject agreement markers in the verb If NP lacks an In
like p osition we predict that it will only have ob ject agreementmarkers In
fact in Yup ik nouns have both sub ject and ob ject agreement markers
Thus the hyp othesis under which illustrates the only p osition for AGR
in the noun phrase is empirically inadequate and we are forced to assume
an In like p osition in the noun phrase
Let us b egin then by considering the facts from Yup ik in more detail
The ob ject agreement is not agreement with an actual ob ject I have called it
ob ject agreement b ecause it is morphologically identical to ob ject agreement in the
sentence See immediatelybelow section
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Yup ik
Yup ik a Central Alaskan Eskimo language provides a textb o ok exam
ple of a language with AGR in the noun phrase Nouns even concrete
nouns agree with their p ossessors The agreement they show is the same
agreement morpheme which is found on the verb sharing even the same
suppletions Furthermore the sub ject of the noun phrase takes ergative
case the case of sub jects of transitiveverbs
angute m kiputa a
man ERG buy OM SM
the man b ought it
angute t kiputa a t the men pl b oughtit
angute k kiputa a k the men du b oughtit
angute m kuiga
man ERG river SM
the man s river
angute t kuiga t the men s pl river
angute k kuiga k the men s du river
The parallelism in agreement and Case assignment is immediately ac
counted for if we assume parallel structures
IP
DP I
angutet I VP
AGR V
t kiputaa
SM abbreviates sub ject agreementmarker OM abbreviates ob ject agreement
marker
INFL IN THE NOUN PHRASE
DP
DP D
angutet D NP
AGR N
t kuiga
The lexical head kiputaa or kuiga raises to join to AGR p ossibly at PF
On the other hand there is a di erence b etween the two structures
Namely the verb is agreeing with two arguments whereas the noun has
only one argument This might suggest that the alternative to the DP
analysis illustrated in is in fact correct Supp ose that a given head
can only agree with one argument at d structure head raising may create
elements containing multiple agreementmarkers after d structure
At d structure a head can b ear at most one AGR element
We could argue that In is necessary in the sentence b ecause the verb has
two arguments and twoAGR s but it can only b ear one of the AGR s
itself hence the necessity of an In to b ear the other AGR The noun on
the other hand has only one AGR thus no noun phrase In is necessary
DP NP
DPi D NPi N
D VP N
D AGRi V DPj N AGRi
e t V AGRj pro kuiga t
kiputa a
But under this analysis it is curious that p ossessed nouns pattern mor
phologically with transitive verbs rather than intransitiveverbs Unp os
sessed nouns pattern with intransitiveverbs
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
yurartuq s he dances
yurartu t they pl dance
yurartu k they du dance
arnaq a woman
arna t women pl
arna k women du
Despite the fact that unp ossessed nouns have no argument they b ear an
agreement marker which enco des their own referential features sp ecif
ically numb er Morphologically this agreement marker is identical to
that on the verb Let us assume that it is in fact the same element AGR
Tonowwehave made the implicit assumption that AGR is licensed lo osely
sp eaking by b earing an agreement relation to an argument Wenow need
to qualify that assumption
AGR is licensed either A by b earing the Agreement relation to an
argument or B by a xing to the semantic head of an argument
Reconsider p ossessed nouns now Possessed nouns also show own
agreement and this agreement corresp onds to ob ject agreementintheverb
angute t kiputa a t the men pl b oughtit
angute t kiputa i t the men pl b ought them pl
angute k kiputa k t the men pl b ought them du
angute t kuig a t the men s pl river
angute t kuig i t the men s pl rivers pl
angute t kuig k t the men s pl rivers du
Thus the original structure given for the noun phrase in should b e
revised not to but to the following
DP
DPi D
angutet D NP
D AGRi Nj
t Nj AGRj
kuig a
k t suppletes to gket
INFL IN THE NOUN PHRASE
Mayan
A similar paradigm is found in Mayan I illustrate with data from Tzutujil
drawn from Dayley
Tzutujil lacks case marking but its agreement follows an ergative absolutive
pattern in that the sub ject agreement marker for intransitiveverbs is iden
tical to the ob ject agreement marker for transitiveverbs For example
x o q wari asp ect pOM sleep we slept
x ix wari pOM you pl slept
x ee wari pOM they slept
x ix qa kunaa j asp ect pOM pSM cure we cured you pl
x e kunaa j sOM pSM you pl cured him
x ee ki kuunaa j pOM pSM they cured them
In the Mayan literature the ergative agreementmarkers whichIhave
lab elled SM are called Typ e A and the absolutive markers OM
Typ e B The full paradigm is
B abs OM A erg SM
in nuu
at aa
ruu
oq qa
ix ee
ee kee
Ki is an alternantofkee
Nouns agree with their p ossessors and the agreementmarker they take
is the ergative marker SM
qa tza n our nose
ee tza n your pl nose
kee tza n their nose
As in Yup ik wecancharacterize the Typ e A AGR as AGR asso ci
ated with a functional category I or D and the Typ e B AGR as AGR
asso ciated with lexical categories Tzutujil di ers from Yup ik only in that
Tzutujil do es not use Typ e B AGR as own AGR on the noun
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Hungarian
In Hungarian as well similar facts are to b e found Hungarian di ers from
the other languages wehave examined in that it is nominative accusative
rather than ergative absolutive The relevant paradigm in Hungarian is the
following from Szab olcsi cf Szab olcsi
az en vendeg e m
my guest
the I nom guest p ossd s
a te vendeg e d
your guest
the you nom guest p ossd s
a Mari vendeg e
Mary s guest
the Mary nom guest p ossd s
Again the p ossessor shows the case of the sub ject of the sentence nominative
in this case rather than ergative and the head noun agrees with the p os
sessor This agreement is morphologically identical to the verb s sub ject
agreement On the basis of these examples in fact Szab olcsi argues that
there is an In no de in the noun phrase She argues that In is sp eci ed
either for the feature Tense or for the feature Possessed the former when it
app ears in the sentence and the latter when it app ears in the noun phrase
Her In corresp onds to our In and her In corresp onds to
Tense Poss
our D
It may cause some concern that the de nite article precedes the p ossessor
in If the determiner marks the p osition of noun phrase In as we
sp eculated in the intro duction then the p ossessor in app ears in the
one place it should not app ear In particular if a nominal In selects NP
and the determiner marks the p osition of In there are four p ossible word
orders as follows
DP DP
POSSR D POSSR D
D NP NP D
Horro cks Stavrou argue for the same analysis and the same two features
for mo dern Greek Szab olcsi and Horro cks Stavrou havearrived at the same analysis
apparently indep endently Nouns do not agree with their p ossessors in Mo dern Greek
Horro cks Stavrou were concerned with accounting for extraction from noun phrase in
Greek I will discuss some of their facts shortly
INFL IN THE NOUN PHRASE
DP DP
D POSSR D POSSR
D NP NP D
The two orders that are excluded are those in which the Possessor app ears
between determiner and noun exactly as in
Szab olcsi notes that az is eccentric in its p osition however All other
determiners app ear where wewould exp ect them
Peter minden kalap ja Peter s every hat
Peter ezen kalap ja Peter s this hat
Peter melyik kalap ja Peter s which hat
Szab olcsi argues that az unlike the other determiners is not a noun phrase
In but a noun phrase Complementizer she argues that the noun phrase
in Hungarian parallels the sentence in structure not only in p ossessing an
In ectional head but also in p ossessing a nominal Complementizer pro jec
tion b eyond that
I will not consider this extension of the basic idea of noun phrase sentence
parallelism in any detail but I would like to brie y examine the facts Since
there are also facts from Greek which b ear on the question I will devote a
separate section to it The question of the p osition of lexical determiners
in Hungarian I take up again in section IV c
Digression Comp in the Noun Phrase
Szab olcsi p oints out that there is a second kind of p ossessor in Hungarian
whichtakes dative case and precedes az
Peter nek a kalap ja
Peter DAT the hat
Peter s hat
This p ossessor di ers from the nominative p ossessor in that it can b e freely
extracted whereas the nominative p ossessor cannot b e extracted at all
Szab olcsi argues that the di erence b etween the two p ossessors is that the
nominative p ossessor is the sp eci er of a noun phrase In whereas the da
tive p ossessor is the sp eci er of a noun phrase Comp The dative p ossessor
can b e extracted and still prop erly govern its trace whereas the trace of
the nominative p ossessor is to o deep inside the noun phrase to b e prop erly
governed from outside
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Horro cks Stavrou also argue for a Comp escap e hatch in
mo dern Greek though not on the basis of a dative p ossessor Horro cks
Stavrou note that many extractions from noun phrase that are ungram
matical in English are go o d in Greek
pyon akuses t mi t oti ap elisan t
i i i i
who hear s the story that dismiss p
who did you hear the story that they dismissed t
to kokino mu ip es pos aghorases t to forema t
i i i
the red me dat said s how b ought s the dress
the red you told me that you b oughtthet dress
He correlates this with the fact that there is a topic p osition in the noun
phrase in Greek
a to vivlio tu Chomsky
the book the gen Chomsky
Chomsky s b o ok
to endhiaferon ya to arthro afto
the interest in the article this
the interest in this article
to forema to kokino
the dress the red
the red dress
b tu Chomsky to vivlio t
i i
Chomsky s book
ya to arthro afto to endhiaron t
i i
the interest in this article
to kokino to forema t
i i
the red dress
He claims that this topic p osition is the sp eci er of a noun phrase Comp
K which also serves as an escap e hatch for extraction out of noun phrase
in Greek
to kokino mu ip es p os aghorases t to forema t
i KP i DP i
If Horro cks Stavrou s and Szab olcsi s claim that there is a noun
phrase Comp can b e veri ed and the evidence at least on the cursory
INFL IN THE NOUN PHRASE
examination wehavegiven it seems to indicate so it constitutes a strong
case that the noun phrase and sentence are parallel in p ossessing functional
heads and b olsters the more mo dest prop osal which I wish to defend
namely that there is a noun phrase equivalent of In
Turkish
Turkish also shows an agreement element on p ossessed nouns even on con
crete nouns Consider the following examples from Underhill
a el
the a hand
b sen in el in
you GEN hand s
your hand
c on un el i
he GEN hand s
his hand
In Turkish the p ossessor has genitive case not nominative or ergative
Also the agreement paradigm di ers from that found on matrix verbs The
paradigms are
Verbal Nominal
s y Im s Im
s sIn s In
s DIr s s I n
p y Iz p ImIz
p sInIz p InIz
p DIr lEr p lErI n
The capitalized vowels are sp eci ed only H their other features are
lled in by a pro cess of vowel harmony The capitalized D is a dental
stop unsp eci ed for voicing
If nominal AGR di ers from verbal AGR in Turkish in its morphological
form and in the Case it assigns it nonetheless b ehaves like a true AGR in
that it licenses pro drop In fact though wehave not mentioned it to now
the nominal and verbal AGR s in all the languages wehave discussed to
now license pro drop This is not a necessary prop ertyofAGR but it is a
typical prop erty cross linguistically Korn lt shows carefully that
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
the noun phrases in Turkish that can b e pro dropp ed are all and only those
whose features are marked by either nominal or verbal AGR i e sub ject
of the sentence p ossessor and ob ject of certain p ostp ositions Though
other arguments can b e dropp ed they cannot b e dropp ed freely but only
under restrictive discourse conditions Korn lt argues that pro drop is not
involved in such cases
Korn lt also shows that nominal AGR assigns genitive case For exam
ple the twoaremutually dep endent a noun phrase cannot b ear genitive
case unless it agrees with a nominal AGR and if there is anyovert noun
phrase which agrees with a nominal AGR it must b ear genitive Case
a pasta nIn bir par ca sI
cake GEN a piece s
a piece of cake
b pasta dan bir par ca
cake ABL a piece
a piece of cake
c pasta nIn bir par ca
d pasta dan bir par ca sI
Turkish also has English typ e gerunds In fact all sub ordinate clauses
are gerundive There are twotyp es known in the literature as verbal
noun and nominalization The verbal noun involves the a x mE
mEk the nominalizationinvolves the a x DIg non future or y EcEg
future There is a di erence in meaning which Underhill characterizes
as action verbal noun vs fact nominalization Their syntax is
virtually the same though the nominalizing morpheme is attached to the
verb stem after which nominal su xes nominal AGR case markers can
b e attached The complements and adjuncts the nominalized verb takes are
identical to those whichittakes as a matrix verb with the exception that
the sub ject app ears in genitive case not nominative case Examples
These p ostp ositional phrases have the surface syntactic app earance of noun phrases
and p ossibly are to b e analyzed as such e g masa nIn alt I table GEN under s under the table
INFL IN THE NOUN PHRASE
a i Halil her dakika i s im e karI s Ir
Halil every minute business s DAT interfere s
Halil constantly interferes in my business
ii Halil in her dakika i s im e karIs ma sI
Halil GEN every minute business s DAT interfere ING s
Halil s constantly interfering in my business
b Halil in gel di g in i bil iyor um
Halil GEN come ING s ACC know PROG s
I know that Halil is coming
c Kedi ye yemek ver me di g iniz do gru mu
cat DAT fo o d ACC give NEG ING p true Q
Is it true that you did not give fo o d to the cat
In c for example the verb give assigns the same array of cases it assigns
in matrix sentences there are no underived nouns whichtake a comparable
array of arguments
Korn lt argues that AGR is the head of these emb edded sentences that
their structure is exactly parallel to that of the non emb edded versions She
argues further that the structure extends to p ossessive noun phrases they
to o are headed by the AGR which app ears on the p ossessed noun and
assigns genitive case to the p ossessor She claims that p ossessive noun
phrases and sentences are b oth IP Under Korn lt s account then non
p ossessive noun phrases di er in syntactic category from p ossessive noun
phrase the former b eing NP the latter IP This problem can b e eliminated
by assuming exactly what wehave argued to now sentence and noun phrase
are b oth headed by in ectional elements In in the sentence D in the noun
phrase The di erence b etween p ossessed and non p ossessed noun phrases
is the presence or absence of AGR not a di erence of syntactic category
The Turkish facts are esp ecially interesting for two reasons they show
that at least in some languages there is an AGR in the noun phrase which
assigns Genitive case p ointing the waytoward an analysis in which there
is a similar but abstract AGR in English noun phrases and secondly the
Poss ing typ e of gerund app ears to b e rare cross linguistically but Turkish
shows that it is not simply a quirk of English I will have a great deal more
to say ab out the Poss ing gerund in the Chapter I I I in I I I b and b
I return brie y to Turkish gerunds
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
The DP Analysis
Concepts and Terminology
Ihave presented the essence of the p osition which I will defend in the rest
of this thesis that the noun phrase is headed by an In like category in
many languages including English and probably universally Iwould like
to sp ell out myhyp othesis carefully here and de ne my terminology
a In ectional Elements
First I havespoken of an In like no de or an In ectional element in
the noun phrase without de ning precisely what I mean I consider the
no de In to b e typical of a class of elements that I have elsewhere called
functional elements incontrast with thematic elements They are typically
called non lexical categories I resist this designation b ecause I assume
that complementizers and mo dals etc have lexical entries likeany other
word The twouncontroversial functional elements are Complementizer
and In ection
The primary prop erty of functional elements is this they select a unique
complement which is not plausibly either an argument or an adjunct of
the functional element C selects IP and I selects VP CandIdonot
taketypical arguments noun phrases prep ositional phrases sub ordinate
clauses not even as an option C and I do not takemultiple arguments
but only one IP oroneVP resp ectively And semantically at least on
an intuitivelevel C and I contrast with N V A etc in that they do
not describ e a distinct ob ject from that describ ed by their complement
In That John hit the bal l for instance the VP hit the bal l intuitively
describ es an act of hitting the IP John hit the bal l describ es an act of
hitting and the CP that John hit the bal l also describ es an act of hitting
This intuition is a ma jor motivation for the continuing debate over whether
V is not actually the head of the sentence In the passing on of the
descriptivecontent of their complements functional heads contrast with
thematic heads The noun phrase the bal l describ es a ball when that noun
phrase is the complementofaverb as in hit the bal l the VP emphatically
do es not describ e a ball but an action in this case an act of hitting
We see then that the relation b etween a functional element and its
complement and the relation b etween a thematic element and its comple
ment contrast starkly I assume that there are syntactic relations b etween
all heads and their complements or adjuncts by which those complements
and adjuncts are licensed a minimal condition on a well formed syntactic
Abney
THE DP ANALYSIS
structure is that every no de b e licensed by some such relation These rela
tions divide into two classes thematic relations on the one hand including
at least assignment and the relation by which adjuncts are licensed there
is no concensus ab out what precisely that relation is and functional se
lection or f selection on the other hand The syntactic relation b etween
a functional element and its complement is f selection F selection corre
sp onds semantically to the passing on of the descriptive content of the
complement The relation b etween a non functional element and its com
plement is a thematic relation for this reason I call non functional elements
thematic elements I distinguish functional elements from thematic ele
ments by means of the syntactic category feature F Functional elements
are F thematic elements are F
There are a large numb er of prop erties that typify the functional ele
ments in contrast with the thematic elements and justify our treatment
of them as a natural class I will discuss these prop erties in the next sec
tion I would liketopoint out here that these additional prop erties do
not de ne the class of functional elements functional elements are de ned
as those elements which p ossess the feature F There are atypical func
tional elements just as there are atypical elements within virtually every
grammatical category This do es not call into question the existence of the
classes it only means that in some cases it is di cult to decide howto
classify a particular item
b C Projection and S Projection
The distinction b etween f selection and thematic relations allows us to cap
ture the intuition that the verb is the head of the sentence without sup
p osing literally that S VP Let us distinguish two notions of pro jection
whichwemay call c pro jection category pro jection i e syntactic pro
jection and s pro jection semantic pro jection These designations are
of course mo delled on Pesetsky s c selection and s selection A
no de s c pro jection is its syntactic pro jection in the usual sense the maxi
mal c pro jection of V is VP IIP and C CP A no de s s pro jection path is
the path of no des along which its descriptive content is passed along The
maximal s pro jection of V is CP via IP likewise the maximal s pro jection
ofIisCP and the maximal s pro jection of C is CP Formally
is an s pro jection of i
a or
b is a c pro jection of an s pro jection of or
c f selects an s pro jection of
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
To illustrate graphically the c pro jection set of the lower V is circled in
a and its s pro jection set is circled in b
c D vs Det
Returning to the noun phrase what it means to prop ose an In like no de
as head is that there is a functional element a F category which heads
the noun phrase I have designated this category D and will continue to
do so but I must stress that the existence of a functional head of the noun
phrase and the question whether the determiner is the head of the noun
phrase are two separate questions Except in a handful of passages I will
b e concerned only with the former question whether there is a functional
head of the noun phrase in this chapter and the next In Chapter Four I
turn to the second question whether or not determiners are lexical items
of category D the way mo dals are items of category I
It is easy to con ate the two issues The In no de is the site of b oth lex
ical In s i e mo dals and of AGR This corresp ondence is not neces
sary however An account in which there were no indep endent morphemes
of syntactic category In would not b e incoherent As it happ ens there
is some evidence that mo dals are of category In they are in contrastive
distribution with overt AGR i e only when a mo dal is present do nite
verbs fail to mark agreement with the sub ject they are in contrastive dis
tribution with in nitival to which is itself in contrastive distribution with
AGR overt or non overt It is an op en question whether similar evidence
can b e pro duced to supp ort the claim that lexical determiners o ccupy the
THE DP ANALYSIS
same p osition as AGR in the noun phrase assuming there is an AGR in
the noun phrase
For the purp oses of the next twochapters then the designation D
is entirely arbitrary it is a hyp othetical syntactic category whichis F
but distinguished from In and Comp in that it b elongs to the nominal
system not the verbal system i e D is N F whereas In and Comp
are N F D is the site of AGR in the noun phrase By Determiner on
the other hand I mean the lexical determiners leaving op en the question
whether in fact D Determiner Det is synonymous with Determiner
A few more notes on terminology under the DP analysis the noun
phrase is DP not NP DP is sub ject to the Case Filter and Criterion DP
undergo es Passive and Wh Movement leaving b ehind DP traces When I
write NP I mean the maximal c pro jection of N NP under the DP
analysis corresp onds to N in the standard analysis I never use NP simply
as an abbreviation for noun phrase in a pretheoretic sense When I wish
to refer to the noun phrase without presupp osing an analysis I always
write out noun phrase this refers to DP under the DP analysis and
NP under the standard analysis
d Syntactic Features
Iwould like to conclude this section by sp elling out my assumptions ab out
the feature comp osition of syntactic categories in a little more detail
Anticipating conclusions of later chapters let us take the noun verb
distinction to b e the most fundamental categorial distinction adjectives
clearly group with nouns in English though not in all languages prep osi
tions less clearly group with verbs but probably so Adhering to standard
notation the feature that captures the noun verb dichotomyisthus N
I am not p ersuaded that adjectives and verbs have something in common
that nouns and prep ositions lack however in the way that they are group ed
by the feature V Certainly the adjective verb vs noun prep osition di
chotomyisinnoway on a par with the noun vs verb or functional vs
thematic dichotomies There are two ma jor motivations for having the fea
ture V to predict that there are four ma jor syntactic categories
when taken in conjunction with N and to p ermit a treatmentof
passive participles as unsp eci ed for V
As concerns the second p oint in section I I I I argue for a very dif
ferent view of passive participles which replaces any need for considering
passive participles to b e verb adjectivehybrids unsp eci ed for V
As concerns the rst p oint there are in fact clearly many more syntactic
categories than N V A and P in English We can also add at least Q Adv Det In Comp Conj And A and P are not so ma jor that they
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
app ear in all languages Some languages lack English typ e adjectives or
nearly so Swahili is a famous example Other languages app ear to lack
a separate class of adp ositions using nouns instead the Mayan languages
for instance
Further there are two distinct categories with very di erentsyntactic
prop erties which meet notional criteria of adjective ho o d i e they typi
cally denote physical attributes emotional states etc In some languages
adjectives in the notional sense are syntactically very similar to even
a sub category of verbs in other languages they b ehavesyntactically like
nouns Many languages have b oth syntactic typ es with a prep onderance
of one or the other It app ears then that there are at least twosyntactic
categories that are notionally adjectives one essentially nominal N
as in English and one essentially verbal N If so and if b oth syntac
tic typ es of adjective constitute ma jor categories then wehave ve ma jor
categories not four
These are my reasons for b eing skeptical of the standard N V cate
gory tetrachotomy I do not claim that I haveproven in this brief discussion
that there is no feature V nonetheless I do not adopt it I do assume
nouns are distinguished from adjectives and prep ositions are distinguished
from verbs but I do not assume that these two distinctions necessarily have
anything in common
I assume two ma jor features F N which de ne four ma jor classes
of syntactic categories I also assume that there are minor features that
distinguish sub classes of syntactic categories but I will not argue here for
a particular set of minor features Unless a given minor feature cuts across
ma jor syntactic category classes the question of the identity of the minor
features is not very interesting A candidate for a minor feature which
cuts across ma jor syntactic category classes is that which distinguishes
nouns and adjectives In section IV I examine the p ossibility that this
feature also distinguishes b etween main verbs and auxiliaries i e that
N A V Aux
The four ma jor classes of syntactic categories are as follows
See Dixon for a detailed notional characterization of adjective and a survey
of language typ es with regard to the syntactic expression of adjective notions
I do not assume that categories are necessarily de ned by their feature comp ositions
I assume that features de ne classes of categories but I leave op en the question whether
it is p ossible for two categories to have all feature sp eci cations in common yet remain distinct categories
THE DP ANALYSIS
F F
N V Aux P I C
N N A Q Adv D
These classes app ear not to b e exhaustive For example conjunctions like
and or app ear to b e F but unsp eci ed for N they app ear equally
freely in b oth nominal and verbal systems Likewise P seems to straddle
the line b etween functional and thematic elements one might wish to treat
it as unsp eci ed for F
Functional Selection
In this section I would like to consider the prop erties of functional cate
gories in more detail
The distinction b etween thematic and functional categories is a very
venerable one Aristotle in his Poetics makes a ma jor category cut b etween
complementizers conjunctions etc on the one hand and nouns verbs
and adjectives on the other The traditional Japanese grammarian Akira
Suzuki in his Gengyo Yonsyu Ron On Four Parts of Sp eech
distinguishes four syntactic categories noun verb adjective and particles
case markers auxiliary verbs etc The rst three are si the last zi
The distinction b etween functional and thematic elements is also im
p ortantinpsychology Children acquire functional elements later than the
matic elements Also in certain aphasias the ability to pro cess functional
elements is lost while the ability to use and understand thematic elements
survives
There are a numb er of prop erties that characterize functional elements
in contradistinction to thematic elements Like all ma jor grammatical dis
tinctions there is a substantial grayareabetween thematic and functional
elements there are thematic elements with some prop erties of functional
elements and vice versa and some items that are very di cult to cate
gorize at all Thisdoesnotnullify the distinction however And even
though none of the following prop erties are criterial for classi cation as a
functional element that do es not mean that it is false or naive to ascrib e
these prop erties to the class of functional elements The prop erties which
characterize functional elements then are
Functional elements constitute closed lexical classes
My source on Suzuki is Makino
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Functional elements are generally phonologically and morphologically
dep endent They are generally stressless often clitics or a xes and
sometimes even phonologically null
Functional elements p ermit only one complement which is in general
not an argument The arguments are CP PP and I claim DP
Functional elements select IP VP NP
Functional elements are usually inseparable from their complement
Functional elements lack what I will call descriptive content Their
semantic contribution is second order regulating or contributing to
the interpretation of their complement They mark grammatical or
relational features rather than picking out a class of ob jects
The nal characteristic concerning the semantics of functional ele
ments is in some sense the crucial characteristic It is the prop erty con
sistently chosen by traditional grammarians to characterize functional el
ements Aristotle de nes functional elements simply as words without
meaning in contrast to thematic elements words with meaning For
Suzuki the rst prop ertyofasi thematic element is that it denotes
something the rst prop ertyofazi is that it denotes nothing it only
attaches voice of heart to si quoted in Makino
Descriptive content what functional elements lack is a phrase s link
to the world If someone utters the word ball and there is a ball in view
the default assumption is that that ball is b eing describ ed by the utterance
This is the sense in which the noun bal l has descriptivecontent Verbs also
have descriptivecontent in this sense For instance if John hits Bill and
the word hit is uttered it is clear what action is b eing describ ed On
the other hand with the utterance of a functional element say the mo dal
wil l or the complementizer if it is not p ossible to pick out some bit of the
world in the same way Words with immediacy and concreteness are those
with descriptive content they are the words that survive when language is
reduced to bare b ones as when one is attempting to communicate with a
non sp eaker of one s language
More formally thematic elements are roughly those which denote a
predicate of typ e he ti i e functions from entities to truth values rst
order predicates This is uncontroversial with regard to common nouns
Verbs however are not usually considered to b e exclusively single place
predicates Under most accounts there are at least transitiveverbs of typ e
he he tii in addition to intransitives My characterization of thematic
elements as those with he ti denotations can b e maintained though if we
On the other hand predicates of typ e he he tii and he he he tiii etc are rst
THE DP ANALYSIS
adopt a somewhat extreme form of Davidson s event semantics Let us
assume that as in my informal discussion verbs are single place predi
cates over events Hit for example do es not denote x y x hit y nor
even e x y e is was an eventofx hitting y as Higginb otham b
assumes but rather e e is was an event of hitting For thematic ele
ments then this view involves a complete divorcing of semantic arguments
and syntactic arguments No syntactic argumentofaverb is a semantic
argument of it Syntactic arguments e g agent patient are related to the
verb via roles functions from events to ob jects For example the VP
hitaboy would have the denotation e e is was an event of hitting x
b oy x Patient e x I take assignment to b e a place syntactic
relation holding among a assigner a receiver and a role In general
the denotation of any phrase marker of the form b c where Theta b c
a
is e b e e c
In contrast to thematic elements functional elements take predicates
as arguments they are functors Following Higginb otham wemay
assume that In is an existential quanti er over predicates of events The
denotation of an I bar I VP is true i e VP e In similar fashion de
terminers taketwo predicates as arguments the characterization of deter
miners sp eci cally quanti cational determiners as relations b etween sets
is from Barwise and Co op er cf Higginb otham May The
denotation of the noun phrase the boy for instance is X X y b oy y
y b oy y if jy b oy y j unde ned otherwise
Two Notions of Command
Before I turn to a preliminary consideration of the second half of the
DP hyp othesis i e that determiners o ccupy the p osition of D I would
like to discuss one advantage that accrues to the DP hyp othesis simpliciter
The DP analysis allows us to re unify the notion of c command For most
purp oses the de nition of c command which is required is one in which
the c domain of a no de is the rst maximal category which dominates that
no de But with resp ect to binding in the noun phrase a simpli ed ver
sion of Reinhart s original branching no de de nition is necessary
order predicates in contrast with e g determiners which are of typ e hhe ti hhe ti tii
i e which take predicates as arguments If one nds ob jectionable the extension of
Davidson s ideas I present immediately b elow in the text thematic and functional ele
ments can still b e distinguished as rst order vs second order predicates
In a very broad sense of event which means something closer to situation than
event in the usual sense In particular I assume that stativeverbs and the like denote
events in the intended sense of event
There are a numb er of matters I am glossing over I give a formal and much more
detailed account in Abney in preparation
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Consider the noun phrases of
a picture of himself
b The city s destruction t
c His picture of himself
d Its destruction t
e Himself s picture of himself
f Himself s destruction t
If we assume the maximal category de nition of c command and as
sume that is not maximal the sub ject and ob ject p ositions mutually
c command So wewould exp ect that a John s picture of himself would
violate Condition C of the binding theory as the r expression John is c
commanded and b ound by himself Similarly his picture of himself should
violate Condition B and e and f should arguably b e go o d with each
anaphor binding the other For this reason Chomsky a adopts two
command relations c command with the branching no de de nition and
m command with the maximal category de nition We can avoid this
duplication of relations by supp osing as in the DP analysis that is in
fact maximal Then a noun s complementwould fail to m command its
sub ject as desired
It is conceptually disagreeable to have one general notion of command
m command and another sp ecial notion of command for binding theory
solely to b e able to account for binding in the noun phrase But matters
are in fact worse than this Consider again these adjunct control examples
from section
a John criticized Bill after his talk
j j
John s criticism of Bill after his talk
j j
b John criticized Bill after PRO talking
j j
John s criticism of Bill after PRO talking
j j
We can account for this paradigm if we assume that the after adjunct is
attached high enough that the coindexed elements Bil l and his orBil l and
PRO do not c command each other This do es not prevent the pronoun
from taking Bil l as antecedent but it do es blo ckcontrol of PROby Bil l
b Control of PRO is p ossible only when the antecedent c commands
PRO
Under the standard analysis this entails that c command not m command
is the requisite notion of command inasmuchaswe can attach the after
adjunct no higher than daughter of NP inwhich case the only no de inter
vening b etween Bil l and PRO is N bar
THE DP ANALYSIS
This is problematic b ecause it would predict that it would b e imp ossible
for a direct ob ject of a verbtocontrol an adjunct within VP In the structure
NP do es not c command IP hence control should b e blo cked
VP
V IP
V NP
But there is reason to b elieve that control is in fact not blo cked in this
con guration Consider the following examples
a I gave the gun to Mugsy PRO to get rid of it
i j i
b I gave the gun to Mugsy PRO to get rid of it
i j j
c I gave the gun to Mugsy PRO to get rid of
i j i
d I gave the gun to Mugsy PRO to get rid of
i j j
We can account for this paradigm by assuming there must b e mutual c
command b etween the controller and the adjunct When there is no op era
tor the adjunct can attach either under IP a or under VP b with
corresp onding di erences in the identity of the controller When the ob ject
p osition is b ound by an empty op erator on the other hand there must b e
mutual c command b etween the adjunct and the antecedent of the empty
op erator viz the gun Hence only the VP attachmentisavailable and
c is ungrammatical
If the adjunct is under VP however it is still an adjunct and for that
V Thus we are brought to the conclusion that reason cannot b e under
b and d have the structure shown in with control b etween
the ob ject and the adjunct This conclusion runs directly counter to the
hyp othesis that the sub ject ob ject assymetry in control in the noun phrase
is to b e accounted for by attaching the adjunct outside N It is p erfectly
compatible with the DP analysis however where the uniform de nition of
N but not V is a command is in terms of maximal pro jections and
maximal pro jection
Det as Head
In this section I would like to consider in a preliminary way the hyp othesis
that the determiner is the lexical instantiation of D
The primary motivation for putting determiners in the p osition of D is
to allowustomaintain a general restrictiveversion of X bar theory First
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
it is widely assumed in GB circles that phrase structure rules should b e
entirely eliminated If we eliminate the phrase structure rule
NP
NP N
Det
wemust explain what constrains the determiner to app ear in the p osition
it o ccupies i e under the standard analysis
NP
DET N
POSSR
N COMPL
In current GB theory an account for the distribution of some element
generally takes the following form app ears only where it is licensed
It is licensed minimallyby some semantically interpreted relation it b ears
to some other element assignment is the quintessential such licensing
relation Additional relations may imp ose additional restrictions
There is apparently a selectional relation b etween the determiner and
noun that provides a likely candidate for the licensing relation that de
termines the distribution of determiners Determiners only o ccur in noun
phrases and nouns often require a determiner e g singular count nouns
The question is then the nature of the relation b etween determiner and
noun We might assume that N selects Det alternatively DetP
The only real mo dels wehave for such a relation are the relation b etween
I and its sub ject or that b etween C and its sub ject following Fassi Fehri
Chomsky a in assuming that fronted wh elements o ccupy
Sp ec of C However N clearly do es not assign Det P nor is there any
likely source for a movement which lands Det P in Sp ec of N If determiners
were sub jects of N wewould exp ect e g that paw to b e interpreted as if
it were that s paw But determiners are neither arguments nor adjuncts
Another p ossibility is that Det P mo di es N and selection is imp osed
via this mo di cation relation i e Det P is only capable of mo difying N s
With some exceptions That for instance also o ccurs in AP s that big Butit
is su cient here that there exist determiners suchasthe every which only app ear in noun phrases
THE DP ANALYSIS
This would put Det P on a par with adjective phrases Determiners di er
from adjectives in imp ortantways however Adjectives even in prenominal
p osition clearly head full phrases as is evident from the fact that they take
their own sp eci ers
a nearly as devastating attack
AP
DetP never contains any material except Det Corresp onding to this AP s
app ear in p ositions other than the prenominal p osition p ostnominally as
complementof be seem etc as heads of small clauses Some Det s never
app ear outside of the noun phrase e g the a and others when they
stand alone b ehave exactly like noun phrases
that was a nice idea
DetP
Iwould like some
DetP
John thoughtabout those
DetP
This last fact suggests that DetP in fact is the noun phrase This leads
us to a third hyp othesis that Det selects a pro jection of N not vice versa
In this case there is a ready mo del for the relation b etween Det and NP
namely f selection Det has all the prop erties of a functional element It
constitutes a closed lexical class it is often phonologically weak and in
separable from its complement e g the and a and it lacks descriptive
content If Det b elongs to the same class of elements as Comp and In as
it certainly app ears to the minimal assumption is that it is licensed by the
same relation viz f selection The analysis allows us to accountfor
I am b eing a little sloppyhereinmy use of the word license Technically Detis
not licensed by NP under the analysis rather NP is licensed by Det Det is licensed
by b eing the head of DetP whichisnow the noun phrase and licensed in the ways that
wehave always assumed noun phrases are licensed Det is licensed by f selection only
in the sense that the analysis provides a place for Det in the network of licensing relations
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
the licensing of Det without inventing a new kind of relation the licensing
of Det generalizes with that of In and Comp
There are further X bar theoretic considerations that make the Det
as head analysis attractive First D is no longer defective with resp ect
to X theory but pro jects a phrasal no de and takes a complement like
other categories This is in keeping with the analysis of I and C which has
emerged in recentyears see Chomsky Stowell Chomsky a
in whichIandCaretaken to participate fully in the X system In fact the
Det as head analysis is almost forced if we wish to supp ose generally that
non lexical categories are not defective with resp ect to X bar theory
Another X bar theoretic advantage of the Det as head analysis is that
determiner and p ossessor no longer app ear in the same p osition There
is a tendency in current views of X bar theory toward the p osition that
max
there are X p ositions on the one hand and X p ositions on the other
X schema and the two are completely disjoint In the formulation of the
given in Stowell the Sp ec p osition like complement p ositions can
only b e lled with maximal pro jections not X s An X cannot ll an
max max
X p osition and vice versa This separation of X and X p ositions
max
is preserved and strengthened in Chomsky s recentwork an X can
max max
substitute only into an X p osition and an X can adjoin only to
max
an X mutatis mutandis for X The Det as head analysis allows us to
Xschema without confronting us with the adopt this strong version of the
embarassing question of whyDetPnever contains any material except Det
With regard to complements and sp eci ers wenowhaveavery sym
metric system Only functional categories i e C I D freely have overt
sub jects John was Bill seen John s Bill s
IP VP DP NP
picture if we assume that only functional categories can host AGR this
fact is immediately accounted for All and only sub ject p ositions are land
ing sites for movement where substitution is involved who Bill saw
CP IP
t Bill was seen t the city s destruction t
IP VP DP NP
Another factor whichmakes a parallel syntactic treatment of Det and
In attractive is their semantic similiarity The function of the determiner
is to sp ecify the reference of a noun phrase The noun provides a predicate
and the determiner picks out a particular memb er of that predicate s ex
tension The same function is p erformed in the verbal system by tense or
In ection The VP provides a predicate that is a class of events and tense
lo cates a particular event in time In Higginb otham s terms In binds the
VP s event place in the same way that the Determiner binds the op en place
in NP
The quali cation freely is meant to exclude cases where ECM into say SpecofAP
or Sp ec of PP under Stowell s account of small clauses p ermits sub jects
to exceptionally app ear in these categories
THE DP ANALYSIS
Though the idea that the Determiner is the head of the noun phrase
seems rather o dd at rst the conceptual considerations I havejustsketched
make it seem a very natural even necessary development of current views
of phrase structure I will discuss the Det as head analysis in more detail
in Chapter Four I haveintro duced it here b ecause I will o ccasionally make
reference to it in the remainder of this chapter and in the next
As a bibliographic note I would also liketopoint out that the Det
as head analysis and the analysis in which there is an In ectional i e
functional head of the noun phrase are also not so o dd that others have
not thought of it b efore me When I rst b egan exploring the p ossibility
I thought it quite novel but I have since discovered comparable prop osals
in Brame Hale Hellan Horro cks Stavrou
Hudson Korn lt Kuro da Reuland Szab olcsi
For the most part these authors app ear to b e unaware of each other s
work
The determiner as head of the noun phrase is also of course a very well
established tenet in the Montagovian semantic tradition Montague
and receives particular attention in the Generalized Quanti er prop osal of
Barwise Co op er cf Higginb otham May
The Position of s
In this section I would like to consider how Case is assigned to the p ossessor
under the DP analysis It is generally assumed that the s is involved in
Case assignment to the p ossessor But what precisely is the p osition of s
and what is its relation to the p ossessor
a Morphological Case A x
One p ossibility that can b e immediately eliminated is that s is a morpho
logical case marking As is well known s cliticizes to the entire sub ject
noun phrase it do es not app ear simply as an a x on the head
a a cousin of mine s house
b the man in the store s sudden disapp earance
If words like mine your are suppletive from I s or me s you s then cliticization
of s feeds morphological pro cesses This is not problematic
The text examples are not p erfectly well formed Later in a di erent context I mark
them as marginal I think they are su ciently go o d though to illustrate the claim that
s is not simply a case a x which attaches to the head of the noun phrase
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
b Determiner
Another p ossibility suggested to me byRichard Larson is that s in fact
o ccupies the determiner p osition i e that the structure is the following
DP
DP D
John D NP
s book
s app ears only pre nominally in noun phrases DP s b ecause it is in fact
a D The non co o ccurence of p ossessors and determiners is not problem
atic b ecause p ossessors do co o ccur with a determiner namely s Case
assignment to the p ossessor is parallel to Case assignment in the sentence
s corresp onds to AGR in assigning Case to its sub ject Possessors fail to
co o ccur with other determiners b ecause other determiners are unable to
assign Case
c Postp osition N Case Assigns
A third p ossibility is that s is a p ostp ositional Case marker Let us assume
Chomsky s b characterization of Case assignment in the noun phrase
He assumes the standard analysis of the noun phrase in which the noun is
head s is not present at d structure It is also not the assigner of Case
to the p ossessor Rather the noun assigns genitive case to the p ossessor
Genitive case in contrast to nominative and accusative case is an inherent
case and is assigned at d structure However even though it is assigned
at d structure it must b e realized at s structure this is the purp ose of
s insertion s is the realization of genitive case
This analysis is not readily transplantable into the DP analysis struc
ture It is crucial for Chomsky that the noun govern the p osition in which
s app ears this is a consequence of his Uniformity Condition on inherent
Case assignment by whichheintends to account for the lack of raising in
To account for genitive case assignmentinthePoss ing gerund Chomsky assumes
VP can assign genitive case when it heads a noun phrase This is highly problematic
Wehave already discussed how making VP the head of the Poss ing gerund violates
X bar theory strictly interpreted Further unanswered questions are why VP is the only
Case assigner which is a maximal pro jection and why VP do esn t assign genitive case
in other places such as to the sub ject of in nitives The DP analysis p ermits a much
less ad ho c account of gerunds as wehave seen and as will b e sp elled out in detail in
the next chapter
THE DP ANALYSIS
the noun phrase among other things In the DP analysis though the
noun do es not govern the p osition of the p ossessor This problem might
b e gotten around byintro ducing a notion of s government which di ers
from government only in that the elements whichanode can s govern
b elong to the domain of its s maximal s projection rather than that of
its maximal c pro jection Unless it can b e shown that s government plays
some indep endent role in the grammar however an analysis which did not
require it would b e preferable
Quite apart from the DP analysis an ob jection to Chomsky s analysis
is that it do es not explain why s only app ears with p ossessors If s is the
realization of genitive Case it is explicable why it can only app ear in the
context of genitive case assignment but this would still p ermit s app earing
p ost nominally destruction the city s or in AP s
On the other hand if s can only b e inserted under governmentbyN it
is di cult to explain why it can app ear in gerunds John s baking the cake
As mentioned in fo otnote Chomsky assumes that VP exceptionally
assigns genitive case here this move seems to me to b e entirely ad ho c
d Postp osition AGR Case Assigns
Alternatively we could take s to b e a p ostp osition marking genitiveCase
assigned byAGR not N
DP
PP D
DP P D NP
s AGR N
An apparent problem for the p ostp ositional analysis is that the deter
miner never actually app ears but is always empty when there is a p ossessor
This would seem to make the p ostp ositional analysis and the DP analysis
incompatible One p ossibility is that the disapp earance of the determiner
is actually an instance of a more general pro cess of determiner elision If
this is the case it turns this apparent liabilityinto an advantage Under an
analysis in which determiner and p ossessor o ccupy the same p osition there
is no determiner at all not even a deleted one making it di cult to ex
plain why p ossessed noun phrases have a de nite interpretation Under the
elision analysis we can assume that the determiner that has b een deleted is de nite
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Evidence for other cases of determiner elision is not hard to nd In
English consider the noun phrases
a a hundred nights
hundred nights
b those a hundred nights
those hundred nights
A is required b efore hundred unless a determiner pro ceeds when it is elided
A similar pro cess is found in Papago
a g a al
the children
b g ha je e
the p mother
their mother
c g g a al ha je e
the the children p mother
c am g miisa weco
the the table underneath
d g t ha je e g a al
the p mother the children
the children s mother
d am t weco g miisa
the underneath the table
under the table
e g a al ha je e
the children p mother
the children s mother
e am miisa weco
the table underneath
Two consecutive determiners as in c c are ungrammatical Either the
p ossessor can b e extrap osed as in d d other material in the sentence
can intervene b etween the noun phrase and the extrap osed p ossessor or
the inner p ossessor s determiner can b e elided Evidence that the bracket
ting in e is as shown and not am miisa weco is that am is a sp ecial
Data from K Hale p c Cf Hale et al
THE DP ANALYSIS
lo cative determiner that only o ccurs with p ostp ositions like weco am
miisa is ill formed
One piece of evidence weighing against the elision analysis is that rel
ative clauses are licensed by the but are prohibited with p ossessors the
book that I read John s book that I read If there is an elided the with the
p ossessor i e if the structure is actually John s the book that I read prior
to PF this is unexp ected
An alternative to the elision analysis is that there is a co o ccurence re
striction in English whichprevents nominal AGR from o ccupyingaDnode
which is already o ccupied by a lexical determiner Then overt p ossessors
cannot co o ccur with determiners b ecause the p ossessors would not receive
Case
A nal question is whether the genitive marker s is presentatd
structure or inserted after d structure If it is present at d structure we
must tread lightly vis a vis passive in the noun phrase Ob ject of p ostp o
sition is generally assumed not to b e a valid landing site for movement
if we take s to b e a p ostp osition this would apparently b e incompati
ble with noun phrase passive We can avoid this problem by taking s to
b e equivalent to a case marker in languages that overtly mark case For
concreteness let us assume case markers di er from true adp ositions in
that the phrase headed by the case marker is like a noun phrase with re
sp ect to assignment Case markers are functional elements that inherit
the descriptivecontent and the referential index of their complement
whereas true adp ositions are thematic elements that and Case assign
their complements I will denote case markers as K in contrast with
true adp ositions i e P Further let us supp ose that an argument
must b e a maximal s pro jection This means that a DP is an argument
when it is not the complement of a K but DP is not an argumentwhenit
is the complementofK Thus assigning a role to KP but not to the DP
buried inside it do es not violate the criterion Finally case markers
b ear the case features of the argument they head these case features must
by licensed by and coincide with the Case actually assigned to the argu
ment If DP s isaKP we can generate it as complement of a noun
receiving the internal role assigned by that noun and raise it to Sp ec of
D to receive genitive Case from AGR in other words the characterization
ofKIhave just given p ermits us to treat s as a p ostp ositional K without
forcing us to abandon the idea of passive in the noun phrase
It seems then that coherent accounts can given whether we take s to
b e present at d structure or inserted in the course of the derivation For
conceptual reasons I prefer a theory in which d structure can b e read o
of s structure hence a theory which eschews insertion op erations For this
reason I prefer the analysis in which s is present at d structure though
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
it will not b e crucial for anything I havetosay in what follows
There is also little evidence clearly favoring the s as case marker analyis
over the s as determiner analysis of section b or vice versa I prefer
the s as case marker analysis for two reasons historically s was a case
morpheme synchronically analyzing it as a case marker is more intuitive
than analyzing it as a determiner and the s as determiner analysis do es
not generalize to languages like Hungarian where p ossessors and lexical
determiners i e AGR and lexical determiners do co o ccur the s as case
marker analysis do es generalize to these languages
App endix Selection of DP
An obvious ob jection to the DP analysis is that unlike C and I D do es not
app ear to b e selected by a matrix head but as is well known selectional
restrictions are imp osed on N This would argue against D as the head of
the noun phrase But note rst that the kinds of selectional restrictions
imp osed on nouns are purely semantic and not structural in the way the
restrictions imp osed on C and I have b een argued to b e Namely the kinds
of selectional restriction imp osed on ob ject noun phrases are also imp osed
on sub ject noun phrases Restriction to animate nouns is one such example
as illustrated in the classic sentences
a i Sincerityfrightens John
ii John frightens sincerity
b i Sincerity fears John
ii John fears sincerity
The sub ject however is not governed by the verb which imp oses the re
striction Thus though it is unexplained whyverbs do not select for deter
miners this is actually a general problem verbs do not select for any part
of the noun phrase in the way they select for C and I
In regard to the selection of determiners there is a very interesting
paradigm from Navaho that merits consideration There is a small class of
Navaho verbs which select for semantic categories typically assigned to the
determiner as illustrated in Perfective stem given All Navaho
examples drawn from Young Morgan
a hi to kill one thing
tseed to kill two or more things
b gho d to run of one b eing
chaa to run of two b eings
jee to run of three or more b eings
THE DP ANALYSIS
c han to throw one thing
tl iid to throwtwo or more things
a aad to lose toss a at exible ob ject
deel to lose toss a slender exible ob ject
ne to lose toss a round or bulky ob ject
b tso oz to handle a at exible ob ject
la to handle a slender exible ob ject
a to handle a round or bulky ob ject
tlee to handle mushy matter
ta to handle a slender sti ob ject
c keez to fall of a slender sti ob ject
heezh to fall ow of mushy matter
ts id to fall of a hard ob ject
tlizh to fall of an animate ob ject
The distinctions made in are distinctions often enco ded in determiners
i e in class markers such as are found in many East African languages
What is most striking is that unlike the semantic selectional restrictions
found in English these restrictions are imp osed only on the object There
are no transitiveverbs in Navaho which select for the numb er of their
sub ject in this fashion
There are two facts that make this paradigm only a curiosity however
First though the selected argumentisalways a sole argument it is prob
ably not always an underlying ob ject run for instance is not a typical
unaccusative meaning Secondly and more imp ortantly Navaho do es not
actually mark any of these distinctions ob ject class or numb er in its de
terminer Despite this though I think that the Navaho paradigm do es
show that selection of determiner is not a p ossibility excluded byUniversal Grammar
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
PRO in the Noun Phrase
A question on which the DP analysis b ears is whether there can b e a PRO
sub ject of the noun phrase The DP analysis involves making the noun
phrase sentence like in suchawayasto make ro om for a PRO sub ject
Certain curiosities ab out noun phrase b ehavior which indicate it is as if
there was a PRO in the noun phrase have long b een noted In this section
I review and expand on these facts
Under the standard analysis PRO in the noun phrase is not a p ossi
bility without signi cantly altering certain assumptions ab out PRO if the
noun phrase is the maximal pro jection of N its sub ject p osition is always
governed by N hence PROisalways excluded
On the other hand the DP analysis p ermits PRO in the sub ject p osition
of the noun phrase In particular since D is not a lexical category we
exp ect it not to b e a governor hence its sub ject p osition may b e ungoverned
dep ending on whether there is an external governor and whether DP is
abarriertogovernment In principle then there maybea PRO in the
sub ject p osition of DP
PRO b o ok
The standard analysis app ears to make the right predictions for examples
like the PRObook as observed by Aoun Sp ortiche Iwanted
the book cannot mean either I wanted my b o ok or I wanted someone s
b o ok This indicates that there is neither a controlled nor arbitrary PRO
p ossessor present
However there is an explanation for the non o ccurence of PRO inde
p endent of the non governabilityofPRO It is very likely that the p osses
sor role is not assigned by the noun Possession is p ossible with every
concrete noun not varying from item to item as roles do It has b een
claimed by some that s is the assigner of the p ossessor role I would like
to state it slightly di erently the p ossessor role is assigned by D but
only when s is present This comes to the same thing if s isaD we claim
that s is the only determiner that assigns the p ossessor role If s is a
case marker we can supp ose that there is a unique empty D whichAGR is
able to o ccupy this empty D is the assigner of the p ossessor role
If this story is correct PRObook violates the Criterion there is no
role for PRO as there is no s On the other hand if s do es app ear
Under the accountinwhich s is a case marker we are forced to take the somewhat
curious p osition that the empty D that assigns the p ossessor role call it D cannot
e
app ear without AGR If D satis es count nouns need for a determiner and if it could
e
app ear without AGR wewould exp ect it to b e able to assign the p ossessor role to PRO
PRO IN THE NOUN PHRASE
there is either an AGR with it or it is itself equivalenttoAGR on the
s as determiner story in b eing a Case assigner Thus PRO s book is also
ill formed in this case b ecause PROisgoverned byAGR
An apparentweakness in this account is a problem with one of my
assumptions namely that D is the assigner of the p ossessive role
AGR
There are apparent recipients of the p ossessive role which app ear as com
plements of N as in the social security number of your spouse cf your
spouse s social security number If the p ossessive role is assigned byD
how can it show up inside NP I would like to suggest that the of involved
in these examples is a true prep osition which assigns the p ossessive role
In other words D assigns the p ossessive role but it is not the only
AGR
word which do es so D and of are unable to co o ccur for the same rea
AGR
son that twoverbal adjuncts which assign the same role cannot co o ccur
your spouse s social security number of the big lout is equivalentto the
ship was destroyedbyanExocet missle with that endish weapon Of your
spouse in the social security number of your spouse is thus distinct from
of your spouse in the deception of your spouse The former is a PP the
latter a KP The former is a assigner the latter not The distinction is
underlined in the fact that the assigner imp oses sp ecial restrictions on its
ob jects which are not imp osed by the case marker Consider
a the battle cry of the Visigoths
the battle cry of John
b the elimination of the Visigoths
the elimination of John
theory
a Derived Nominals
The rst argument that there is in some cases a PRO sub ject of DP comes
from theory The Criterion in its simplest form predicts a recipient
for the external role in action nominalizations like the destruction of the
in PROD b o ok Note that it is not su cient simply to saythatD is a governor
e e
indep endently of whether it has an AGR or not If D can app ear without AGR we
e
would predict that D b o ok without a PRO is well formed the countnounbook has
e
an acceptable determiner Ifwe claimed that D b o ok is bad b ecause D obligatorily
e e
assigns a role but there is nothing available in D b o ok to assign it to then we
e
run into problems with examples of noun phrase passive like the city s D e destruction
where wewould liketosay that D Case assigns but crucially do es not assign the
e
city
Whatever this restriction is it is not phonological i e no monosyllables asit
might seem at rst OK the battle cry of fools
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
city and in fact an agent is understo o d Ceteris paribus wewould exp ect
the agenttobesyntactically realized
DP PRO the NP destruction of the city
th
We can assume that NP assigns the external role of destruction to PRO
via predication For cases suchasCaesar s AGR destruction of
D NP
the city I wish to make a similar claim Caesar is Case assigned byD
AGR
but it is assigned byNP The empty D in the p ossessive construction
assigns the p ossessor role optionally I assume If the p ossessor receives a
role from N either externally asin Caesar s destruction of Carthage or
via an internal trace as in the city s destruction t D do es not assign
AGR
the p ossessor role and the sub ject receives only one role as desired
b Rationale Clauses
Ro ep er presents evidence that implicit agents b ehave as if they are
syntactically present which supp orts the claim that implicit agents are
indeed presentasPRO Consider
a the PRO destruction of the city PROtoproveapoint
b the city s destruction PROtoprove a p oint
a the PRO review of the b o ok PROtoproveapoint
b the b o ok s review PROtoproveapoint
Ro ep er exx
Ro ep er argues that the rationale clause is licensed only if the Agent role
is syntactically realized In the a sentences the rst PRO receives the
Agent role licensing the rationale clause In the b sentences on the other
hand the passivized ob ject lls the sub ject p osition excluding PRO Hence
the Agent is not realized and the rationale clause is not licensed
We cannot say simply that there must b e an Agent in the matrix clause
and it must control the sub ject of the rationale clause First there are
rationale clauses even where no control is involved
Jesus died that we mightlive
John cleaned o the table for Mary to haveroomtowork
Counter Williams I assume that predication is p ossible in the noun phrase
precisely b ecause I assume counter Williams that there is a maximal category predicate
NP within the noun phrase More on predication b elow section
PRO IN THE NOUN PHRASE
Let us assume that rationale clauses are licensed by a relation R b etween
the matrix and sub ordinate situations where the interpretation of R
is the purp ose of is Where the sub ject of the rationale clause is
PRO though R is sub ject to a condition on control Where the matrix
situation is an action as opp osed to a state there must b e an agent and
it must control the lower PRO Where the matrix situation is stative on
the other hand this is not the case
Roses are thornyPRO to protect them from gardeners
i i
Not only is there no agent but the sole argument roses also do es not
control PRO if we claimed that roses controlled PRO then wewould have
a Principle B violation b etween PRO and them
In these cases as observed by Lasnik it do es not app ear that
PRO has an arbitrary interpretation Rather the controller app ears to b e
the matrix situation Thus means that the fact of roses b eing thorny
protects them from gardeners
It is not necessary that the situation b e the controller in statives how
ever Consider
Sharks are streamlined PRO to cut through the water b etter
Here sharks is the controller situations in particular that of sharks b eing
streamlined cannot cut through water
The prop er generalization app ears to b e this with a matrix action
a stative situation there must b e an agent and it must control
the rationale clause With a matrix state a stative situation any
argument including the situation itself may b e the controller
This predicts contrary to Ro ep er that rationale clauses should in fact
b e p ossible with middles if middles can b e made stative This can b e
accomplished by making the matrix sentence generic
Continents sink PRO to replenish the earth s supply of magma
The distinction b etween this example and Ro ep er s ungrammatical the
boat sank to prove a point Ro ep er ex a is that the matrix sentence
in Ro ep er s example describ es an individual event hence is stative and
thus an agent is required
Finally Ro ep er notes that in contrast to passive in nominals and mid
dles passive in the sentence do es not nullify rationale clause licensing
The b oat was sunk to collect the insurance
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Ro ep er argues that the Agent role is in fact syntactically realized on the
passive morphology Baker Johnson and Rob erts prop ose that the
passive morpheme en behaves like a sub ject clitic Alternatively we can
analyze this implicit argumentasa PROaswell if we adopt a bi clausal
analysis of passive roughly
the boat was PROi en VP sink t PROi to collect the
Ag insurance
The matrix PRO or the en under the Baker Johnson Rob erts
prop osal b ears the agent role and licenses the rationale clause In nom
inals and middles the morphology is absent hence the emb edded passive
clause with its PRO is absent the Agent role cannot b e assigned and
the rationale clause is not licensed
the boat s D NP destruction t to collect the insurance
The long and short of this discussion is that when restricted to stative
cases Ro ep er s original observation still holds rationale clauses require
a syntactical ly realized controlling agent argument to b e licensed PRO
provides such a controller in the nominal though not in the passive
nominal where PRO is displaced by the fronted ob ject
Control Theory
A second argument that has b een forwarded in favor of a PRO in sub ject
of the noun phrase is provided by control theory Consider
Any attempt PROtoleave
The desire PRO to succeed
In the rst example the attempter is necessarily the same as the leaver
and mutatis mutandis for the second example This is explained if we
assume that a con guration of obligatory control is involved and that there
is a PRO sub ject of attempt desire
A problem is that similar facts arise even where control cannot b e in
volved For example in an attemptedescape the attempter is necessarily
the escap er but wewould not wish to say there is a control relation b e
tween twoPRO sub jects Apparently there is a purely semantic control
phenomenon following from the meaning of attempt
PRO IN THE NOUN PHRASE
Binding theory
Binding theory also provides arguments for the existence of PRO in the
noun phrase The simplest examples are the following
a pictures of themselves b other the men
b criticism of oneself is necessary in mo deration
The anaphors themselves oneself lackovert antecedents Principle A in
sists that a lo cal antecedent exist therefore it must b e non overt A PRO
sub ject of noun phrase is by far the most likely candidate
There is an alternative explanation one might suggest for a Con
sider
a pictures of each other were given t to the men
d Igave pictures of each other to the men
Supp ose that the men c commands each other in b Principle A is sat
is ed in the normal way even without a PROinpictures of each other If
we assume that binding theory is applied to a con guration in which noun
phrases are at least optionally reconstructed into their d structure p osi
tions a is grammatical b ecause it is identical to b at the relevant
level of representation In like manner we might explain the grammatical
ity of a by assuming that the d structure is in fact
e b other the men pictures of each other
This explanation do es not extend to b however thus b remains as
evidence for a noun phrase PRO
Parallel to b are examples like
PRO criticism of them
i i
where the criticiser s cannot b e them This can b e accounted for as a
Principle B violation if there is a PRO sub ject of criticism
Further examples are due to Ross
a PRO the realization that he has broken the law
i i
b PRO the realization that John has broken the law
i
j i
In a the realizer can b e he In b on the other hand the realizer
cannot b e John butmust b e someone else This is explicable as a Principle
C violation assuming there is a PRO present
It is also p ossible to construct violations of Strong Crossover though
the judgments are rather subtle Consider the following two discourses
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
John won in small claims court
The judge b elieved PRO the assertion that Bill cheated him
i i
I can t remember who it was who won in small claims court
Who did the judge b elievePRO the assertion that Bill cheated
i
j i
t
In it is p ossible that John is sp eaking for himself that he is the
asserter In it do es not seem that the sp eaker can b e assuming that
the asserter and the cheated were the same p erson whose identity is under
question There is a mild CNPC violation in making it less than fully
grammatical but that is irrelevant to the p oint under discussion
Again consider these examples from Chomsky b
a They heard stories ab out each other
i i
b They heard PRO stories ab out them
i i
c They told stories ab out each other
i i
d They told PRO stories ab out them
i i
Assuming Chomsky s binding theory the judgements are as would b e ex
p ected except for the b sentence They told stories about them Since
the whole sentence is the governing category for them wewould exp ect a
violation of Condition B just as in d On the other hand if PRO option
ally app ears in the noun phrase the noun phrase b ecomes the governing
category Thus sentence b b ecomes acceptable where PRO is not coin
dexed with them And in fact the only interpretation available is one in
which they heard someone else s stories ab out them In sentence d on
the other hand the PROmust b e coindexed with the sub ject hence with
them b ecause of the meaning of tel l Thus d cannot b e saved byallowing
the optional PRO to app ear
This argument is actually not consistent with an earlier argument at
least on the face of it It is crucial to the argument from paradigm
that PRObeoptional IfPRO is optional however then we lose our earlier
explanation of why they cannot b e the criticisers in criticism of them I will
not pursue the issue here b eyond suggesting that it mayberelevant that
criticism is a derived nominal while story is not Perhaps PRO is required
with criticism to receive the external role but not with story b ecause
story is not deverbal hence lacks a grid Story can acquire an external
role by a kind of back formation pro cess treating it as if it were deverbal This pro cess is presumably optional and somewhat marginal
PRO IN THE NOUN PHRASE
Arguments Against PRO in the Noun Phrase
a Yesterday s Destruction
Williams presents several arguments against having PRO in the noun
phrase One argument is that in the noun phrase temp oral adjuncts can ll
the sub ject p osition under certain circumstances When they do so they
presumably displace PRO yet rationale clauses are still licensed indicating
that the licensing of rationale clauses is not evidence for the presence of
PRO after all
yesterday s D destruction of the ship to collect the insurance
AGR
Iwould like to claim that PRO is in fact present in that the
structure is
DP
DP KP D
PRO yesterday s D NP
AGR destruction of the ship
Poss
Ag
Let us supp ose that PRO only counts as governed when it participates
in some relation with a governor In D Case assigns and assigns
AGR
yesterday but it has no relation to PRO hence do es not govern PRO In
this crucially di ers from
I assume that yesterday receives the p ossessor role from D is interpreted
AGR
as the destruction b elonging to yesterday the destruction of yesterday This highly
abstract sense of p ossession app ears to b e well within the range of asso ciations that
qualify as p ossession the range of relations qualifying as p ossession is notoriously broad
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
DP
PRO D
D NP
AGR book
Poss
In PROis assigned byD hence governed In PRO has no
AGR
relationtoD PROis assigned byNP receiving the external role
AGR
of destruction and of course PRO requires no Case NP do es not qualify
as a governor b eing a maximal pro jection else PROwould b e governed
by VP in in nitives as well
b Obligatoriness of Control
The ma jor argument against having a PRO in the noun phrase is that the
PRO in the noun phrase di ers from sentential PRO in its prop erties as
acontrollee PROinthesentence must usually b e controlled otherwise it
must b e arb PRO in the noun phrase on the other hand may b e b oth non
controlled and non arbitrary i e non generic Consider these examples
from Williams l
a The leaves should not b e b othered while PRO dessicating
i i
b The leaves should not b e b othered during PRO dessication
i i
a You should not b other the leaves while PRO dessicating
i i
b You should not b other the leaves during PRO dessication
i i
The PRO of the gerund must b e coreferential with the surface structure
sub ject This provides strong evidence that it in fact exists The PRO
of the noun phrase on the other hand is not sub ject to this restriction It
do es not require an antecedentatall
You should not enter the chamb er during PRO detoxi cation of
i j
the samples
vs You should not enter the chamb er while PRO detoxifying the
i j samples
PRO IN THE NOUN PHRASE
If there were actually a PRO in the noun phrase one would exp ect it to
b ehave likePRO in the sentence Since PRO in the sentence cannot takea
discourse antecedent this suggests that PRO in the noun phrase either
do es not exist or is not PRO
Wasow and Ro ep er also note the obligatoriness of control into
sentences but not into noun phrases They compare di erent kinds of
gerunds Consider
a I detest PRO loud singing
i j N
b I detest PRO singing loudly
i j V
a John enjoyed PRO a reading of The Bald Soprano
i j N
b John enjoyed PRO reading The Bald Soprano
i j V
a PRO sightings of UFO s makeMary nervous
j N i
b PRO sighting UFO s makes Mary nervous
j V i
a PRO the killing of his dog upset John
j N i
b PRO killing his dog upset John
j V i
All the verbal gerunds are go o d with coreference The nouns vary a is
bad the others are relatively acceptable
One p ossible explanation for these facts is the following It is prop osed
in Williams that control is not a direct relation b etween an antecedent
and PRO but is actually a relation b etween an antecedent and the clause
of whichPRO is sub ject and only indirectly a relation b etween antecedent
and PRO This would p ermit us to make a distinction b etween PROinthe
noun phrase and PRO in sentences if we supp ose that sentences are sub ject
to control but noun phrases are not The apparent di erence b etween
PRO in sentences and PRO in noun phrases with regard to obligatoriness
of control is actually a di erence in the ability of the phrase containing
PROtobecontrolled
A distinction in control prop erties dep ending on the nature of the phrase
of whichPRO is sub ject seems to me very reasonable Wemust b e careful
in howwe sp ell it out though Anticipating results of Chapter Three I
assume that PRO ing and Ing of gerunds are not distinct in syntactic
category b oth are noun phrases But they are distinct in their control
prop erties as wesawabove PRO ing patterning with in nitives and Ing
of patterning with noun phrases This is a ticklish problem to whichI
return in section I I I For now it must remain outstanding
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
In conclusion the DP analysis provides ro om for a PRO in the noun
phrase and there is evidence that suchaPRO exists At present the evi
dence is somewhat mixed b ecause of the di erences in control prop erties of
noun phrase PRO and sentence PRO but if the prop osal proves defensible
that these di erences trace to di erences in the phrase containing PRO
rather than to PRO itself the ma jor disadvantage of p ostulating a PROin
the noun phrase will have b een removed
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Di erences Between Noun Phrase and Sentence
The theme of this chapter has b een the similarities b etween noun phrase
and sentence particularly those noun phrase sentence similarities which
provide evidence for the parallelism of noun phrase and sentence structure
p ostulated under the DP analysis However there are also substantial dif
ferences b etween noun phrase and sentence This leads to understandable
skepticism of the DP analysis which could well app ear susceptible to the
charge that it is motivated by a handful of similarities only at the exp ense
of ignoring a much larger b o dy of di erences In this section I defend the
DP analysis against this accusation I present a long list of sentence noun
phrase dissimilarities to show that none of them seriously challenge the
DP analysis The ma jority clearly are concerned only with the relation
between the noun and its complements the remainder arguably so
Before I catalog these di erences though I consider one alleged di er
ence that clearly do es concern the structure of the noun phrase sp eci er
not its complements namely the alleged lack of predication in the noun
phrase
Predication in the Noun Phrase
It has b een claimed that there is no predication in the noun phrase Williams
N do es not predicate of an external and Rothstein claim that
argument as it is a non maximal category and only maximal categories
are syntactic predicates Consider the following examples
a I consider John a go o d lawyer
b Isaw John s lawyer
a involves a small clause in which agood lawyer is the predicate and John
is the sub ject This small clause corresp onds in meaning to the full clause
John is a good lawyer in which agood lawyer is likewise predicated of John
Now consider b If there were predication b etween the N lawyer and the
sub ject John wewould exp ect the sense John is a lawyer But b
do es not presupp ose that John is a lawyer rather that there is someone
who is a lawyer with whom John is asso ciated probably as client That
b do es not have a reading in which John is the lawyer is attributed to
alack of predication b etween N bar and p ossessor
These facts app ear in quite a di erent light however if we take seri
ously the idea that verbs denote situations If verbs denote situations the
predication involved in a is clearly di erent from predication b etween
a VP and its sub ject as in John left InJohn left the VP denotes an event
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
of leaving and its sub ject is identi ed with some role de ned bythatevent
in this case the leaver In Iconsider John a good lawyer on the other
hand the predicational noun phrase denotes a lawyer and the sub ject is
identi ed with the lawyer not with some role de ned relativetoalawyer
To bring home the p oint let us consider the examples
Caesar destroyed the city
Caesar s destruction of the city
Mo difying assumptions of Higginb otham let us take the denotation
of the VP destroy the city to b e the one place predicate
e x y city y destroy e R x e R y e
where DESTROY is a one place predicate true of exactly the acts of de
struction R is an Agent relation and R is a Patient relation The relation
between this predicate and the denotation of the sub ject Caesar is not one
of semantic predication rather Caesar lls one of the roles asso ciated with
DESTROY namely R of More precisely x x Caesar is added
as a restriction on one of the existential quanti ers assuming that In
serves to existentially bind the lamb da abstracted variable e of the
denotation of the IP Caesar destroyed the city is the following
e x x Caesar y city y destroy e R x e R y e
Iwould like to argue that the semantics for destruction is exactly par
allel Recall that the syntactic structure I assume for Caesar s destruction
of the city is
Or some platonic ideal of a lawyer an abstract essential lawyer For the sake
of concreteness let us assume with Montague that individuals are sets of prop erties
or functions from prop erties to p ossible worlds if wetakeintensionalityinto account
Then the predicational noun phrase a lawyer can b e taken to denote the set containing
only the prop erty of b eing a lawyer an archi individual The predicate is identi ed
with of the next phrase in the text should then b e understo o d as includes
Or to b e consistent with the previous fo otnote we could take it to denote the
singleton set containing the prop erty corresp onding to this predicate
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
DP
KP D
Caesar s D NP
N PP
destruction of the city
The NP destruction of the city I claim is semantically identical to the
verb phrase destroy the city Its translation is In DP the variable e
is b ound by D in the same way that In binds the e p osition in VP and
there is a syntactic relation of Predication b etween the maximal pro jection
NP and its sub ject Caesar whichisinterpreted just like the syntactic
relation of Predication b etween VP and its sub ject namely not as semantic
predication but as the lling of an argument slot by restricting a variable
e x x Caesar y city y destroy e R x e R y e
If this account is correct then there is in fact predication within the
noun phrase and the relation b etween John and a lawyer in Iconsider
John a lawyer is not predication at all but identi cation If predication
were involved in small clauses headed by noun phrases wewould exp ect
e g Iconsider John an expression of grief to b e synonymous with
SC DP
Iconsider John to have expressed grief but of course it is not
IP VP
I should add though that I do not wish to imply that NP always
predicates of the sub ject of DP I have already stated explicitly that I take
the p ossessive role to b e assigned by D not to b e an external role
of NP assigned via predication Thus John s expression of grief and John s
puzzled expression di er in the way John acquires a role there is syntactic
predication by NP in the former but not in the latter
Two more arguments Rothstein gives against predication in the
noun phrase are the optionality of the sub ject in the noun phrase and
the lack of pleonastics in the noun phrase The paradigm is
illustrative
More precisely the denotation of John is taken to include b e a sup erset of the
denotation of a lawyer where the denotation of John is the set of John s prop erties
and the denotation of a lawyer is the set containing the sole prop ertylawyer ho o d Cf fo otnote
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
a destroyed the city
the destruction of the city
b it is likely that John will leave
its likeliho o d that John will leave
The generalization is not quite noun phrase vs sentence however at
least not if Poss ing gerunds are noun phrases as is widely accepted and
as I argue in the next chapter Pleonastics are p ermitted in b oth Acc ing
and Poss ing gerunds
a I approve of there b eing a literacy exam for p olitical candi
dates
Iwas worried ab out it b eing to o obvious that Charlie was lying
b Iwas worried ab out its b eing to o obvious that Charlie was
lying
The sub ject of gerunds is also obligatory If it is not overt there must
be a PRO present as illustrated bythecontrast from Williams
cited earlier
a The leaves should not b e disturb ed while PRO dessicating
b The leaves should not b e disturb ed during dessication
Whether there is a PRO in b is immaterial here What is imp ortant
is that the obligatorily agent controlled reading of the adjunct in a
indicatesthataPRO is indeed present
In short in some noun phrases namely gerunds the sub ject is oblig
atory and pleonastics are allowed These are precisely the noun phrases
in which a VP app ears in place of an NP under the analysis of gerunds I
sketched in the intro duction
Under the DP analysis then the generalization is that VP requires a
sub ject to predicate of whereas NP is capable of predicating of a sub ject
Poss ing with there is ill formed but it is generally agreed that this is due to ex
traneous factors This is esp ecially likely in light of the well formedness of the there
example in a p erhaps it has to do with the fact that there b ears an inherent case
in its adverbial function which clashes with genitive case cf
i a yesterday s party
b then s party
now s party
here s party
there s party
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
but do es not require a sub ject PRO is obligatory only where predication is
obligatory and pleonastics are p ermitted only where predication is oblig
atory This commits us to a weaker p osition than Rothstein s namely
that syntactic predicates do not always require sub jects only verbal syn
tactic predicates do This revision of Rothstein s claim seems reasonable
esp ecially in light of the fact that with regard to other forms of argument
taking e g internal assignment verbs demand their arguments to b e
syntactically presentinaway that nouns do not The only nouns whose
arguments are not freely deletable are derived nominals and if Leb eaux
claims are correct derived nominals are not nouns at LF but verbs
They are certainly atypical nouns on anyone s account Wemay claim
then that syntactic arguments of verbs b oth arguments and predication
arguments are obligatory while those of nouns are in general optional
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Catalog of Di erences
In this section I give a fairly exhaustive list of the constructions found in
the sentence which are not found in the noun phrase Many of these facts
are old observations some as far as I know have not b een noted previously
in the literature The purp ose of presenting this catalog of di erences is
to show that they do not call into question the parallelism b etween noun
phrase and sentence structure p ostulated under the DP analysis The DP
analysis p ostulates similar sp eci er structures for noun phrase and sentence
most of the di erences listed here have clearly to do with noun complement
structure as it contrasts with verb complement structure I do not attempt
to give detailed analyses of all these constructions however doing so would
b e a thesis in itself I only wish to show that the fact of these di erences is
not problematic for the DP analysis
a A Preliminary Pro cess vs Result
In examining the di erences b etween sentence and noun phrase we will have
frequent cause to compare derived nominals with the verbs from which they
derive In doing so it is crucial to make a distinction which is to o frequently
not made in the literature on derived nominals namely between pro cess
nominals and result nominals Pro cess nominals denote actions events
and result nominals denote ob jects Consistently the grid of the verb
is preserved only in pro cess nominals not result nominals Result nominals
mayhave PP complements that app ear to corresp ond to arguments of the
verb but they are never obligatory and frequently show other indications
of b eing mo di ers not arguments This is most clearly seen with derived
nominals that have b oth result and pro cess readings suchasexamination
a examination of the students will take several hours
examination will takeseveral hours
b the examination of the students was printed on pink pap er
the examination was printed on pink pap er
Examination in a denotes an action whereas examination in b
denotes a concrete ob ject Though the ob ject is ill formed with the result
nominal here this is not always the case
a a reconstruction of the events will take a long time
a reconstruction will take a long time
Result nominal is something of a misnomer in that result nominals do not always
denote the result of the action of the verb though that is a often the case Following
Grimshaw I use the term in a extended sense to cover all nominals that denote
ob jects concrete or abstract instead of events
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
b John s reconstruction of a th century French village was de
stroyed in the re adapted from Anderson
John s reconstruction was destroyed in the re
It is not always a trivial task to determine whether one is dealing with
a pro cess nominal or a result nominal in a given example There are a
numb er of diagnostics that are helpful if not fo olpro of These are collected
in Grimshaw
Process nominals do not pluralize Thus the clipping of the grass is
a pro cess nominal but in the plural the clippings it can only b e a
result nominal
Process nominals do not occur with demonstrative determiners Thus
that examination of the students occuredaweek ago is distinctly o dd
whereas that examination is twenty pages long is ne
Result nominals often require a determiner Consider examination
p
was ten pages long but examination of the students took ten hours
Process nominals do not occur with of NP s The adjunct of NP s only
has a concrete p ossess ion reading which is incompatible with events
the discovery of the vaccine s occuredatanopportune moment cf
the vaccine s discovery occured at an opportune moment
The distinction b etween pro cess and result nominals is made clearly in
Anderson and Grimshaw but it is much more often completely ignored
with the result that many of the arguments in the literature concerning
derived nominals are compromised Two examples o ccur esp ecially fre
quently John s belief to be intel ligent is rep eatedly cited as an illustration
that there is no raising in the noun phrase and John s gift of Mary of a
b o ok is cited to show that there is no dative shift in the noun phrase Nei
ther of these examples quite illustrate the intended p oint however Both
belief and gift are result nominals not pro cess nominals Belief do es not
preserve the argument structure of the verb
John b elieved the story
John s b elief of the story
And gift obviously denotes the ob ject given it cannot denote the act of
giving
John s gift of a Rembrandt to the Fogg to ok place yesterday
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
What confuses matters somewhat is that belief and gift do take argu
ments that app ear to corresp ond to verbal arguments
a the b elief that John was intelligent
b the gift of a b o ok to Mary
These arguments in fact fall under a nominal paradigm however Result
nominals fail to preserve the grid of the verb from whichtheywere de
rived but they may take mo di ers like those of similar concrete nouns
this is one factor whichcontributes to di culty at times in distinguishing
pro cess and result nominals Belief patterns with non derived nouns like
theory
the b elief that John was intelligent
the theory that John was intelligent
Gift s arguments pattern with two di erent sets of non derived nouns The
gift of a book has the argument structure of nouns like tribute honorarium
agiftofabook
an honorarium of a gold inlaid plaque
ayearly tribute of a horse
AgifttoMaryhas the argument structure of non derived nouns like present
letter
a gift to Mary
a presenttoMary
a letter to Mary
In short one must b e careful to distinguish b etween arguments that pattern
with nominal paradigms and those inherited from ro ot verbs Only pro cess
nominals nominals that denote events preservethe grid of the ro ot
verb
Two closing notes rst Belief and gift are typical of a large class of
derived nouns whichhave only result readings namely zero derived nouns
Often zero derived nouns do not take mo di ers whicheven app ear to cor
resp ond to verbal direct ob jects
a hit of the ball
John s kickofthedog
the slap of the little brat
Mary s frightofBill
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Even when zero derived nouns take of complements they consistently meet
diagnostics for b eing result not pro cess nominals
a John s fear of water
John s fear
John s fears of failure
b a smear of paint
asmear
several smears of paint
It is also usually clear that the nominal do es not denote an action but
an ob ject though esp ecially with nouns of mental state it is all but im
p ossible to distinguish b etween the action denoted by the verb and the
mental state denoted by the result nominal For example it is di cult to
distinguish b etween the action of fearing something and the mental state
of fear
Second derived nominals in ing often b ehave di erently from other
derived nominals The two most salient di erences are that nominals in
ing never allow passive and they do allow particles
a the b ombing of the city
the destruction of the city
the city s b ombing
the city s destruction
b the explaining away of the problem
the explanation away of the problem
Because of these facts zero derived nominals and nominals in ing are
b est avoided in making generalizations ab out the relation b etween derived
nominals and the verbs they derive from The b est nominals to study are
a xally derived usually latinate and clearly denote actions not ob jects
With this in mind I turn to an examination of the di erences b etween
noun phrase and sentence
As p ointed out to me byR Kayne there is at least one apparently zero derived
nominal which denotes an action and otherwise app ears to b e a pro cess nominal namely
capture I submit however that capture is analyzed as a cranb erry word derived
a xally from the stem capt from which are also derived captor captive Capture thus
actually patterns with failure seizure not with zero derived nominals which are almost
always Anglo Saxon
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
b Obligatoriness of Subject
The sub ject is obligatory in the sentence but not in the noun phrase
destroyed the city
destruction of the city
c Pleonastics
When there is no genuine sub ject in the sentence a pleonastic sub ject is
inserted This option is not available in the noun phrase
a there arrivedaman
there s arrival of a man
b it was proven that the earth is round
its pro of that the earth is round
These two facts do clearly concern the sp eci er of the noun phrase not
the complement But it app ears that a reasonable account can b e given
under the DP analysis as sketched at the end of the previous section I
have nothing to add to my discussion there
d Case
Nouns do not Case assign their ob jects hence they may not app ear with
bare noun phrase complements unlike their verbal counterparts
a Caesar destroyed the city
b Caesar s destruction the city
It is usually claimed that b is a well formed d structure and that it is
saved by a rule of of insertion which applies to yield the well formed
s structure Caesar s destruction of the city Alternatively wemaytake of
to b e a Case marker K rather as we argued for s Probably we should
distinguish the Case marked by s and the Case marked by of I will call
the former genitive and the latter partitive though with the caveat
that what I mean by partitive is precisely the Case marked by of
genitive and genitive would p erhaps b e b etter in b eing more neutral
but they would b e harder to keep straight The noun assigns partitive Case
D assigns genitive Case A KP generated in the ob ject p osition of a
AGR
noun can b e headed by either a partitive or genitive case marker the Case
it is actually assigned must agree with the Case marked however which
requires it to raise to a p osition of genitive Case assignmentifitshows
genitive marking
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
e Restrictions on Passive
There is a noun phrase equivalent of passive as wehave noted There
are additional restrictions on this movement however b eyond those found
in the sentence Consider the following examples adapted from examples
noted by Mona Anderson
a Iknow algebra
Algebra is known by many p eople
Icontemplated the day s events
The day s events should b e contemplated b efore sleeping
b knowledge of algebra
algebra s knowledge
contemplation of recentevents
recentevents contemplation
The accountgiven by Anderson the only accountgiven to date is that
what is involved is an A ectedness Constraint on sub categorization frames
whereby only nouns denoting actions which a ect the denotata of the
nouns ob jects can b e sub categorized for a bare noun phrase ob ject Non
a ective nouns can b e sub categorized only for genuine i e d structure
of PP s Since only bare noun phrases and not PP s can undergo passive
passive can only o ccur with a ective nouns If this account is correct it
lo cates the di erence in the complement structure of nouns
It is not entirely clear that the A ectedness Constraint really constitutes
a di erence b etween noun phrase and sentence There are after all verbs
which do not p ermit passive resemble weigh cost Itisinteresting that
none of the nominalizations of these verbs take ob jects
a John weighed p ounds
p ounds were weighed byJohn
John s weighing weight of p ounds
b John resembles his father
his father is resembled byJohn
John s resembling resemblance of his father
It is not entirely clear that know ledge is a pro cess nominal Because of its Anglo
Saxon origins and its similarity to clear result nominals like fear it is arguable that
algebra s know ledge is out b ecause know ledge is a result nominal This would make of
algebra a PP mo di er not a direct ob ject of know ledge A similar argument cannot b e
brought against contemplation however so the paradigm stands
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
c That b o ok costs
are cost bythatbook
That b o ok s costing cost of
Iwould like to suggest that the ob jects of weigh etc are not direct ob jects
but measure adjuncts whichhave to some extent b een made into arguments
at least in that they are obligatory We can either supp ose that they di er
from true arguments thematically or Case theoretically let us call them
simply oblique arguments without deciding whether oblique is to b e
de ned as b earer of oblique role or b earer of oblique Case The
generalization then is that oblique arguments cannot b e passivized and
ob jects of nominals cannot corresp ond to oblique arguments of verbs
f Psych Nouns
A class of derived nominals which consistently fail to take ob jects are the
psych nouns
a Mary frightened John
Mary amused John
Mary angered John
Mary b ored John
Mary liked John
Mary hated John
b Mary s fright of John
Mary s amusementofJohn
Mary s anger of John
Mary s b oredom of John
Mary s like of John
Mary s hate of John
The reason however is obviously that all the examples in b are result
nominals All but two are zero derived and the a xal examples amuse
ment and boredom clearly refer to mental states not acts amusement
cannot refer to the act of amusing someone and boredom cannot refer to
the act of b oring someone The question is then why no pro cess psych nom
inals exist If any class of nouns is to fail to have pro cess nominalizations
wewould exp ect it to b e nouns of mental state inasmuch as their thematic
structure is so very unlike the canonical Agent Patient structure In fact if
we consider ing nominals the examples of divide into a hierarchyof
well formedness when an of ob ject is present roughly the verbs with the
greatest element of causation are most grammatical
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
c Mary s frightening of John
Mary s angering of John
Mary s amusing of John
Mary s b oring of John
Mary s liking of John
Mary s hating of John
And if we consider examples like tempt or realize that havetwo readings
one causative one stative we nd only the causative reading in the pro
cess nominal
a I can tell that cake is tempting John
the devil tempted Jesus
b the cake s temptation of John
the devil s temptation of Jesus
a John realized his mistake
John realized his fondest dreams
b John s realization of his mistake
John s realization of his fondest dreams
In short it app ears that pro cess nominals can only b e built on verb
meanings that include an element of agentivity not on purely stativeverb
meanings Purely stativeverb meanings yield stative nominals which are
uniformly result nominals
Possibly this generalization subsumes the A ectedness Constraint Con
sider an example like fear of cats Fear is obviously a result nominal so
wemust take of cats to b e a PP mo di er that expresses as it were the
content or sub ject matter of the mental state of fear This presents
the p ossibility of analyzing know ledge of language in the same way know l
edge is a result nominal and of language is a PP mo di er sp ecifying the
content or sub ject matter of the mental state of knowing Thus lan
guage s know ledge is out b ecause language is not an argument butamod
ifer of know ledge hence cannot passivize mutatis mutandis for the pro
posal s contemplation The ob ject of know ledge or contemplation is freely
deletable which is consistent with their b eing result nominals
However know ledge and contemplation do seem to di er when they are de nite
i a the knowledge of his imp ending do om frightened him
the knowledge frightened him
b the contemplation of his imp ending do om frightened him
the contemplation frightened him
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
a knowledge of language makes man man
knowledge makes man man
b he s busy with contemplation of the prop osal
he s busy with contemplation
Atany rate it seems clear that the question hinges on di erences in the
thematic structures of nouns and verbs and is not relevant to the question
of the structure of the noun phrase sp eci er
g Raising
Raising i e Raising to Sub ject is p ossible in the sentence but not in the
noun phrase
a John app eared to haveleft
John was b elieved to b e intelligent
John was likely to win
b John s app earance to have left
John s b elief to b e intelligent
John s likeliho o d to win
I will discuss these facts together with those in the next two paragraphs
h Exceptional Case Marking
Exceptional Case Marking Raising to Ob ject is found in the sentence but
not in the noun phrase
a I b elieved John to b e intelligent
I exp ected John to win
b My b elief John to b e intelligent
My exp ectation exp ectancy John to win
An alternativeway to Case mark ob jects of nouns is via of insertion
but this course is also unavailable for the noun phrases of b
My b elief of John to b e intelligent
My exp ectation of John to win
There is also a contrast with the passivization facts if we use pronouns instead of
full noun phrases as p ointed out to me byR Kayne its contemplation i e of his
imp ending do om its know ledge A more systematic investigation is called for
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
It should b e p ointed out that my belief of John and my expectation of
p p
John are also ill formed contra Ibelieve John I expected John Likewise
John s belief t etc corresp onding to John s belief to be intel ligent though
p
John was believed This suggests that whatever is wrong with e g John s
belief to be intel ligent is the same thing as is wrong with the simpler John s
belief t and has nothing to do with raising A ready suggestion is that the
ill formedness of John s belief t has the same source as the ill formedness
of algebra s know ledge t We could claim that John in Ibelieve John is
not an argument but an oblique adjunct Actually wemust group belief
with weight notknow ledge Bil l s weight of the package Bil l s belief
p
of John Bil l s know ledge of algebra However this would not explain
why John s belief to be intel ligent is ill formed whatever prevents oblique
noun phrases from passivizing Case clash p erhaps should not prevent
the argument John in John to be intel ligent from moving to Sp ec of D and
receiving genitive Case
The prop er generalization I b elieve is that nouns cannot take reduced
clause complements but only full CP complements If nouns are incapable
of licensing bare IP complements then the noun would b e incapable of
governing the sub ject of the lower clause hence incapable of Case assigning
it accounting for the lack of ECM Likewise a raised sub ject would b e
incapable of governing its trace whichwould thus violate the ECP
I will p ostp one discussion of why nouns should b e incapable of tak
ing reduced clause complements until I have presented the numerous other
noun phrase sentence di erences that fall under the same generalization
Note though that if the di erence is in the sub categorization selectional
prop erties of nouns and verbs as I claim then we do not need to assume
di erences in the landing sites of A movement i e the structure of the
sp eci er of noun phrases and sentences
i Small Clauses
Another reduced clause which nouns do not take are small clauses though
the unavailability of raising and Exceptional Case Marking are su cientin
themselves to preclude anywell formed small clause structure in the noun
phrase
a I b elieveJohnafool
I exp ect John in my o ce
b my b elief John a fo ol
my exp ectation John in my o ce
c my b elief of John a fo ol
my exp ectation of John in my o ce
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
a John was b elieved a fo ol
John was exp ected in my o ce
b John s b elief a fo ol
John s exp ectation in my o ce
j Ditransitivity
There are no ditransitive nouns Dative Shift
a Igave Bill a b o ok
Irented Bill a car
I fed the cat dinner
b the rental of Bill of a car
c the giving of Bill of a b o ok
the renting of Bill of a car
the feeding of the cat of dinner
Gift is a result nominal thus the ill formedness of the frequently cited the
gift of Bil l of a car is out for entirely extraneous reasons Rental do es
not app ear to su er from this shortcoming cf my rental of the car took
place a ful l year ago
This fact ts in with b oth generalizations I have put forward to now
the inability of nouns to assign partitive Case i e of to arguments
that receive oblique Case in the VP and the inability of nouns to take
reduced clause complements The lack of ditransitives falls under the latter
generalization if we adopt an analysis in which double ob ject verbs take
a small clause complement Several such analyses have b een prop osed
including those of Kayne a Larson The lack of ditransitives
falls under the prohibition against oblique arguments if we assume one of
the two arguments is oblique If we consider the contrast the feeding of the
p
cat dinner the feeding of the cat it seems to indicate that the Theme is
the oblique argument it also app ears to indicate that oblique should b e
de ned in terms of Case assignment not assignment inasmuch as there
are many examples with non oblique Theme arguments e g the sel ling of
the car On the other hand the following alternation indicates that it is
the Goal argumentwhich is oblique
a i I presented the award to John
ii I presented John with the award
b i my presentation of the award to John
ii my presentation of John with the award
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
The Theme is emb edded in a PP in b ii hence could not b e the
o ending argument
One p ossibility is to assume that feed has two distinct grids in feed
the cat the cat receives the Patient role and in feedthecat dinner the
cat receives the Goal role Then taking oblique to mean Goal would
give the right results Another p ossibility is to followKayne a in
extending the small clause analysis of ditransitives to present John with
the award
Another example which p ossibly b elongs here is the contrast
a I b elieve the story
I b elieve John
b my b elief of the story
my b elief of John
my belief of the story is not very go o d but it is clearly b etter than when
the sentence with the goal argument is nominalized
k Object Control
Ob ject control constructions do not app ear in the noun phrase
a I p ersuaded John to leave
I instructed John to leave
b my p ersuasion of John to leave
my instruction of John to leave
Other commonly cited examples like my command of John to leave my
order of John to leave are trivially ungrammatical by virtue of involving
zero derived result nominals
One p ossibility is that these examples fall under the prohibition against
oblique arguments assuming that John is oblique It is true that exam
ples like my persuasion of John are grammatical but wemight argue that
persuasion like feed isambiguous b etween two frames one which is a sim
ple action verb taking a direct ob ject Patient and no ob ject control and
the second which takes an oblique Goal argument and ob ject control
a I p ersuaded John
Pt
I p ersuaded John to leave
Goal
p
One is tempted to cite my instruction to John to leave here but that example is
actually irrelevant b eing clearly a result nominal patterning with my command to John
to leave etc Cf I instructed to John to leave
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
I co erced John
Pt
I co erced John to leave
Goal
b my p ersuasion of John
Pt
my p ersuasion of John to leave
Goal
my co ercion of John
Pt
my co ercion of John to leave
Goal
It is rather di cult to detect much di erence in the meanings of these
pairs however vis a vis the role of John An alternativeistoappealtothe
prohibition against small clauses and analyze the examples of b as
my p ersuasion of John
my p ersuasion of John PROtoleave
SC CP
my co ercion of John
mycoercion of John PROtoleave
SC CP
l Tough Constructions
Tough constructions are not available in the noun phrase
a John is tough to please
Bill is easy to o end
Mary is pleasanttolookat
b John s toughness to please
Bill s easiness to o end
Mary s pleasantness to lo ok at
It is p ossible to assimilate these examples either to the examples involv
ing oblique arguments or to the examples involving semi clauses Let us
consider the former alternative rst
It has b een argued that there is a non overt b enefactive argumentin
tough constructions whichcontrols the in nitival clause corresp onding to
an overt for controller as in John is tough for Bil l PRO to please it
i i
is tough for Bil l PRO to please John If this is correct wehavethe
i i
following structure where e is the non overt controller of PRO
John is tough e OP PRO to please t
j i j i j
If e is syntactically present it is reasonable to consider it an oblique argu
ment as it is a for adjunct when it app ears overtly i e a b enefactive or
ethical dative adjunct
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
A second p ossibility is that tough constructions are actually unaccusative
in particular that John is not assigned by tough but is the sub ject of a
small clause complementof tough
e is tough John OP PROtopleaset
SC i i i
There is some direct evidence in favor of this structure First there is
the fact that wedohavesentences like it is tough to please John that seem
to indicate that the sub ject p osition of tough is not a p osition Further
recall the sentences
a I gave the gun to Mugsy PRO to get rid of it
i j i j
b I gave the gun to Mugsy OP PRO to get rid of t
i j
i j
On the basis of these sentences we argued that a clause must b e in a relation
of mutual c command with the antecedents of b oth an empty op erator in
its sp eci er and PRO if its sub ject is PRO The PRO reading is ruled out
i
in b b ecause if the adjunct clause attaches to IP the antecedentof
OP do es not c command OP and if the adjunct clause attaches to VP the
adjunct clause do es not c command the antecedentofPRO On the PRO
j
reading if the adjunct clause attaches to VP b oth the antecedentofOP
and the antecedentofPRO c command the adjunct clause and the adjunct
clause c commands b oth of them thus the structure is well formed
If this analysis is correct and if the in nitival clause is a complementof
tough in John is tough to please as indicated by the fact that it is selected
by tough cf e g John is necessary to please to see that the in nitival
clause indeed sub categorizes the predicate then the in nitival clause is
attached under VP andJohn must also originate under VP
If we adopt Belleti Rizzi s prop osal that psychverbs are actu
ally double ob ject unaccusatives i e that John feared Mary derives from
efeared Mary John we not only have a precedent for the analysis of
tough movement prop osed here but it also seems p ossible to defend a very
strong thematic restriction on the p osition of arguments at d structure
namely that arguments are external at d structure i they b ear an actor
or agent role crucially not an exp eriencer role Agent alone
app ears to b e to o strong for cases of simple intransitives like sneeze where
the sub ject is an actor but arguably not an agent
There is actually a third p ossibility that tough nominalizations are
excluded on b oth counts oblique arguments and small clauses Supp ose
that there is an emptycontroller of PRO and that John originates as
sub ject of a small clause
John is tough e t OP PRO to please t
j i SC j j i j
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
The one y in the ointment for all these alternatives is the example Mary
is pretty to look at Unlike Mary is pleasant to look at there is no imp ersonal
version it is pretty to look at Mary and pretty takes no for phrase Mary
is pretty for John to look at My only suggestion is that Mary is pretty to
look at is formed on analogy with sentences built on synonyms of pretty all
of which otherwise t at least halfwayinto the tough construction paradigm
the lackoffor adjuncts requires explanation though
a the sun streaming in is b eautiful to lo ok at
the sun streaming in is lovelytolookat
the sun streaming in is gorgeous to b ehold
the sun streaming in is breathtaking to b ehold
the sun streaming in is pleasanttolookat
the sun streaming in is nice to lo ok at
b it is b eautiful to see the sun streaming in
it is lovely to see the sun streaming in
it is gorgeous to see the sun streaming in
it is breathtaking to see the sun streaming in
it is pleasant to see the sun streaming in
it is nice to see the sun streaming in
m John s breaking his leg
One curious di erence b etween sentence and noun phrase is the p ossibilities
of interpretation in the following pair
a John s breaking his leg
b John s breaking of his leg
a can describ e a situation in whichJohnunintentionally breaks his leg the
Exp eriencer reading in b on the other hand the strongly preferred
reading is that in which John intentionally breaks his leg the Agent
reading This is not precisely a di erence b etween sentence and noun
phrase but rather one b etween VP and NP at least under my assumptions
ab out the structure of gerunds
It is p ossible to ascrib e the semantic ambiguityof a toasyntactic
ambiguity Break can b e either an action verb or an exp eriencer verb Under
the agentive reading let us supp ose that break is a simple transitive but
under the exp eriencer reading let us supp ose that break is a double ob ject
unaccusative Under the latter reading John is non agentive b ecause it
is underlyingly not a sub ject but an ob ject The contrasting d structures are
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
a John broke his leg agentive
b e brokeJohnhisleg exp eriencer
b is parallel to the ditransitive structure of give As with give the second
ob ject the displaced direct ob ject cannot b e easily passivized The
book was given John likewise his leg was broken only has the agentive
reading where someone intentionally broke John s leg
We can then subsume the unavailability of the exp eriencer reading in
the nominal under either the prohibition against obliques or the prohibition
against small clauses as with ditransitives It would fall under the prohi
bition against small clauses if we extended Kayne s or Larson s small clause
analysis of ditransitives to the structure of b
Striking con rmation for this account comes from West Flemish In
many Germanic languages there is an ethical dative that can b e used
with verbs of acquisition and deprivation In English it is found only with
verbs of acquisition as in I m going to get myself a new TV In German it
is also found with verbs of deprivation
dem Kind ist sein Fahrrad geklaut worden
the child DAT is his bike NOM stolen b ecome
the child s bikewas stolen
As in English the direct ob ject b ecomes the sub ject In West Flemish how
ever the ethical dative can b ecome the sub ject as discussed by Liliane
Haegeman
Jan is zenen velo gepakt
Jan NOM is his bike stolen
Jan s bikewas stolen
Haegeman applies a battery of tests which show unambiguously that Jan
is the sub ject not a topic in it agrees with the verb it can b e
replaced with a sub ject clitic etc This example di ers from John broke
his arm under the analysis I am prop osing only in that it is passive and
not ergative Haegeman also gives transitive ergative examples
a Jan is zenen oarm gebroken
Jan is his arm broken
Jan brokehisarm
b Jan is zenen inkel verstukt
Jan is his ankle sprained Jan sprained his ankle
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
c Jan is zenen b o ek vergeten
Jan is his b o ok forgotten
Jan forgot his b o ok
Haegeman argues that these are unaccusatives not intransitives b ecause
the auxiliary is to be not to have As such they exactly matchthe
structure I prop ose for John broke his arm and provide striking cross
linguistic evidence supp orting that analysis
n Pseudo Passive
Pseudo passive is not available in the noun phrase
a The dispute was settled
A sum was settled on
b The dispute s settlement
A sum s settlementon
Under usual assumptions the availability of pseudopassive dep ends on the
p ossibility of reanalysis b etween verb and prep osition This is then a third
di erence b etween nouns and verbs nouns do not take oblique ob jects do
not take reduced clause complements and do not reanalyze with prep osi
tions We can make this third prohibition more general if we followBaker
b in taking the reanalysis of pseudopassive to b e in fact prep osition
incorp oration In general it is not p ossible to incorp orate into nouns but
only into verbs Pseudopassive is only a sp ecial case
Whichever analysis wecho ose it seems clear that what is at stake is the
relation b etween the noun and prep osition hence our analysis of sp eci er
structure is not a ected
o Particles Particle Movement
Neither particles nor particle movement are p ermitted in noun phrases
a he explained de ned away the problem
he explained de ned the problem away
A question which Haegeman do es not address is the fact that these ergatives are
apparently identical to the structures she called passives earlier The passives di er
from German and Dutch passives in that the past participle of the passive auxiliary to
become isabsent I assume that this has brought ab out an accidental similaritybetween
passive and ergative structures Atany rate it is clear that the examples of are
ergatives esp ecially b ecause of example c there is no p ossible source for it as a
passive The only candidate would b e the nonsensical Someone forgot John his book
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
he separated out the impurities
he separated the impurities out
b his explanation de nition away of the problem
his explanation de nition of the problem away
p
cf his explanation de nition of the problem
his separation out of the impurities
his separation of the impurities out
p
cf his separation of the comp onent media
If we followKayne b and Gueron in analyzing particle con
structions as small clauses this fact to o falls under the prohibition against
reduced clause complements of nouns
p Resultative Secondary Predicates
Resultative secondary predicates are not p ermitted in the noun phrase
a Wepainted the house red
We hammered the metal at
We shot him dead
b Our painting the house red
Our hammering the metal at
Our sho oting him dead
c Our painting of the house red
Our hammering of the metal at
Our sho oting of him dead
If we adopt a small clause analysis of ditransitives it would b e natural
to distinguish resultative from depictive secondary predicates by treating
resultatives as small clause complements and depictives as simple adjuncts
Ihave had to illustrate with gerundive forms b ecause I have b een unable to nd any
verbs which take resultative clauses and yield nominals that take arguments Almost
no latinate verbs take resultative predicates and almost no Anglo Saxon verbs which
are also for the most part zero derived yield nominals that take arguments
i a We injected him dead
We contused him senseless
We extruded the metal round
b Our paint of the house
Our hammer of the metal Our shot of the escap ee
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
wepainted the house red
SC
Mary painted John nude
AP
This would account for the contrasts b etween resultative and depictive sec
ondary predicates resultatives predicate only of ob jects never sub jects
and resultatives apparently sub categorize the matrix verb only a restricted
class of verbs take resultative secondary predicates Depictives on the other
hand can predicate of sub jects as well as ob jects and app ear much more
freely with nearly anyverb would b e no more di cult to inter
pret than ditransitives under a small clause analysis It would di er from
ditransitives in fact only in having an understo o d come to b e instead
of come to have in the small clause We gave John a book would b e
interpreted roughly as wewere the agents of an act of giving whose cau
sandum was that John should come to have a b o ok and we painted the
house red would b e roughly wewere the agents of an act of painting
whose causandum was that the house should come to b e red
q Object Pleonastics
Pleonastics do not app ear exclusively in sub ject p osition There are some
ob ject pleonastics in English and they are plentiful in other languages
such as German They do not app ear in the noun phrase however
a I hate it when it snows on myFrench toast
I lose it whenever she lo oks at me that way
I can t b elieve it that you venever listened to Twisted Sister
b my hatred of it when it snows on myFrench toast
my loss of it whenever she lo oks at me that way
my disb elief of it that that you venever listened to Twisted
Sister
r Concealed Questions
Concealed questions are not available in the noun phrase
a I considered your o er
I considered sab otage
Consider for instance the contrast i
i John drank himself silly
i i
John drank whisky silly
i i
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
I knew the facts
I knew the time
b my consideration of your o er
my consideration of sab otage
myknowledge of the facts
my knowledge of the time
s Indirect Questions
Over a broad range indirect questions are unavailable in the noun phrase
a Iknow who came
I recollect who came
I determined who came
I rememb er who came
b myknowledge who came
my recollection who came
my determination who came
my remembrance who came
These are all go o d when of is inserted
my knowledge of who came
my recollection of who came
my determination of who came
my remembrance of who came
t Complementizer Deletion
The complementizers that and for can b e deleted in the sentence after
bridge verbs but not in the noun phrase
a Iknow Bill came
I b elieve Bill came
I rememb er Bill came
I d prefer Bill to do it
b myknowledge Bill came
my b elief Bill came
my remembrance Bill came
my preference Bill to do it
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
c myknowledge that Bill came
my b elief that Bill came
myremembrance that Bill came
my preference for Bill to do it
These last four sets of facts ob ject pleonastics concealed questions indi
rect questions that deletion I have no analysis of I only note that the
phenomena clearly concern only the complement of the noun not its sp ec
i er
In conclusion I have shown in rather more detail than was probably
necessary that the many di erences b etween sentences and noun phrases
are di erences in the complements p ermitted by nouns and verbs Three
ma jor generalizations are these verbs but not nouns allow oblique argu
ments verbs but not nouns take reduced clause complements and verbs
but not nouns can b e incorp orated into These di erences do not weigh
against the DP analysis in that the parallelism b etween noun phrase and
sentence structure envisioned under the DP analysis centers on the struc
ture of their sp eci ers not their complements also b ecause these di erences are for the most part selectional not structural
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
App endix Reducing the Di erences
In this section I would like to indulge in some frankly sp eculative theoriz
ing the aim of which is to reduce the three ma jor di erences b etween noun
and verb identi ed in the previous section to one overarching di erence
These are the cases we wish to account for
a John s app earance to have left
b the app earance of John to have left
c my exp ectation of John in my o ce
d myrental of Bill a car
myrental of the car
my feeding of the cat dinner
my feeding of the cat
e the presentation of the award to John
the presentation of John with the award
f my p ersuasion of John to leave
my p ersuasion of John
g John s toughness to please
h John s breaking of his leg under Exp eriencer reading
i a sum s settlementon
j the explanation away of the problem
the explanation of the problem away
k the sho oting of John dead
l myamusement of the children
Let us set aside i for the moment and consider the remaining cases
which fall under the prohibition against direct oblique arguments and the
prohibition against reduced clauses It seems that the cases p otentially ex
plicable under the prohibition against oblique arguments is a prop er subset
of the cases explicable under the prohibition against reduced clauses All
cases receive at least a p otential account under the prohibition against re
duced clauses but several do not app ear to involve oblique arguments i e
There are six other cases wehave examined but which do not app ear to fall under
our three generalizations hence which are ignored in namely obligatoriness of
sub ject sub ject pleonastics ob ject pleonastics concealed questions emb edded ques
tions and that deletion
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
a b c j k and l To substantiate this claim wemust verify
that there are no cases of single oblique arguments i e not in a ditransi
tive construction or a construction otherwise analyzable as a small clause
which are prohibited in the noun phrase The examples that readily spring
to mind are also bad in the sentence hence are irrelevant
the rental of Bill
Goal
but I rented Bill
Goal
the presentation of Bill
Goal
but we presented Bill
Goal
In fact there are cases that wehave already noticed where what is appar
ently a Goal argument is go o d precisely when it o ccurs alone
the feeding of the cat dinner
the feeding of the cat
my p ersuasion of Bill to leave
my p ersuasion of Bill
my instruction of Bill to clean up
my instruction of Bill in the ner p oints of hygiene
A few problematic cases do exist First wehave already noted the con
trast it weighs lbs its weighing of lbs In this case though it
app ears that we are dealing with a constraintabove and b eyond the prohi
bition against oblique arguments Namely lbs cannot passivize in the
sentence whereas the oblique arguments wehave b een concerned with oth
erwise do passivize lbs was weighed by the book John was renteda
p
car A second problematic case is my promising of John cf Ipromised
John John was promised This do es seem to b e a genuine counterexam
ple But since it is the only one I have found I will assume there is some
complicating factor I have not discovered Atworst we could app eal to the
prohibition against oblique arguments for this individual case even if we
reduce it to the prohibition against small clauses in all other cases
Let us b egin with ditransitives It is the Goal argument which receives
the verb s accusative case it is the Goal argument for instance whichmust
app ear adjacent to the verb and it is the Goal argumentwhich passivizes
IgaveJohnabook
I gave a b o ok John
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
John was given a b o ok
a book was given John in American English
Something sp ecial must b e said ab out the way the second argument the
Theme receives Case Baker b suggests that it do es not receive Case
but is identi ed hence passes the Case lter by incorp orating into the verb
at LF I would like to suggest a mo di cation of this account Let us adopt
a small clause analysis of the double ob ject construction Further let us
supp ose that there is an abstract X head of the small clause as required
by a strict interpretation of X bar theory
IP
John VP
V XP
gave DP X
Bill X DP
e a book
Let us supp ose that there is a sp ecial constraint on suchanempty head
namely that it must b e identi ed by incorp orating into the verb So it is
not the second ob ject which incorp orates into the verb but the empty head
taking the second ob ject as its complement
It is not clear what syntactic category to assign X to I assume that the
second ob ject is licensed by b eing assigned and Case assigned by X this
makes X app ear to b e a prep osition and the construction in question to b e
an applicative if Baker b is right in analyzing applicatives as cases
of prep osition incorp oration On the other hand the small clause parallel
suggests treating X as an In Another p ossibilitywould b e that it is a
verb We might treat X as a proto verb that corresp onds to the have
part of the meaning of give and assigns the two roles asso ciated with that
part of the meaning of give namely the Goal Possessor and Theme roles
The verb give is actually the combination V X and do es not corresp ond to
a unique syntactic no de until after incorp oration has o ccured at LF This
explains the obligatoriness of incorp oration X alone is not a word and if
it did not incorp orate it could not b e assigned its lexical prop erties which
it p ossesses only by virtue of b eing a part of the word give
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
This third alternative is indistinguishable for practical purp oses from
the account presented in Larson a Larson assumes verb raising
rather than proto verb incorp oration but otherwise his structure is iden
tical to that of with V substituted for X
IP
John VP
V VP
gave DP V
Bill V DP
t a book
Larson defends this analysis in part by app ealing to a large range of tests
summed up in Barss Lasnik that show that the inner indirect
ob ject is actually higher in the structure than the outer direct ob ject
The small clause structure is one of the few conceivable analyses for the
double ob ject construction that has the prop erty that the inner ob ject as
symetrically commands the outer ob ject
Larson prefers a verb raising analysis over an incorp oration analysis in
order to avoid the pitfalls of lexical decomp osition he do es not wish to
rep eat the mistakes of the generativesemanticists in decomp osing give into
cause to come to have However the proto verb approach I am prop os
ing is subtly but fundamentally di erent from lexical decomp osition The
basic problem with the lexical decomp osition approachisthatitcannot
account for the idiosyncratic prop erties of give that are not contributed
byany of its comp onents cause come to orhave My view is that verb
meanings are arranged in an inheritance lattice such that individual verbs
indeed p ossess idiosyncratic prop erties but the prop erties they share with
all other verbs of their class need not b e stated individually for eachverb
but once for the class ob ject that represents the entire verb class Agen
tiveverbs for instance all inherit from a class ob ject that p ossesses two
Larson also assumes NP s instead of DP s I am glossing over that di erence for
consistency s sake Another wrinkle to Larson s analysis which is not imp ortant for my
purp oses is that he assumes the underlying structure is actually John e a book gave
V
to Bil l and passive applies in the lower VP as wellasverb raising out of the lower
VP to yield the surface order
Inheritance lattices have b een extremely well studied in the arti cial intelligence
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
or three roles Agent Instrument and Patient Motion verbs inherit
from a class ob ject that p ossesses the roles Theme Source Goal It is
these class ob jects which I mean when I say proto verb The agentive
verb class ob ject is the proto verb with roughly the content of cause the
motion verb class ob ject is the proto verb with roughly the content of go
It is imp ortant to understand that these proto verbs or archi verbs are
not the actual verbs cause and go Rather it is convenient to designate
them as cause and go b ecause the agentive verb class ob ject and the
motion verb class ob ject are present in purest form in the verbs cause
and go resp ectively cause and go app ear to inherit from the single classes
CAUSE agentive class and GO motion class resp ectively Theverbs
cause and go are distinct from the classes CAUSE and GO however and
do have some idiosyncratic prop erties they do not inherit from those classes
Averb may instantiate more than one class Di erentverbs instantiat
ing the same classes may map the roles provided by those classes di erently
For example one verb inheriting from b oth the Agentive class and the Mo
tion class may map the Agent and Theme roles onto the same p osition y
for instance while another may map Patient and Theme roles onto the
same p osition throw for instance Further an individual verb can have
idiosyncratic prop erties which it do es not inherit from any class An in
dividual verb may also override prop erties provided by a class ob ject Fly
for instance inherits from CAUSE arguably but it overrides the Patient
role in the grid it inherits from CAUSE keeping only Agent and Instru
ment roles he ew with a hang glider In short viewing proto verbs as
verb class ob jects avoids the problems of lexical decomp osition as usually
conceived We can view give as containing the parts inheriting from the
classes CAUSE COME TO GO without implying that give has only the
prop erties provided by these parts This disarms Larson s ma jor motiva
tion for adopting a verb raising analysis in preference to an incorp oration
analysis like that of
The analysis is also reminiscent of Chomsky s analysis of
small clauses Chomsky suggested that the matrix verb and the small
clause predicate form a complex predicate and the small clause predicate
is subsequently extrap osed to yield the surface word order
a I consider intelligent John
b I consider John intelligent
In the current framework this would probably b e revised so that b is
literature they are as basic to knowledge representation as constituent structure is to
syntax Reasonable starting p oints for the interested reader are Winston Chapter
Fahlman b a
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
s structure and a is not d structure but LF i e intel ligent incorp orates
into consider The analysis di ers from this hyp othetical revision of
Chomsky s analysis only in that it is not intel ligent but an abstract element
selecting intel ligent which incorp orates into consider
I V consider X e XP John X X t intelligent
There is actually something of an inaccuracy in in that under the
analysis I have prop osed the verb consider is actually the V complex which
includes X X is part of the lexical entry of consider In other words it is
only at LF that there is a unique no de corresp onding to the word consider
Thus verbs which take small clause complements select those complements
in the strongest p ossible sense the head of the complement is actually a
part of the verb s lexical entry
Notice that whatever the category of X adopting the analysis
in e ect generalizes the unavailability of the double ob ject construction in
noun phrases with the imp ossibility of incorp orating into nouns whichwe
had used to account for the lack of pseudo passive i of The
account also generalizes to c e f g h k and l of
under the analyses illustrated in
c exp ectation of John X in my o ce
XP e PP
e presentation of John X with the award
XP e PP
f p ersuasion of John X PROtoleave
XP e CP
g John s toughness t X OP PRO to please t
i XP i e CP j j
h John s breaking t X of his leg
i XP i e PP
k sho oting of John X dead
XP e AP
l my amusement t X of the children
i XP i e PP
A note ab out h and l these di er from the others in that I have
placed the of on the second ob ject not the rst ob ject This is b ecause
these two cases derive from double ob ject unaccusativeverbs under the
analysis I am assuming Leaving the rst ob ject in its d structure p osition
or leaving the of o the second argument do es not improve matters
the breaking of John his leg
the breaking his leg put John in an awful x
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
the amusement of John the children
John s amusement the children
John s breaking his leg is grammatical but deceptive it is clearly a Poss
ing gerund not an Ing of gerund Only the Ing of gerund is relevant to the
question at hand
The remaining cases are a b and j of raising in nitival
ECM and particles a and b di er from the examples of in that
they involve S bar deletion in nitives not small clauses I would liketo
claim that these complements are not IP s but CP s They generalize with
the examples of in that the empty complementizer is incorp orated
into the matrix head in order to b e identi ed The structure is thus
V consider C e CP C t IP John to VP
I assume that it is the empty complementizer which assigns accusativecase
to the lower sub ject John much in the way that X assigns Case to the
second ob ject in double ob ject constructions
Raising and in nitival ECM are ungrammatical in the noun phrase
under this account b ecause they too involve incorp oration into the matrix
head which is illegal when that head is a noun
It is tempting to assume that the failure of complementizer deletion in
noun phrases is also due to the requirement that the empty complementizer
b e identi ed by incorp orating into the matrix verb This is not obviously
p ossible however If we to ok that course wewould b e unable to distinguish
ECM and control constructions
I d prefer C t John to do it
i CP C i IP
I exp ected C t John to do it
i CP C i IP
Possibly there is a way of resolving this quandary and bringing the lackof
complementizer deletion in the noun phrase under the prohibition against
incorp oration as well but I leave it as an op en question
The nal case is j the lack of particles in the noun phrase Kayne
b argues that particle constructions are also to b e analyzed as small
clausal where the particle is a little verb
Ilooked the information up
PP P
It would b e natural to assume that the version Ilooked up the informa
tion is derived by incorp orating up Kayne givesanumb er of arguments
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
against this hyp othesis however For instance pronouns are p ermitted in
the particle moved construction but not when the particle is adjacentto
the verb
Ilooked it up
I lo oked up it
This is unexp ected if look up is a complex verb as verbs can certainly take
pronominal ob jects I sought it
Another argument is that particles allow mo di ers whereas parts of
comp ound verbs do not
Ilooked it rightup
I right up ended the chair
Another argument is that sentential sub jects can app ear with pre
p osed particles but not p ostp osed particles
a I p ointed out that John had left
b I p ointed that John had left out
Kayne generalizes the ill formedness of b with the ill formedness of
sentential sub jects of emb edded clauses He analyzes a as involving
extrap osition of the sentential sub ject If wemoved the particle leftward to
derive a on the other hand that John had left would still b e an em
b edded sentential sub ject the sub ject of the trace of out Thus wewould
incorrectly predict a to b e ill formed Kayne argues that the exam
ples with prep osed particles are uniformly derived by extrap osing the
sub ject of the particle obligatorily with sentential sub jects optionally
with noun phrase sub jects
I will followKayne in assuming that prep osed particle constructions
are derived by extrap osition of the sub ject of the particle I assume though
that the particle does incorp orate at LF accounting for the unavailability
of particle constructions in noun phrases
An unsolved problem for this analysis is why particles are go o d with
ing nominals but not with other derived nominals
a i the explaining away of the problem
ii the explanation away of the problem
b i all the gyrating away they do makes tops susceptible to
idiosyncratic typ es of structural damage
ii all the gyration away
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
b shows that it is not Case or assignment to the ob ject that makes
a ii bad the same contrast is to b e found where an intransitiveverb
is involved
One p ossible solution is that ing nominals exceptionally p ermit incor
p oration This is clearly wrong though b ecause ing nominals do not
p ermit incorp oration in any of the other cases wehave discussed
the exp ecting of John to leave
the giving of John a b o ok
the b eing tough to please
etc
Another p ossibilityisthat ing nominals with particles are in fact V particle
comp ound verbs in contrast to verbs app earing with particles in the sen
tence This would explain why the base form of these nominals is bad
the looking of the information up Most of Kayne s tests ruling out a
V particle complex verb in the sentence are not helpful in the noun phrase
b ecause they involve other small clauses in addition to the particle these
would b e indep endently ruled out by the prohibition on small clauses in
the noun phrase The two tests that can b e applied to ing nominals give
con icting results a is ill formed indicating that looking up is not a
complex noun but b is also ill formed indicating that up is not an
indep endentword
a the lo oking up of it
b the lo oking right up of the information
I leave this as an op en question
To sum up the results of this section given the analyses illustrated in
and a signi cant range of the constructions which are prohib
ited in the noun phrase can b e uni ed under a single generalization namely
a prohibition against incorp oration into nouns
As Kayne p oints out this example can also b e ruled out by a prohibition against
PP s in sub ject p osition He cites contrasts such as i to illustrate that this prohibition
can force rightward movement of the sub ject when it is a PP
i John teamed up with Bill
John teamed with Bill up
They sto cked up on fo o dstu s
They sto cked on fo o dstu s up
CHAPTER NOUN PHRASE AND SENTENCE
Chapter
The Gerund
Intro duction
In English the construction in which the noun phrase lo oks most likea
sentence is the gerund where by gerund we mean the class of structures
headed byverb ing The gerund particularly the so called Poss ing
construction has long b een a puzzle Unlike the sentence like noun phrases
wehave examined in other languages the English Poss ing construction is
not simply a noun phrase with sentential prop erties but has a decidedly
gri on like structure Its forequarters i e its external distribution and
its sub ject are that of a noun phrase while its hindquarters its com
plement structure are that of a verb phrase
The gerund is of great interest in evaluating the DP analysis inasmuch
as if the DP analysis is correct it provides a simple and general structure
for the gerund which app ears otherwise so exceptional Under the DP
analysis we can takethePoss ing construction to involve D taking a VP
complement instead of an NP complement In this way we account for the
prop erties of the Poss ing construction while maintaining a strict version
of X bar theory
There is a resp ectable transformational literature on the gerund includ
ing Lees Rosenbaum Ross Emonds Wasow
and Ro ep er Sto ckwell Schachter and Partee Thompson
Horn Williams Schachter Reuland Baker c
In the earlier work it was assumed that all gerunds were sentence trans
In traditional usage the term gerund usually refers to the noun in ing not to
the construction headed bysuch a noun see e g Poutsma Current usage is
frequently more lax applying the term gerund b oth to the noun in ing andtothenoun
phrase headed in a pre theoretic sense byN I follow the more lib eral usage here
ing
CHAPTER THE GERUND
forms The lexicalist hyp othesis of Chomsky paved the way for a
non sentential treatmentofPoss ing and he argued explicitly for a non
sentential treatment of gerunds like the cal ling of the rol l Emonds
claimed that Poss ing gerunds were never dominated byS atany level
of derivation this p osition was apparently not widely adopted until the
mid seventies however Horn and Schachter b oth argue for
this p osition Schachter s analysis app ears to have b ecome standard it is
adopted for example in Chomsky
The paradigmatic sentence tensed S with that complementizer and
the paradigmatic noun phrase a simple concrete noun phrase like the
rock havevery distinct prop erties b oth internally and externally i e with
regard b oth to their structure and distribution As Ross p oints out
though there is a range of structures p ossessing b oth sentence and noun
phrase prop erties Ross argued that these constructions form a continuum
of which tensed S and concrete noun phrase are the endp oints in order
of increasing nouniness tensed S indirect question in nitive Acc ing
Poss ing action nominal Ing of derived nominal concrete noun Un
der more common assumptions there is a cut b etween sentence and noun
phrase and exceptional prop erties of atypical constructions must b e ac
counted for in some other way The generally accepted cut at least since
Reuland is b etween Acc ing the most noun phrase likesentence and
Poss ing the most sentence like noun phrase
The Range of Gerund Constructions
There are a numb er of distinct structures in which the gerund app ears In
this section I would liketosurvey them In coming sections I will fo cus
more narrowly on the Poss ing construction
Discriminating at a fairly ne grain we can distinguish at least these
uses of V ing
PresentParticiple
a After progressive be
b As pre or p ost nominal mo di er
c In adjunct clause sometimes with nominative or accusative sub
ject
Argumental Acc ing
Horn and Schachter app ear to come indep endently to the conclusion that Poss
ing is a noun phrase at all levels Both claim the non transformational analysis as an
innovation and neither includes the other in his bibliography
INTRODUCTION
PRO ing
Poss ing
Ing of
Traditionally is distinguished from the former b eing named
the Participle the latter the Gerund I will not b e much concerned ab out
the participle are distinguished from in that Ing of app ears
to involve a simple deverbal noun and lacks the verbal characteristics to
b e found in the other cases Acc ing and Poss ing are distinguished
chie y in the Case which is assigned to the sub ject of the gerund Ac
cusative in Acc ing GenitiveinPoss ing PRO ing di ers from Poss ing
and Acc ing in lacking an overt sub ject It is an op en question whether the
structure of PRO ing is actually the same as that of Poss ing Acc ing or
mayhave either structure dep ending on context Less likely though not to
b e ruled out a priori is that PRO ing has a structure distinct from that of
either Acc ing or Poss ing
Eliminating the participle then and assuming provisorily that PRO ing
collapses with either Acc ing Poss ing or b oth wehave three basic typ es
of gerund construction Poss ing Acc ing and Ing of
Reuland s Analysis of Acc ing
The most thorough recent analysis of the Acc ing construction is that of
Reuland I adopt his characterization of Acc ing at face value for the
time b eing to provide a backdrop against which to compare the prop erties
of Poss ing whichismychief concern I o er a new analysis of Acc ing in
section
These are the most imp ortantcharacteristics of the Acc ing construc
tion
The sub ject receives accusative case Weapprove of him studying
linguistics
The sub ject alternates with PRO We approveofPRO studying
linguistics
The Acc ing clause must app ear in a Case marked p osition
The sub ject takes scop e within the Acc ing clause I counted on no
one coming vs I counted on no one to come
No overt complementizer no overt wh in Comp
CHAPTER THE GERUND
No raising from sub ject John was hated having to leavesosoon
Wh movement from sub ject p ermitted Who did you approveoft
studying linguistics
Anaphors p ermitted in sub ject p osition Weanticipated each other
winning his race
Acc ing can b e selected for
Reuland accounts for these facts by prop osing that the Acc ing con
struction is a CP with an empty Complementizer selecting an IP headed
by ing ing is a nominal element when Acc ing is an argument and
requires Case It shares that Case with its sub ject Ing lowers onto
the verb via a x hopping or Rule R of Chomsky If it lowers in
the syntax no Case can b e assigned to the sub ject the sub ject p osition
is ungoverned and PRO app ears If it do es not lower until PF PROis
excluded and the sub ject receives accusativeCase Ing do es not count
as a Sub ject in the binding theory of Chomsky for the sub ject by
stipulation A matrix verb can govern IP and its head ing across an empty
complementizer but not the sub ject of ing as ing counts as a closer gov
ernor For this reason the ECP is violated if raising is attempted from
the sub ject p osition or if one attempts to raise the sub ject out of the Acc
ing clause by QR Wh movement out of Acc ing is p ermitted on the other
hand b ecause it can use the emptyCompasanintermediate landing site
this option is not available to A movement and QR
Noun Phrase Asp ects of Poss ing
As the rst order of business I would like to review the evidence which
leads us to the conclusion that Poss ing gerunds are noun phrases while
Acc ing gerunds are sentences
External evidence
a Distribution
The rst class of evidence indicating that Poss ing is a noun phrase and
not a sentence is its external distribution There are a numberofpositions
Though the morphological case which app ears on the sub ject of Acc ing may di er
from the abstract Case assigned to the Acc ing phrase as a whole as for instance when
the Acc ing construction app ears in sub ject p osition receiving nominative Case but
assigning accusative Case to its own sub ject Reuland o ers no explanation for this
discrepancy
NOUN PHRASE ASPECTS OF POSS ING
from which sentences are excluded Poss ing do es app ear in these p ositions
These p ositions include a ob ject of prep osition b sub ject of a sentence
where Sub ject Auxiliary Inversion has applied c sub ject of an emb ed
ded sentence d sub ject of a sentence following a sentence initial adverb
e topic p osition f cleft p osition
a I learned ab out John s weakness for stogies
I learned ab out John s smoking stogies
I learned ab out John smoking stogies
I learned ab out that John smoke s stogies
I learned ab out for John to smoke stogies
b Do es John s weakness for stogies b other you
Would John s smoking stogies b other you
Would John smoking stogies b other you
Do es that John smokes stogies b other you
Would for John to smoke stogies b other you
As Horn notes topicalization of a clause is p ossible curiously if it originates
as a sentential sub ject
i That John died we b elieved
ii That John died we b elieved to b e horrible
This is esp ecially curious since the putative source is ungrammatical
iii We b elieved that John died to b e horrible
Descriptively when a sentential sub ject leaves its d structure p osition it can either
move leftward and leave an empty category or it can move rightward and leaveanovert
pleonastic If it is unable to leave a pleonastic it is also unable to move leftward and
leave an empty category In this regard consider cases where an ob ject pleonastic is
p ossible
iv Wewere sure of it that John would win
That John would win wewere sure of
v You can count on it that John will win
That John will win you can counton
vi I said it rst that John would win
That John would win I said rst
The generalization breaks down with examples like the following
vii We resented it that John was given the prize
That John was given the prize we resented
viii I hate it when it snows on myFrench toast
When it snows on myFrench toast I hate
CHAPTER THE GERUND
c I b elieve that John s weakness for stogies b others you
Ibelieve that John s smoking stogies would b other you
I b elieve that John smoking stogies would b other you
I b elieve that that John smokes stogies b others you
I b elieve that for John to smoke stogies would b other you
d Perhaps John s weakness for stogies b others you
Perhaps John s smoking stogies would b other you
Perhaps John smoking stogies would b other you
Perhaps that John smokes stogies b others you
Perhaps for John to smoke stogies would b other you
e John s weakness for stogies I can t abide
John s smoking stogies I can t abide
John smoking stogies I can t abide
That John smokes stogies I can t b elieve
For John to smoke stogies I won t p ermit
f It s John s weakness for stogies that I can t abide
It s John s smoking stogies that I can t abide
It s John smoking stogies that I can t abide
It s that John smokes stogies that I can t b elieve
It s for John to smoke stogies that I won t p ermit
Acc ing gerunds present the least serious violation On the basis of
this evidence alone in fact one can make a case for including Acc ing
with Poss ing as a noun phrase The degraded status of Acc ing in b
f might b e ascrib ed to some problem with accusative Case assignmentin
these contexts or simply to the generally slightly marginal status of Acc
ing In section I will o er an analysis which predicts that Acc ing has the
distribution of a noun phrase but no other noun phrase prop erties Until
then I leavethebehavior of Acc ing in the paradigm as an anomaly
Atany rate the contrast b etween simple noun phrase and Poss ing on
the one hand and in nitives and tensed clauses on the other illustrates
the p oint at hand that Poss ing has the distribution of a noun phrase not
that of a sentence
Another irregularityisthebehavior of indirect questions which pattern
like noun phrases in some contexts
a I heard ab out what you did
b the knowledge of that John came
the knowledge of who John saw
NOUN PHRASE ASPECTS OF POSS ING
Two p ossibilities are that indirect questions in these contexts share
something of the structure of headless relatives which are arguably noun
phrases or that there is a wh AGR in Comp that licenses wh words
in Sp ec of C and this AGR supplies CP with certain nominal features I
will not pursue the issue here
There is one noun phrase p osition in which gerunds do not app ear
p
namely sub ject of noun phrase stagnating s evils Cf stagnation s
evils This is due to other factors though Note that ing forms do not
make go o d p ossessors even when they are clearly nouns
the singing s a ect on them was heartwarming
the rioting s p olarization of the country
b Agreement
The Poss ing gerund also di ers from sentences in that it b ears agree
ment i e conjoined gerunds trigger plural agreementontheverb whereas
with conjoined sentential sub jects the verb shows default singular agree
ment Again note that Acc ing patterns with sentences not Poss
ing
a That John came and that Mary left b others b other me
b John coming so often and Mary leaving so often b others b other
me
c John s coming and Mary s leaving b others b other me
Possibly the AGR in Comp acquires these nominal features in turn from the wh word
it agrees with or we could take the more traditional line that wh words o ccupy Comp
It might b e ob jected that not all wh words are noun phrases but the Case requirement
remains
i I heard ab out what you did
I heard ab out whyyou did it
the knowledge of what you did
the knowledge of whyyou did it
We can follow Larson however in taking wh words like why how tobenoun
phrases that p erform adverbial functions on a par with bare NP adverbs like yesterday
last year Wewould need to assume that the inherent Case these words p ossess under
Larson s analysis is not passed on to the CP they app ear in a plausible assumption Note
that with true PP s as wh phrases indirect questions do not show the same prop erties
ii I heard ab out in what wayyou did it
the knowledge of in what wayyou did it
CHAPTER THE GERUND
We can account for this fact if we assume as is natural that AGR can
coindex with nominal elements but not with sentences An unb ound
AGR shows default singular agreement
c Long distance Binding
Finally Acc ing and Poss ing gerunds show di erences with regard to long
distance binding of their sub jects such binding is p ossible in noun phrases
and in Poss ing gerunds but not in Acc ing gerunds
a they thought that each other s giving up the ship was forgivable
they thoughtthateach other giving up the ship was forgivable
b they thoughtthateach other s desertion was forgivable
c they thoughtthatforeach other to desert would b e forgivable
cf they thought that for John to desert would b e forgivable
Internal evidence
In this section I turn to the asp ects of the internal structure of Poss ing
that indicate that it is a noun phrase
a Subject
With regard to their internal structure gerunds lo ok like noun phrases b e
cause of the prop erties of their sub ject First unlike sub jects of sentences
sub jects of gerunds b ear genitive Case
Secondly as noted by Horn and Reuland there are certain
semantic restrictions on the sub ject of Poss ing which makes it lo ok likeany
other genitive noun phrase sp eci er In particular inanimate sub jects make
p o or p ossessors
a the refrigerator s do or
John s do or
b wewere very upset at the refrigerator s tipping over
wewere very upset at the refrigerator tipping over
c wewere very upset at our idea s b eing unfairly criticized
wewere very upset at our idea b eing unfairly criticized
Alternatively sentences but not noun phrases are forced to topicalize out of sub ject
p osition see Koster Stowell and the trace left b ehind always has default
numb er features
NOUN PHRASE ASPECTS OF POSS ING
Likewise idiom chunks are not very happy in the p ossessor
a I was irked at advantage s b eing taken of John s situation
b The outcome justi ed much s b eing made of Calvin s foresight
The evidence of must b e taken with a grain of salt however There
are p erfectly go o d Poss ing gerunds where the p ossessor is not animate and
concrete
Wewould prefer its not raining just now
We might also cite the classic example the city s destruction Possibly the
contrast in b amounts to no more than a weak stylistic tendency to
prefer Acc ing over Poss ing when the sub ject is non pronominal as noted
for example byPoutsma
Thirdly the Poss ing genitive b ehaves like a p ossessor in the requirement
that it b e head nal
a a friend of mine s new house
a friend of the little b oy s new bicycle
the man resp onsible s briefcase
the man who left early s briefcase
Iwas upset at
b a friend of mine s leaving early
a friend of the little b oy s leaving early
the man resp onsible s leaving early
the man who came late s leaving early
Iwas upset at
c a friend of mine leaving early
a friend of the little b oy leaving early
the man resp onsible leaving early
the man who came late leaving early
Examples likethoseIhave starred here are frequently pro duced in conversation and
it is arguable that they are not ungrammatical but only bad style Whatever the status
of the deviance of a b though it is their contrast with the p erfectly acceptable
c that is relevant for the p oint at hand
CHAPTER THE GERUND
b Sp eci city
Further extraction from gerunds shows sp eci city e ects In this gerunds
contrast minimally with Acc ing constructions Consider
a We rememb er him describing Rome
b We rememb er his describing Rome
c the citythatwerememb er him describing t
d the city that we rememb er his describing t
The ungrammaticality of d can b e accounted for by assimilating it to
sp eci city e ects in extraction from noun phrases
Who did you see a picture of t
Who did you see his picture of t
An alternative analysis is that sp eci cityisnotinvolved in the exam
ples of but simple sub jacency IfthePoss ing construction but not
the Acc ing construction involves a noun phrase DP then d could
potentially b e subsumed under the Complex Noun Phrase Constraint
c Pied Piping
Poss ing gerunds containing wh sub jects can front under pied piping not
so for Acc ing gerunds This groups Poss ing with noun phrases b and
Acc ing with sentences c
a the man whose irting with your wife you to ok such exception
to
the man who irting with your wife you to ok such exception
to
b the man whose opinions you to ok such exception to
c the man for who to leave early you would have preferred
d Scop e
The sub ject of Poss ing gerunds like the sub ject of noun phrases can take
wide scop e that of Acc ing strongly prefers narrow scop e
p
a John disapproves of everyone s taking a dayo wide
John disapproves of everyonetakingadayo wide
NOUN PHRASE ASPECTS OF POSS ING
p
b John disapproves of everyone s happiness wide
c John prefers everyone to takeadayo wide
This is explained if QR cannot cross a barrier nor move Comp to
Comp and Acc ing gerunds have a CP IP structure with an empty
complementizer On the assumption that the sub ject of the noun phrase is
emb edded under only one maximal pro jection DP and not two CP and
IP it is free to moveout
e Sentential Adverbials
Finally it is usually assumed in particular by Williams Jackendo
and Reuland that sentential adverbials are not very go o d
in Poss ing gerunds but that they are go o d in sentences including Acc ing
gerunds
a John probably b eing a spy Bill thought it wise to avoid him
Reuland
John s probably b eing a spy made Bill think it wise to avoid
him
b John fortunately knowing the answer I didn t fail the test
John s fortunately knowing the answer kept me from failing
This paradigm is called somewhat into question however by the fact
that Acc ing do es not takesentence adverbials when it is in argumentpo
sition
a I was worried ab out John probably b eing a spy
b I was grateful for John fortunately knowing the answer
Factivity probably contributes to the ill formedness of a note that I
was worriedabout John being a spy involves the presupp osition that John
is aspy this would b e incompatible with an adverb like probably This
do es not account for the ungrammaticality of b however Whatever
the condition that prevents sentence adverbials from app earing in Acc ing
gerunds in argument p osition maywell also exclude them from Poss ing
gerunds whichmust always app ear in argument p osition I leave this as
an unresolved question
CHAPTER THE GERUND
Sentential Asp ects of Poss ing
In the previous section I summarized the evidence that has b een collected
over the years that makes it quite clear that Poss ing gerunds are noun
phrases whereas Acc ing gerunds are sentential
VP in Poss ing
If Poss ing gerunds are noun phrases though there is clearly a VP emb ed
ded in them The head of the gerund i e the V ing a Case assigns
its complement b takes adverbs rather than adjectives c takes aux
iliaries d takes double ob ject complements etc etc For a complete
catalog of the constructions that are found in the complementofverbs in
cluding Poss ing gerunds but not in the complement of nouns see section
I I In all these ways it b ehaves like a true verb and not a noun
a John s discovering a thesis writing algorithm
John s discovery a thesis writing algorithm
b Horace s carefully describing the bank vault to Max
Horace s carefully description of the bank vault to Max
c Guineve s having presented a golden cup to Bertrand
Guineve s have ing presentation of a golden cup to Bertrand
d Ilana s giving Marc a kiss in public
Ilana s gift of Marc of a kiss in public
These facts indicate that there is a VP emb edded within Poss ing that the
structure is NP s VP
NP
PRO in the Gerund
There is a bit of complicating evidence There are ways in which the genitive
noun phrase do es not b ehave likea typical genitive In particular the
sub ject of the gerund like the sub ject of the sentence but unlike the sub ject
of the noun phrase is obligatory as we discussed in I I b As discussed
at length byWasow Ro ep er Poss ing di ers from Ing of in that Poss
ing or more accurately PRO ing since there is no sign of genitive case
shows obligatory control Wasow Ro ep er exx
a i I detest loud singing
ii I detest singing loudly
b i John enjoyed a reading of The Bald Soprano
ii John enjoyed reading The Bald Soprano
SENTENTIAL ASPECTS OF POSS ING
c i The killing of his dog upset John
ii Killing his dog upset John
In the ii sentences the agent of the gerund is necessarily understo o d
to b e either the sub ject of the sentence or the ob ject in the psych verb
constructions i e I in a John in b and c This is the usual
pattern for control of in nitives as well I would prefer to sing loud ly To
kil l his dog would upset John In the i examples on the other hand the
nominal need not b e understo o d as controlled This seems to indicate that
there is necessarily a PRO sub ject in the ii examples but necessarily none
in the i examples
There are two sets of apparent counterexamples to the claim that PROis
obligatory in the PRO ing examples First are examples like Shooting deer
is fun il legal Wasow Ro ep er argue that these involve a deleted one in
current terms PRO Supp orting their analysis wemay observethat
arb
examples of this sort are only p ossible in generic contexts and in general
corresp ond to PRO contexts for in nitives It has b een suggested that
arb
such cases actually involve control by an implicit b enefactive argument
Shooting deer is fun for X il legal for X If so these examples generalize
with the next set of apparently problematic examples
The second class of apparent counterexamples involvePRO ing con
structions as sub jects of passives suchasSeceding from the Union was
considered Wasow Ro ep er argue that the controller is the implicit agent
of the passive this seems quite reasonable esp ecially in lightofrecentwork
into the syntactic activeness of such implicit arguments
Baker c notes that not only are PRO ing gerunds obligatorily
controlled but they require pleonastic sub jects when no external role is
assigned
I am disapp ointed by
a its the raining all day
b its the b eing certain that she ll quit
c its the certainty that she ll quit
Baker c ex
Baker also cites examples like I enjoyedPROrendition of the aria as
evidence that PRO is not only not required in non gerundive noun phrases
it is not allowed Such examples must b e considered with caution though
They crucially assume that sub jects of noun phrases o ccupy the same p o
sition as determiners This is called somewhat into question by examples
suchasthere s no PRO xing this boat now where a determiner and PRO
CHAPTER THE GERUND
co o ccur As Quirk et al p oint out the presentational context is
one place in which gerunds pro ductively app ear with determiners Jesp er
son cites similar examples Be that as it may it is clear that controlled
PRO is excluded from non gerundive noun phrases
Baker explains the obligatoriness of PRO and pleonastics in gerunds
by app ealing to Rothstein s Rule of Predicate Linking Rothstein
argues that verb phrases are predicates and are thus sub ject to a syntactic
requirement that they have a sub ject N bar on the other hand is not a
predicate and thus do es not require and apparently also do es not license
PRO or pleonastics
In section I I b I adopted a mo di ed version of this hyp othesis
namely thatVP but not NP is a predicate that requires a sub ject VP
is found in b oth Acc ing and Poss ing hence the requirementthatPROor
an overt sub ject app ear when VP has an external role and a pleonastic
when it do es not Contrary to Rothstein I assumed that NP can but need
not license a PRO The fact that PRO is not obligatory correlates with
the fact that control is not obligatory with Ing of
There is a residual problem which this do es not solve however Consider
the examples where the context is a discussion ab out one s children
a It s the constantbickering at each other that b others me most
b It s bickering at each other that b others me most
In a wehave an Ing of in a control environment and the anaphor
each other seemstorequireaPROantecedent Control is not required
however as indicated bythewell formedness of the example If control had
b een required the antecedent me would havemadePRO singular thus an
unsuitable antecedentforeach other Justsuch a situation is illustrated in
b with a PRO ing construction
If this argument is correct it indicates that it is not simply the presence
of PRO that determines whether a phrase must b e controlled but also
the typ e of phrase involved The generalization we made earlier was that
control is mediated by the phrase containing PRO and that sentences but
not noun phrases require control This hyp othesis is incompatible with
analyzing Poss ing as a noun phrase If PRO ing can at least optionally
b e an empty sub ject version of Poss ing and control of Poss ing is not
obligatory inasmuchasPoss ing is a noun phrase then wewould exp ect
examples like b to b e grammatical Poss ing should pattern with Ing
of with resp ect to obligatoriness of control
One option is to assume that Poss ing never exists with a PRO sub ject
Wemight supp ose for instance that the only determiner that selects VP
and thus heads a Poss ing typ e construction is AGR and excludes PRO
SENTENTIAL ASPECTS OF POSS ING
by b eing a governor This do es not seem to conform to the facts however
There are a few AGR determiners that app ear in Poss ing constructions
wehave seen there s no xing this boat now for example Also there are
p ositions in which only Poss ing and not Acc ing can app ear
a the Administration defended North s siphoning funds to the
Khmer Rouge
the Administration defended North siphoning funds to the Khmer
Rouge
b the Administration deplored North s getting caughtatit
the Administration deplored North getting caughtatit
In these contexts it is still p ossible to nd PRO ing examples indicating
that these PRO ing examples must corresp ond to Poss ing structures as
exp ected wedohave obligatory control
a the Administration defended siphoning funds to the Khmer
Rouge
b the Administration deplored getting caughtatit
I do not have a solution to this residual problem I b elievethemost
likely line is to argue that the Poss ing construction indeed always has an
overt sub ject and all examples of PRO ing have the structure of Acc ing
Under this hyp othesis an explanation remains to b e found for the examples
of and examples like there s no xing this boat now cf e g fo otnote
A second p ossibility is that the obligatoriness of control is in some way
tied to the obligatoriness of PRO when PRO app ears as the sub ject of NP
it is only optionally controlled b ecause it is an optional PRO
N bar Deletion
A second wayinwhich the p ossessor in gerunds di ers from that in non
gerundive noun phrases is its ability to supp ort a deleted complement N
bar deletion is p ossible with concrete noun phrases but not with gerunds
Iwas surprised by John s eagerness and by Mary s to o
I was surprised by John s pitching in and by Mary s to o
A fact that calls this paradigm somewhat into question is that there are verbs under
which neither Poss ing nor Acc ing app ears yet PRO ing do es app ear These include
avoid cherish deny and p ossibly enjoy and detest Thisweakens the claim that b ecause
Acc ing structures are ill formed in these contexts by pro cess of elimination the examples
of must necessarily involvePoss ing structures
CHAPTER THE GERUND
This prop erty is not unique to gerunds though but is also p ossessed by
derived nominals
I was surprised by John s discovery of an answer and by
Mary s to o
It app ears to dep end only on the fact that these nominals denote situations
rather than ob jects The cut is b etween situations and ob jects not b e
tween concrete and abstract as indicated by the well formedness of similar
sentences where an abstract ob ject is involved I was surprisedbyJohn s
idea and by Mary s too I return to this issue in section f
ANALYSES I FINDING THE SEAMS
Analyses I Finding the Seams
Several prop osals have b een made in the literature as to the prop er analysis
of Poss ing In this section I would like to discuss each of them as well as
some that have not previously b een prop osed
Schachter
Schachter argues for this structure
NP
DET NOM
NP VP
John s fixing the car
Chomsky adopts much the same structure though he omits the
DET and NOM no des and generates VP and the p ossessiveNPdi
rectly under the topmost NP no de
Schachter assumes that auxiliaries are generated inside VP but mo dals
are generated external to VP explaining the absence of mo dals in gerunds
Frederick s must ing depart
Alan s can ning burn toy soldiers
Schachter s and Chomsky s analyses are problematic under current views
concerning X bar structure There are two problems with Schachter s struc
ture assuming VP is the head of NOM and ultimately of NP how can a
maximal category head another category and how can a head di er in syn
tactic category from the phrase it heads i e how can a verbal category
head a nominal category On the other hand if VP is not the head of NP
X theory then NP is unheaded and we still have a violation of
Also to account for the app earance of genitive Case in the gerund it is
assumed that genitive Case is assigned to the structural p osition NP NP
All other Cases are assigned by lexical Case assigners though It would b e
Actually Schachter notes that given his assumptions ab out phrase structure there
is no principled way of excluding the rule NOM Aux VP in place of NOM VP
Thus the lack of mo dals is correctly captured in his rules but is not actually explained
CHAPTER THE GERUND
much preferable to assimilate genitive Case to the others in this resp ect
In Know ledge of Language Chomsky takes the noun to b e the genitive
Case assigner but this leaves the presence of genitive Case in the gerund a
mystery since there is no noun present
On the p ositive side Chomsky gets some mileage from the fact that
no noun head is present in the gerund Sp eci cally he argues that PRO
is p ossible in the gerund but not in non gerundive noun phrases b ecause
in non gerundive noun phrases the noun governs the sp eci er p osition
precluding PRO but in gerunds there is no lexical head and PROis
p ermitted
Horn
Horn prop oses
NP N
Spec N N
ing VP
Under Horn s analysis as well as under Schachter s the availabilityof
PRO is predicted though ing is a noun it is also an a x and presumably
do es not qualify as a lexical category hence it do es not preclude PROin
its government domain
The two problems with Schachter s analysis incompatability with cur
rent X bar theory assignment of genitive Case receive natural solutions
under Horn s analysis X bar theory is observed the head of NP is an
N VP is a complement of that N not the head of the gerund Since ing
app ears at PF merged with the verb we can account for the intuition that
the verb is the head The presence of genitive Case can b e ascrib ed to the
noun ing under assumptions like Chomsky s viz that nouns are assigners
of genitive Case
Certainly there app ear to b e instances of Case assignment without Case assigners
in adjectival absolutives for example our fearless leader sick we al l pitchedinto
help Here a default Case app ears which is in English ob jective or common Case
Genitive Case assignment has little in common with such constructions
Chomsky claims that VP is the genitive Case assigner in gerunds The mystery is
then why VP is the sole phrasal Case assigner all other Cases are assigned byX s and
why VP assigns genitiveCase only when it app ears inside the noun phrase
ANALYSES I FINDING THE SEAMS
The D VP Analysis
a ing as Functional Head
A reason for b eing uneasy with Horn s analysis is that ing is not a typical
noun Nouns are not normally a xes Nouns do not normally select VP s
Nouns do not normally have obligatory complements
A related problem is why determiners cannot generally ll the sp eci er
p osition of ing esp ecially since a p ossessor is p ermitted Also if ing is
a noun why are adjectives PP mo di ers relative clauses etc excluded
The lack of adjectives etc might suggest treating ing as a pronoun but
if it is a pronoun why do es it p ermit a p ossessor
The fact that ing shows up as a verbal a x and displaces mo dals
makes it app ear a priori to b e an In In fact if we accept Reuland s
arguments ing is precisely a garden variety In in the Acc ing construc
tion Unfortunately ifitwere an In in the Poss ing construction Poss ing
should b ehavelikea sentence not a noun phrase
Given the framework develop ed in Chapter I I we can take ing in Poss
ing to b e In ectional in the sense of b eing a functional element one
which is like In moreover in selecting VP We can assume that it di ers
from ing in Acc ing in that it p ossesses the feature N rather than N
This idea is attractive in that it p ostulates minimal variance b etween the
ing of Acc ing Poss ing and Ing of yet still accounts for the substantial
di erences in their b ehavior The ing of the Ing of construction wemay
assume is likethePoss ing ing in b eing N It di ers from Poss ing ing
in that it selects V not VP it is not an a x with an indep endentsyntactic
domain
By changing N to N in the lexical entry of Acc ing ing we in e ect
create a Determiner F N not a Noun F N under the feature
decomp osition of syntactic categories whichwe prop osed earlier Thus if
we take seriously the ways in which Horn s ing b ehaves like a functional
element rather than a lexical element we are led to recast his structure as
a DP structure
DP
Possr D
D VP
ing
CHAPTER THE GERUND
The unavailability of determiners and adjectives follows from the fact that
they are not licensed by D but by N The fact that ing is an a x and
obligatorily selects a non argument complement are typical prop erties of
functional elements
This analysis preserves solutions provided by Horn s analysis for the
problems in Schachter s analysis First the VP is not the head of the
noun phrase the Determiner is The intuition that V is the head of the
phrase is preserved if we assume that D functionally selects VP Namely
if D functionally selects VP then it inherits its descriptive content from
VP and b ecomes an s pro jection of V But since D c pro jects the noun
phrase i e DP X theory is not violated What is involved is merely the
substitution of one maximal category VP for another NP
Second genitive Case in the gerund is accounted for given our earlier
hyp othesis that AGR in the Determiner assigns genitive Case we need
only assume the AGR which assigns genitive Case can co o ccur with ing
The availabilityofPRO is also predicted given that ing is a functional
element thusnotagovernor for PRO
b Turkish Again
The D VP analysis is also rendered particularly attractive b ecause it exactly
parallels Korn lt s analysis of gerunds in Turkish Recall that there
is an overt AGR which assigns genitive Case in Turkish noun phrases and
thus strong evidence for the existence of a D no de The gerund construction
as in English is a mixed construction externally and as concerns the
sub ject it b ehaves like a noun phrase while internally itbehaves likea
VP
a Halil in her dakikai s im e karIs ma sI
Halil GEN every minute business s DATinterfere ING s
Halil s constantly interfering in my business
b Halil in gel di g in ibil iyor um
Halil GEN come ING s ACC know PROG s
I know that Halil is coming
c Kedi yeyemek ver me di g iniz do gru mu
cat DAT food ACC give NEG ING p true Q
Is it true that you did not give fo o d to the cat
The verb takes all its usual complements and mo di ers except for the
morphology on the verb the phrase including the verb and its complements
is indistinguishable from any other verb phrase On the other hand the
ANALYSES I FINDING THE SEAMS
AGR is nominal AGR and assigns genitive Case rather than nominative
Case also the phrase as a whole is assigned Case likeany non gerundive
noun phrase Clearly the structure of the Turkish gerund is precisely
what the D VP analysis prop oses for English Poss ing
DP
Halil in D
D VP
D AGR V
in gel
What is less clear is precisely where dIg attaches and where the case
marker b elongs For this reason I have omitted them from the diagram I
will return to this question b elow
c s and Determiners
An apparent problem for the D VP analysis is that there are a few cases of
lexical determiners co o ccurring with ing Jesp ersen vol V p
cites the following examples the rst of them is also cited by Jackendo
and Schachter similar examples are noted in Ross
a There is no enjoying life without thee
b This telling tales out of scho ol has got to stop
c The judgementofheaven for mywicked leaving my father s
house
d Between rheumatism and constant handling the ro d and gun
Jesp erson ascrib es c to Defo e d to Kingsley
The app earance of determiners in Poss ing class gerunds was apparently
much freer until early in this century Poutsma cites numerous
examples from Dickens
a The having to ght with that b oisterous wind to ok o his
attention Chimes I
The absence of a case marker in c is not indicative of failure of case assignment
The accusative case marker is often omitted even with non gerundive noun phrases
CHAPTER THE GERUND
b the b eing cheerful and fresh for the rst moment and then
the b eing weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of
remembrance David Copper eld Ch IV a
c I am not disp osed to maintain that the b eing b orn in a work
house is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance
that can p ossibly b efall a human b eing Oliver Twist Ch I
Poutsma cites further such examples from Dickens Fielding Samuel Butler
Hume Thackery Jane Austen Scott Shakesp eare and several others
c and d are the most disturbing b ecause they include ad
jectives This suggests a structure in which the VP is inside of N bar It
is di cult to knowhowtoevaluate them however as they are de nitely
ungrammatical in the mo dern idiom a on the other hand illustrates
a construction that is quite pro ductive to the present Consider
There s no xing it now
There s no turning back the clo ck
Gerunds with this are also fairly acceptable as noted also byJackendo
This telling tales out of scho ol has to stop
This mixing business and pleasure is going to catch up with you
Neither of these examples are overwhelming The construction of
is clearly a xed phrase No cannot take gerunds in other contexts I would
recommend no stu ng bal lot boxes this time John thought no teasing his
dogcould bother the general And the examples of are really not very
go o d and to the extent that they are acceptable the construction has the
avor of examples like This Why Mommy every time I tel l you to do
something has got to stop where what follows this is disquotational one
can even imagine having a silent gesture after this
The D IP Analysis
Avariation on the D VP analysis is what wemight call the D IP analysis
ANALYSES I FINDING THE SEAMS
DP
DP D
D IP
DP I
I VP
John s PRO ing hit the ball
Under this analysis s and ing o ccupytwo distinct functional element p osi
tions The complement of D is basically In but it is nominalized by the
ing to some extent Its syntactic category is In but it has certain lexical
features whichmake it su ciently nominal in character that D can select
it In e ect this analysis involves the emb edding of a PRO ing structure
under a noun phrase sp eci er
I argued for the D IP analysis in Abney it was originally sug
gested to me byRichard Larson Larson s suggestion was that PROV
ing
denotes a prop ertywhich is p ossessed by the sub ject see b elow section
e In his view s is a rough semantic equivalent of the verb have
The D IP analysis is required if we are to take s to b e a determiner
an analysis which I considered earlier in section I I b but did not
adopt In particular supp osing that s o ccupies the determiner p osition
raises a con ict with the supp osition that ing is in the determiner p osition
Possibly b oth share the determiner p osition we might supp ose that s is
a sp ell out of AGR and that in the same wayAGR in the sentence can
co o ccur with e g Tense s can co o ccur with an in ectional element viz
ing
But this raises the question why s cannot co o ccur with e g the ifit
can co o ccur with ing whyis John s the book bad where John s
D D
ing leave early is not This is not a problem under the D IP analysis
There are considerations that make the D IP analysis seem plausible
at least initially
a Determiners
First if one found unsatisfying the way I explained away the apparent cases
of determiners in gerunds or if one wishes to assign a structure to the ar
chaic sentences cited by Jesp ersen the D IP analysis makes ro om for a full
CHAPTER THE GERUND
range of determiners The fact that determiners do not general ly app ear
with gerunds might b e explained along lines suggested bySchachter to
wit that gerunds are like prop er nouns in taking only a restricted set of
determiners or by supp osing that only certain determiners are satis ed
with the nominal character of the gerundiveIP and most determiners re
quire true NP s
b The Position of ing
A conceptual problem with the D VP analysis as well as Horn s analysis
is the p osition of ing Under the D VP analysis wemust assume an ing
lowering rule to get the rightword order but lowering rules raise certain
problems with regard to the prop er government of the trace of movement
If we assume the verb raises to ing on the other hand we are unable to
derive gerunds like
John s hurriedly put ting t out the re
D VP
Hurriedly app ears outside of VP in a p osition where it cannot b e licensed
Under the D IP analysis on the other hand wemay assume V raises
to ing and still have a p osition available for hurriedly the same p osition
it o ccupies in the nite clause b
a John s PROhurriedly put ting t out the re
IP I VP
b John hurriedly put AGR t out the re
IP I VP
Counterbalancing this argument to some extent is the fact that the D
IP analysis makes ro om for sentence adverbials as well however aswe
noted ab ove these adverbials are generally considered ungrammatical in
gerunds On the other hand I expressed some question as to whether they
were actually excluded from gerunds if we decide that they are not there
is no problem for the D IP analysis
c Spanish El In nitive
In Spanish we nd the de nite article taking b oth in nitives which are
the equivalent of gerunds in English and que clauses examples from Plann
Though the p ossibilitythat hurriedly originates in the VP and is moved to its ob
served p osition cannot b e dismissed
ANALYSES I FINDING THE SEAMS
el lamentar la p erdida de las elecciones es inutil
the lament the loss of the elections is futile
lamenting the loss in the elections is futile
el que tu vengas no es imp ortante
the that you come not is imp ortant
it is not imp ortant that you are coming
The fact that el takes a clause in Spanish lends credence to the claim that
determiners can take clausal complements
d Scop e of Not
There is also evidence from scop e phenomena which seems to supp ort the
D IP analysis over the D VP analysis and Horn s analysis In the sentence
it is preferred for not in In to take wide scop e over the sub ject of the
sentence Consider the sentence
Everyone didn t come
IP I
Both readings x x came and x x came are p ossible but the former
is preferred Wemay assume that b oth scop e relations are p ossible b ecause
the two op erators mutually c command and that the negation op erator has
wide scop e preferentially b ecause it is more prominent b eing the head
of the constituent
Now consider the Poss ing gerund
Everyone s not coming
Here the narrow scop e reading for not is actually excluded the only inter
pretation is the fact that x x came This is exp ected under the D IP
analysis Assuming the scop e of not to b e IP everyone is outside its scop e
everyone s PRO not ing come
DP IP I
Under the D VP analysis on the other hand wewould exp ect the scopal
relations to b e the same as in the sentence assuming that not app ears in
D in the gerund in the same way it app ears in I in the sentence
everyone s not ing come
DP D
The crucial contrast though is b etween Acc ing and Poss ing gerunds
Under the D IP analysis wewould exp ect that they would di er Acc ing
should b ehave exactly likethesentence Unfortunately the judgements are
very subtle but it do es seem that giving not wide scop e is b etter in the Acc ing construction
CHAPTER THE GERUND
a I was irked at everyone not coming but at least George and
Maria were there
b I was irked at everyone s not coming but at least George
and Maria were there
Oddly enough a seems slightly b etter with stress on everyone Also
in the context of b the wide scop e reading for not is not so bad as it
is out of context And here as well stress on everyone causes considerable
improvement In sum it seems that robust judgements are not to b e had
concerning scop e assignmenttonot but to the extent that they go as I
have indicated they provide supp ort for the D IP analysis
e s as Assigner
In Abney it was assumed that s uniformly assigned a role to its
sub ject accounting in this way for the lack of raising and pleonastics in the
noun phrase The gerund di ers from non gerundive noun phrases in that
raising is p ossible
a John s b eing likely t to win will only spur Bill on
b John s b eing certain t to win will makeBillgiveup
c John s app earing seeming t to wantustoleave him alone
mi ed Mu y
The D IP analysis allows one to preserve the assumption that s is a
assigner in that it makes ro om for a PROantecedent of the NP trace
without assuming that John moved into a p osition The problem which
arises now is getting the prop er interpretation with regard to the role of
John in the situation denoted by the IP In Abney I presented
an accountwhich also solved a problem which arises generally in analyses
in whichA movement in the noun phrase is rejected Grimshaw
presents such an analysis this problem is the construal of p ossessors which
app ear to receivea role other than Possessor from the noun namely in
derived nominals like Caesar s destruction of the city the city s destruction
The accountIgave in Abney in a nutshell is as follows First
consider a phrase like John s honesty which denotes an attribute Presum
ably this do es involve simple p ossession and not A movement Yet there
is entailment that if John s honesty succeeds in denoting something i e
The central idea of p ossession of a prop erty is due to Richard Larson
Though an analysis in which all deadjectival nouns were unaccusative would not
b e inconceivable
ANALYSES I FINDING THE SEAMS
if we are not dealing with a sentence like John s honesty is non existent in
which John s honesty fails to denote then honest John If John p ossesses
the attribute of honesty where we assume the interpretation of honesty to
b e the prop erty x honest x then John is honest This is what I called
the Possessional Entailment
Possessional Entailment
Where is an entity and is an attribute Poss
Nowwe can get the prop er construal of e g John in John s leaving by
claiming that the interpretation of PROleaving is x e e is a leaving
IP
Agent x e PRO in e ect providing the variable of abstraction for the
prop erty Predicating this attribute of John is to say that John left
A similar account can b e given for derived nominals by claiming that
they also denote prop erties namely that when the noun destruction is
formed from the verb destroy the interpretation of destruction is a prop
ertyformedby abstracting over one of the two p ositions of destroy
i e either x e destruction e Agent x e or x e destruction e
Patient x e
Though there may b e something to this account as it stands it seems to
b e a complex x for an unnecessarily complex analysis It would p erhaps b e
necessary if other evidence supp orted the claim that the sub ject p osition of
Poss ing is a p osition Wewould exp ect for instance that pleonastics and
idiom chunks b e disallowed in this p osition as they are in non gerundive
noun phrases Idiom chunks are indeed not very go o d
a Advantage was taken of John s situation
I was irked at advantage b eing taken of John s situation
I was irked at advantage s b eing taken of John s situation
b The bull was taken by the horns
I approve of the bull b eing taken by the horns in this matter
I approve of the bull s b eing taken by the horns in this matter
c Muchwas made of Calvin s foresight
The slim margin by which global thermonuclear warfare was
averted justi ed much b eing made of Calvin s foresight
The slim margin by which global thermonuclear warfare was
averted justi ed much s b eing made of Calvin s foresight
But pleonastics are rather go o d Judgments are somewhat mixed but there
is a clear contrast b etween pleonastics with gerunds and pleonastics with
non gerundive noun phrases Baker c gives a gerund with its being
likely as fully grammatical
CHAPTER THE GERUND
a I m happy ab out its b eing likely that John will nish so on
I was surprised at its seeming that John might not win
b its likeliho o d that John would win
its app earance that John would win
cf the likeliho o d that John would win
The ill formedness of the examples with idiom chunks we can ascrib e to the
indep endent condition on p ossessors that they b e animate Non animate
even non concrete p ossessors are acceptable with some degradation This
degradation is most severe wemay assume with noun phrases like idiom
chunks that do not denote anything at all In fact the examples of
do seem to vary in acceptability according to the extent to which they can
be interpreted as metaphoric rather than out and out non referential We
can account for the marginality of the pleonastic examples of in like
fashion This is myintuition for instance ab out the di erence b etween the
example with belikelyand that with seem it is forced to b e understo o d as
referential With be likely it can b e fairly easily construed as denoting the
prop osition John wil l win and prop ositions can b e likely Withseem on
the other hand even if we construe it as the prop osition that John might
notwin we cannot sp eak of prop ositions seeming hence the additional
ill formedness of the example we are forced to recognize it as truly non
referential
In sum none of the arguments for the D IP analysis are particularly
strong and the relativewell formedness of the examples with pleonastics
is rather p ersuasive evidence against it Thus I reject it and with it the
prop osition that s is a assigning head of DP
Burzio s examples i are relevanthere
i it was likely without PRO b eing obvious that S
it seemed without b eing obvious that S
A p ossible interpretation of the contrast in i is that it as sub ject of be likely o ccupies
a p osition hence can control a PRO It as sub ject of seem on the other hand cannot
control indicating that it is a true pleonastic thanks to N Chomsky for reminding me of these examples
ANALYSES I I THE MORPHOLOGICAL ANGLE
Analyses I I The Morphological Angle
There is another approach to the problem of gerund structure exempli
ed by the analyses of Jackendo Leb eaux and Baker In this view the
question of gerund structure is a question of the interaction of morphology
and syntax it is a question of the b ehavior of phonologically dep endent
morphemes that at some level b ehave like indep endent morphemes syn
tactically
Jackendo
a The Deverbal Rule Schema
Jackendo recognizes that gerunds are problematic for a restrictive
Xschema The assumption that gerunds involve a noun phrase headed bya
verb violates his Uniform Three Level Hyp othesis that every category X
pro jects to X andevery X is headed byanX He subsumes gerunds
along with ve other structures under a single exceptional rule schema the
Deverbalizing Rule Schema
i i
X af V
His structure for Poss ing gerunds results from instantiating this schema
with X N i and af ing
N
Poss N
ing V
V
V Obj
ing subsequently lowers to V yielding the correct surface form
In this way he accounts for the presence of a genitive which is regularly
aN sp eci er the presence of VP V for him V is S and the absence
of a nominative sub ject mo dals and sentence adverbials which are all
daughters of V
CHAPTER THE GERUND
b The History of the English Gerund
As Jackendo p oints out this view p ermits a straightforward accountof
the history of the construction Apparently the oldest form of the gerund
is a simple deverbal noun suchasbuilding writing Jackendo sp eculates
that the historical development of the gerund involved a raising of the
attachment site of the nominalizing a x from where X N and i
to X N i
N
N
N
N
V ing
Emonds and Poutsma givechronologies for the develop
ment of the gerund that supp ort Jackendo s claims Emonds is a
study of gerunds in Chaucer with the intent to demonstrate that the Poss
ing construction is not used by Chaucer but only the Ing of construction
He gives a list of criteria for distinguishing the Poss ing and Ing of construc
tions and applies these criteria to all the examples of V ing in Chaucer s
The Parson s Tale Virtually all examples are either clearly Ing of or
do not show clear indications of their status There are only a handful of
examples whichappeartobePoss ing or PRO ing these Emonds attempts
to explain away with more or less success Even if he do es not showPoss
ing to b e non existent in Chaucer he do es demonstrate that it is very rare
much more so than in current usage
Poutsma gives a much more general chronology of the developmentof
the gerund This is his account in brief The gerund ending was originally
ung that of the participle end e ind e in Southern dialects As
with mo dern German nominals in ung orDutch nominals in ing the Old
English gerund in ung had only nominal characteristics and none of the
mixed quality of present dayPoss ing The gerund and participle endings
collapsed in the development of Middle English Poutsma reconstructs
thecourseofchange as loss of the dental stop in the participle ending
followed byfreevariation b etween a dental and velar p oint of articulation
for the nasal By the fourteenth century b oth endings were ing except
in some Northern dialects where distinct endings had b een preserved at
ANALYSES I I THE MORPHOLOGICAL ANGLE
least to the time of Poutsma s writing an d for the participle in g
for the gerund The collapse of participle and gerund paved the way for
the mixing of the verbal prop erties of the participle and the nominal
prop erties of the gerund The b eginnings of the mixed gerund o ccurred
in the mid fteenth century First gerunds b egan app earing with particles
previously according to Poutsma particles were found with gerunds only
as pre xes not as separate words
a the making up of the seide evidencez Paston Let No ca
b smytynge of of hese feteris smiting o of his fetters Paston
Let No ca
Examples of gerunds taking a direct ob ject b egin to app ear in the late
fteenth century Finally it is only much later the end of the sixteenth
century that gerunds b egin to app ear with asp ect and voice distinctions
Until that time active gerunds are used in a passive sense this usage is fre
quenteven in Shakesp eare and survives to the presentday in constructions
like to be worth seeing synonymous with to be worth being seen
This chronology accords well with Jackendo s claim that the develop
ment of the gerund involved attaching ing at an ever higher p ointinthe
expansion of NP The only glitch app ears to b e accounting for the stage
at which auxiliaries are not generated but particles and bare noun phrase
direct ob jects are This would seem to indicate application of the Deverbal
izing Rule Schema at the X level Jackendo generates auxiliaries under
V However adjectives and sp eci ers like many three are generated out
side N predicting that at the stage in which auxiliaries were not generated
adjectives were p ermitted which is highly unlikely though I do not have
data one way or the other
c Ing of
A third p ossible instantiation of the Deverbalizing Rule Schema with X N
and af ing whichJackendo do es not discuss is the following where i
CHAPTER THE GERUND
N
N
N
ing V
V
In Jackendo s system such a construction would have the following prop
erties it would have the distribution of a noun phrase it would have b oth
N and N sp eci ers i e p ossessors determiners quanti ers and ad
jectives it would have b oth non restrictive and restrictive relative clauses
but ob jects would not b e marked with of butwould b e bare noun phrases
It would lack mo dals auxiliaries all adverbials but would haveverbal
sub categorizations including particles Case marked noun phrases double
ob jects etc
There is a construction which has some but not all of these prop erties
namely the Ing of construction
John s xing of the car
the lo oking up of the information
This construction app ears to involve a simple deverbal noun like derived
nominals In particular it lacks the primary characteristic of a verbal
construction viz Case marking of the direct ob ject However it di ers in
imp ortantways from other derived nominals which p oint to a more verbal
character Firstly it p ermits particles as wehave seen though it do es not
p ermit particle movement the looking of the information up It is also
likeaverb and unlike a derived nominal in that it do es not p ermit passive
without passive morphology
a Their carefully rebuilding the city
Their careful rebuilding of the city
Their careful reconstruction of the city
The city s carefully rebuilding t
The city s careful rebuilding t
The city s careful reconstruction
Thirdly it patterns with Poss ing rather than derived nominals in not p er mitting temp oral sub jects examples from Emonds
ANALYSES I I THE MORPHOLOGICAL ANGLE
a Their renewing our contract this year
Their renewing of our contract this year
Their renewal of our contract
b This year s renewing our contract
This year s renewing of our contract
This year s renewal of our contract
On the other hand determiners and relative clauses are p ermitted
and mo dals and auxiliaries are excluded
a the counting of the votes that to ok the longest was in the th
district
b the having xed of the car
In short the prop erties of the Ing of construction are not precisely what
Jackendo would predict assuming the structure but they are close
enough to merit further investigation
Pesetsky Leb eaux
A structure similar to that of has b een prop osed by Leb eaux
Leb eaux following Pesetsky argues that there is LF movementof
a xes and that the verbal prop erties of the Ing of construction can b e
accounted for by assuming LF raising of ing to N bar
Pesetsky argues for using LF raising of a xes to account for a number
of paradoxes in morphology Most of his examples involve a stem with
b oth a pre x and a su x where the phonology indicates that the pre x
is attached after the su x whereas the syntax or semantics indicates that
the su x is attached after the pre x For instance consider the form un
happi er er attaches only to monosyllabic stems or disyllabic stems with
esp ecially light second syllables direct er complex er This indicates
Restrictive relative clauses are often not as go o d as one might like This seems to
have to do with the fact that these items denote situations it is a prop erty they share
with derived nominals
i the sinking of a ship that b othered me the most was when the Lusitanic went
down
ii the destruction of a city that b othered me the most was when they b ombed
Dresden
Though I am not entirely convinced that the combination of light rst syllable
stressed second syllable and semi vowel third syllable allows er even where the rst
syllable is not a pre x I have b een unable to nd existing words of this form but the
CHAPTER THE GERUND
that for the phonology the analysis must b e un happy er However the
meaning is not not more happy but more not happy indicating that
for the semantics the analysis must b e un happy er Pesetsky solves this
puzzle by satisfying the phonology at s structure and the semantics at LF
he raises er at LF so that it has narrow scop e at s structure and broad
scop e at LF
A A
un A A er
happy er un A
happy t
Leb eaux suggests using this device to accountfortheverbal
prop erties of the Ing of construction He suggests that the V ing noun in
e g the singing of the song has manyverbal prop erties b ecause at LF it
is a verb
NP NP
N N
N of the song V ing
V ing V of the song
sing V t
sing
Note that syntactic feature p ercolation reapplies at LF with the result
that some of the category lab els change b etween s structure and LF In
particular morphological traces do not p ossess syntactic category features
so the former complement sing b ecomes the new head as far as p er
V
colation of syntactic category features is concerned
neologism corrodey corrode y disgusting sounds quite happywith er This is
corrodier than anything my mom s ever made me do before This do es not b ear on the
other paradoxes whichPesetsky has collected however
ANALYSES I I THE MORPHOLOGICAL ANGLE
The similarity to the analysis I suggested to ll out the Jackendovian
paradigm is striking It is attractive to attempt to account for part of
Ross range of noun phrase like vs sentence like constructions by p ostu
lating di erences in the scop e of the nominalizing a x ing In lexicalized
forms like building it takes scop e over N in Ing of it takes scop e over
N bar in Poss ing it takes scop e over NP and in Acc ing it takes scop e
beyond the pro jections of N heading its own indep endent syntactic pro
jection
Baker
Baker c argues that the di erence b etween Poss ing and Ing of gerunds
is a matter of scop e of ing He takes the Poss ing construction to b e a case
of syntactic a xation on a par with noun incorp oration in contrast
to Ing of whichinvolves lexical a xation of ing More precisely he as
sumes that Poss ing gerunds have d structures exempli ed by and
s structures like
IP
NP Infl VP
ing V NP
sing the aria
NP
NP NP
N NP
V ing the aria
sing
ing has lowered to a x itself to sing it is the head of the new complex
lexical item sing ing Following Pesetsky Baker assumes that
pro jection conventions reapply at s structure with the e ect that the no des formerly lab elled V and VP are relab elled N and NP The
CHAPTER THE GERUND
former In disapp ears without leaving a trace and ing b ecomes remains
head of the former IP which is accordingly relab elled NP Baker ascrib es
the sentence like prop erties of gerunds to the fact that they are sentences
at d structure and their noun phrase like prop erties to the fact that they
are noun phrases at s structure and b eyond
There are a numb er of details whichBaker do es not iron out First
Baker considers ing to b e the head of IP at d structure this would indi
cate that ing is of syntactic category I however not N The alternativeis
to assume an empty In at d structure which disapp ears at s structure Sec
ondly there is a paradox concerning the timing of a x movement and Case
marking For the complements of sing Baker requires Case marking to
apply b efore a x movement inasmuch as after a x movement the Case
assigner sing has b ecome the non Case assigning noun singing On the other
hand the gerund as a whole b ehaves like a noun phrase for the purp oses of
Case assignment it is not Case resistant it in fact requires Case This re
quires Case assignment to apply sometime after a x movement when the
gerund has b ecome a noun phrase In this case an empty In will not help
however IP cannot b ecome NP until after a x movement has o ccured
but by then it is to o late to Case mark the complement s of sing Thus
to makeBaker s account coherent wemust assume that the gerund is a
noun phrase at all levels Case assignment precedes a x movement and
a x movement precedes PF and probably s structure
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
Conclusion Syntactic A xation
A Final Analysis
a The Scop e of Ing
The analysis of gerunds I would like to defend is very close to that of
Jackendo except that I will generalize my analysis to Ing of and I adopt
a DP structure for the noun phrase The essence of the analysis is this
the di erences in the structures of the various typ es of gerund in English
reduce to di erences in the scop e of the nominalizer ing Ing has the
same basic prop erties in all three gerund structures Acc ing Poss ing
Ing of namely ittakes a verbal pro jection and converts it into a nominal
category The three typ es of gerund di er only with regard to the p oint
on the s pro jection path of V that the conversion to a nominal category
o ccurs at V atVP oratIP
Most of the prop erties of Acc ing Poss ing and Ing of fall out correctly
if weinterpret take scop e over as meaning b e sister of creating the
following structures at s structure
a Acc ing
DP
ing IP
John I
I VP
V DP
sing the Marseillaise John singing the Marseillaise
CHAPTER THE GERUND
b Poss ing
DP
John s D
D NP
ing VP
V DP
sing the Marseillaise
John s singing the Marseillaise
c Ing of
DP
John s D
D NP
N PP KP
ing V of the Marseillaise
sing
John s singing of the Marseillaise
Ihavetaken ing to adjoin to a s pro jection of V pro jecting its own
nominal features to the category resulting from the adjunction after the
manner of morphological a xation despite the fact that the adjunction
is in the syntax If we assume that ing can only adjoin to a maximal
pro jection when it adjoins in the syntax then under the DP analysis we
correctly predict three p ossible adjunction sites for ing viz those of
adjunction to V i e adjunction in the morphology adjunction to VP
adjunction to IP For sake of preciseness let us assume that ing has
A fourth p ossibilitywould b e adjunction to CP Preliminarily wemayfollow Chom
sky a in assuming that adjunction to CP is excluded by as yet obscure universal
principles The structure C ing is excluded b ecause the selection
CP DP IP prop erties of C are violated
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
the feature N Assuming V VP have the features F N adjoining ing
overrides the N value creating categories of typ e F N i e N NP
Assuming IP has the features F N adjoining ing pro duces a F N
category i e DP
I should makevery clear that I assume that ing a xes toaverbal
pro jection converting it directly into a nominal pro jection without pro
jecting any structure of its own For example in the Acc ing construction
I assume that ing a xes to IP and converts it into DP ing is not a D
it simply substitutes its N feature into the IP matrix pro ducing a DP
There is no D and no D bar If ing were a D pro jecting DP in accor
dance with X bar theory wewould exp ect it to take a sub ject or to license
other dep endents such as lo cative PP s but it do es not I sp ell out the
mechanisms of this a xation to XP in section e
b Acc ing
The only noun phrase prop erty of Acc ing if its structure is as given in
a is its external distribution All the prop erties of the sub ject includ
ing the Case it receives and all the prop erties of the verb phrase contained
within Acc ing are the same as are found in the sentence This di ers from
Reuland s account whichwehave assumed to now in that it predicts a
noun phrase like distribution for Acc ing Reuland ascrib ed no noun phrase
prop erties to Acc ing at all The predictions made by assigning Acc ing the
structure in a seem to accord b etter with the facts As we noted in
discussing the external prop erties of Poss ing section ab ove the dis
tribution of Acc ing is more like that of Poss ing than wewould exp ect if
Acc ing were a CP plain and simple Acc ing is somewhat marginal in most
noun phrase p ositions from which sentences are excluded but not as bad
as wewould exp ect under Reuland s analysis cf the examples of section
a
In addition to its distribution we identi ed in two other ways in
whichPoss ing had the external b ehavior of a noun phrase but Acc ing
did not If we are now to assume contrary to our earlier assumptions that
Acc ing is a noun phrase at its outermost level these ways that Acc ing
di ers in b ehavior from other noun phrases must b e accounted for The
two prop erties in question are the fact that conjoined Acc ing phrases in
sub ject p osition do not trigger plural agreement and that an anaphor
in the sub ject of Acc ing in sub ject p osition cannot b e long distance b ound
I am assuming as I have since I that N and V are distinguishedby their value
for the single feature N Under more standard assumptions ab out their feature com
p osition wewould have to assume that ing has the features N V
CHAPTER THE GERUND
a John coming so often and Mary leaving so often b others b other
me
vs John and Mary b others b other me
b they thought that each other giving up the ship was forgivable
p
vs they thought that each other s desertion was forgivable
Both of these di erences can b e straightforwardly explained given one
assumption which I wish to make for indep endent reasons namely that
the determiner is the site of p erson numb er and gender features so called
Phi features In Poss ing but not in Acc ing there is a D hence Phi
features For this reason conjoined Poss ing s trigger plural agreement like
other plural noun phrases Since Acc ing do es not have Phi features on
the other hand AGR cannot coindex with it hence AGR shows default
agreement when it has an Acc ing sub ject in the same waythatitshows
default agreement when it has a sentential sub ject Likewise since AGR
do es not coindex with Acc ing AGR counts as an accessible SUBJECT
for anaphors within Acc ing accounting for the di erence in long distance
binding prop erties b etween Acc ing and noun phrases that do b ear Phi
features including Poss ing
Thus all the external evidence distinguishing Poss ing as noun phrase
but Acc ing as sentence can readily b e accounted for under hyp othesis
under which b oth are noun phrases externally They continue to di er with
regard to the exp ected b ehavior of their sub jects cf a the sub ject
of Poss ing b ehaves like the sub ject of a noun phrase but the sub ject of
Acc ing b ehaves like the sub ject of a sentence
The assignment of accusative Case to the sub ject of Acc ing b ears a
bit of discussion I will part ways with Reuland and assume not that
accusative Case is assigned from outside and transferred by ing to the
sub ject but that there is an AGR present I assume there is a nominal
AGR in Poss ing assigning genitive Case and a verbal AGR in Acc ing
assigning common Case or nominative Case nominative Case is usually
only assigned in absolutive constructions suchasMary was wasting her
time on John he being a con rmedbachelor I take the p ossibilityof
the presence of AGR in In to b e the default case not the exception The
I discuss my reasons for wishing to make this assumption in Chapter IV In brief
determiners and pronouns whichI take to b e of category Determiner are the elements
which mark these features to the highest degree uniformly across languages This sug
gests that the Determiner is the grammatical lo cus of these features
In the binding theory of Chomsky b the di erence is one of the availabilityof
a BT compatible indexing AGR do es not count as a p otential binder for anaphors in
Poss ing b ecause of the i within i condition AGR does countasa potential binder for
anaphors in Acc ing b ecause it do es not coindex with Acc ing See Chomsky b
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
one place where it is not p ossible to haveAGR in In is in the in nitive
In the in nitive wemay assume that it is the presence of to in In which
precludes AGR
c Poss ing
The analysis of Poss ing presented in b varies only slightly from the
D VP analysis examined earlier and most explanations of prop erties of
Poss ing given under the D VP analysis carry over into the current analysis
Poss ing has the distribution of a noun phrase b ecause it is in fact a noun
phrase DP With regard to agreement and long distance binding when
Poss ing lls sub ject p osition wehave just noted that Poss ing di ers from
Acc ing in p ossessing a D p osition hence Phi features The sub ject
receives genitive Case from D I assume that there is a non overt AGR
AGR
in D assigning genitive Case and that s is a p ostp ositional case marker
K If sentence adverbials are licensed by the presence of an In then we
predict they will b e found in Acc ing but not Poss ing this seems to b e
correct though as we noted earlier x e there is some unclarityinhow
to interpret the facts
We also observed that quanti er sub jects of Acc ing strongly prefer nar
row scop e interpretation whereas quanti er sub jects of Poss ing strongly
prefer wide scop e interpretation If quanti ers need to adjoin to IP to take
scop e the inabilityofquanti ers to take narrow scop e in Poss ing and their
ability to do so in Acc ing is immediately accounted for under the current
analysis there is an IP in Acc ing but not in Poss ing What wehave not
yet explained is why quanti er sub jects in Acc ing resist wide scop e inter
pretation whereas corresp onding sub jects in e g in nitival complements
are amenable to either scop e
a John disapproves of everyone taking a dayo wide
p
b John wanted every girl in the chorus line to b e his wife wide
Iwould like to suggest that there is a stronger relation b etween bridge
verbs and their sentential complements than simply assignment and that
this relation is p ossible only b etween verbs and other verbal pro jections i e
IP CP hence the fact that Acc ing is a DP at the highest level explains
its inability to clause merge with the matrix verb We can explain the
Recall that Acc ing is a DP but there is no D ing converts IP directly into DP
See section e for an account of the mechanisms involved
Fiengo Higginb otham argue that quanti ers can also adjoin to N bar NP
under the DP analysis This do es not a ect the question at hand as long as quanti ers
cannot adjoin to DP NP under the standard analysis
CHAPTER THE GERUND
inabilityofquanti ers in Acc ing to take matrix scop e by claiming that the
lack of clause merging creates a barrier to quanti er climbing
Finally we noted twootherways in which Acc ing and Poss ing are
di erentiated Poss ing shows sp eci city e ects and p ermits pied piping
Acc ing do es not There is no standard accountofthemechanism which
p ermits pied piping I would like to suggest that it involves the p ercolation
of a wh feature along non verbal pro jections The wh feature of a wh PP
can p ercolate to a licensing i e marking noun at least in some cases
but never to a licensing verb at least in English
a my mother a picture of whom you saw t
b my mother examine whom I thought the do ctor never would
t
Assuming the sub ject is licensed by the functional head containing AGR
In in Acc ing D in Poss ing the ability or inabilityofthe wh feature to
p ercolate to the phrase as a whole is correctly predicted under the cur
rent analysis In is a verbal category thus p ercolation of the sub ject
wh feature and pied piping of the Acc ing phrase are prohibited D is a
nominal category hence pied piping of DP is p ermitted
the man who irting with your wife you to ok such exception to
the man whose irting with your wife you to ok such exception to
Concerning sp eci city e ects If we lo calize the source of this e ect
in the presence of a D no de it follows straightforwardly from the current
analysis that Poss ing but not Acc ing will show sp eci city e ects The
current analysis makes it more di cult to give a sub jacency based account
for the distinction in question i e the city which I remember him describing
t vs the city which I remember his describing t There is no concensus
on the prop er way to treat sp eci city e ects but it has b een frequently
observed that even among non gerundive noun phrases the degree to which
a noun phrase no de is a barrier to extraction corresp onds to the degree
to which that noun phrase is interpreted as referential If this intuition
can b e develop ed into a satisfactory formal account it will plausibly cut
prop erly b etween Poss ing constructions which p ossess Phi features and
are to that extent referential and Acc ing constructions whichlackaD
no de
As a closing note recall that the primary problem with the D VP anal
ysis was explaining the co o ccurence of ing and either AGR s or lexical
determiners in the D p osition Since ing is not generated in the D p osition
under the current analysis this is no longer a problem
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
d The Site of Ing
The question I would like to address in this section is precisely what licenses
the con guration a or b
DP NP
ing IP ing VP
This app ears to b e adjunction of ing to IP or VP except that adjunction
do es not change category lab els Ihave describ ed this con guration as
a xation to a maximal pro jection It is similar to a xation in that
the features of the top no de are determined by combining the features of
the a x ing and the features of the stem IP VP In particular DP
and NP inherit the feature N from the a x and the feature F from
the stem This is similar to the way that e g destruction inherits some
features e g syntactic category from the a x tion and other features
e g grid from the stem destroy
Before I can sp ell out precisely what I mean by a xation to a maximal
pro jection I must lay some groundwork First I would like to present
a certain interpretation of X bar theory which though non standard is
extensionally indistinguishable from the standard interpretation of X bar
theory Let us b egin by considering the tree
AP
A
PP
to calligraphy
A
V A
prefer able
As it is usually conceived there are two quite separate trees here ab ove
the line is the syntax to which X bar theory applies and b elow the line is
morphology towhich quite di erentwell formedness principles apply Itis
CHAPTER THE GERUND
only a coincidence that one no de A b elongs to b oth trees On the other
hand the distinction b etween syntax and morphology is b eing blurred more
and more in recentwork such as that of Baker in which parts of words
play imp ortant indep endent syntactic roles If we simply erase the line
between syntax and morphology however and assign to phrases structures
like including b oth syntactic and morphological no des X bar
theory must b e revised Otherwise for instance X bar theory would b e
violated by a subtree like
A
X A
un happy
Under standard morphological assumptions un is the head of the higher
A ifso however A do es not agree in syntactic category with its head but
with the complement of its head violating X bar theory Further the lower
A is not a head yet it is also not a maximal pro jection again violating
X bar theory
There is an obvious reinterpretation of X bar theory that avoids these
problems Let us take X bar theory to b e a set of well formedness principles
which apply to subtrees of depth one
X
Y Z Z
X bar theory states that in such a subtree
i there is a head of X let it b e Y
ii where n is the bar level of X n and the bar level of Y is n
or n
iii X andYhave the same sp eci cations for all inheritable features
including syntactic category
iv all non heads Z are maximal pro jections
i
Let us supp ose that every subtree must b e licensed with resp ect to a
set of con gurational principles Tonow wehave assumed that the only
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
con gurational principle set is X bar theory Ifwe extend phrase markers to
include b oth syntactic and morphological no des however wemust include
a second set of con gurational principles the principles governing a xation
and comp ounding They say roughly that in the subtree
i there is a head of X let it b e Y
ii there is exactly one non head Z
iii X Y and Z all have X bar level
iv for all features for which Y is sp eci ed X and Y have identical
feature sp eci cations
v for all features for which Y is not sp eci ed but Z is sp eci ed X
and Z haveidentical feature sp eci cations
Every subtree must b e licensed either by the syntactic conditions
i e X bar theory or by the principles governing a xation and comp ound
ing If we include the statement immediately following what
wehave said so far is not a revision but simply an alternative formalization
of the standard view a theory that do es not have distinct syntactic and
morphological structures but do es include is extensionally indistin
guishable from the current theory with distinct syntactic and morphological
structures
A subtree must b e licensed by X bar theory if its head has X bar
level n otherwise it may b e licensed either by X bar theory or
by the principles governing morphological con gurations
This is true b ecause we can still draw a line b etween the morphology and
the syntax as in In every path from ro ot to leaf there will b e a
unique no de b elow which all subtrees are licensed by the morphological
conditions and ab ove which all subtrees are licensed by the syntactic
conditions This is guaranteed by the fact that all no des must b e
X s for a subtree to b e licensed by the morphological conditions but any
subtree licensed bythesyntactic conditions will have at least one no de of X
bar level greater than namely the ro ot Thus in ascending a path from
leaf to ro ot it is p ossible to switch from using the morphological conditions
to license subtrees to using the syntactic conditions but it is not p ossible
to switch back
Given this alternative formalization of conditions on structural con g
urations as background the revision I would like to prop ose is simply this
in the morphological conditions I would like to revise the clause iii
which reads X Y and Z have X bar level to iii
CHAPTER THE GERUND
iii if Y has X bar level then Z has X bar level
Given this revision will have no e ect if Y has X bar level greater
than the subtree will b e sub ject to X bar theory not to the morphological
principles If Y has X bar level equal to then X has X bar level by
inheritance and Z has X bar level by the revised clause iii Finally
wemay assume that X bar levels less than are universally prohibited
The revision will have no e ect that is unless there are elements
which are unsp eci ed for X bar level It is p ossible to have elements un
sp eci ed for X bar level if we treat X bar level as a multi valued feature on
a par with syntactic category or p erson numb er and gender For instance
N would b e a shorthand for F N Bar I would liketocounte
nance the p ossibility that there are elements that are not sp eci ed for the
feature nBar in the same way that there are elements like un which are
not sp eci ed for the features F N In particular I would like to assume
that ing is such an a x Consider then the con guration
F N Bar NP
N F N Bar VP
ing make hay
Since ing do es not have a X bar level which is greater than inasmuch
as it has no X bar level at all p ermits us to license by X bar
theory or by the morphological conditions If we try to license
it by X bar theory we fail inasmuch as the head do es not have an X bar
level which is equal to or one less than that of the maximal pro jection In
To b e more precise I should not represent ing as a separate no de but as an abbre
viation for a phonological representation Switching to a p ost x feature representation
for clarity the tree should actually b e
i
where
F
N
NP
Bar
N ing
F
N VP
Bar
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
particular the head has no X bar level at all If we try to license
by the morphological conditions though everything is in order the ro ot
no de inherits its syntactic features from ing and since ing is unsp eci ed
for X bar level the ro ot no de inherits its X bar level from the complement
of ing
Imust emphasize that with regard to elements sp eci ed for X bar level
the assumptions I have presented here are extensionally equivalentto
i e a notational variant of standard assumptions The assumptions
presented here di er extensionally from standard assumptions only in the
constraints they place on elements unsp eci ed for bar level under standard
assumptions such elements do not exist The entire extentofmy revision
of the theory is to say let us supp ose elements unsp eci ed for bar level
exist I have presented a notational variant of the standard theory and
made the minimal mo di cation which p ermits elements unsp eci ed for bar
level to exist The resulting theory without any additional assumptions
predicts a certain b ehavior for elements unsp eci ed for X bar level this
b ehavior is precisely the b ehavior of ing
e Lowering ing
One outstanding question is whether the structures of are represen
tations at d structure s structure or LF Leb eaux needed to assume that
movementof ing in Ing of constructions under his analysis o ccured at LF
b ecause if ing were adjoined higher than V at s structure then the verb
should Case assign the direct ob ject for instance but this is of course
characteristic of Poss ing not Ing of As concerns Case assignment we
would wish to say that the representations of are s structure repre
sentations the direct ob ject receives Case in a and b but not in c
For this reason we should take the representations of to b e s
structure representations This creates the problem though that V and
ing form a morphological unit at least at PF It would seem that we
are forced to assume either that ing lowers onto the verb at PF or that
Case marking is done before s structure and the verb raises to ing bys
structure Horn Jackendo and Baker adopt the former course This
requires some comment b ecause there are problems whichlowering move
ments raise for the ECP these problems have led to lowering movements
b eing generally disfavored A x hopping Rule R of Chomsky for
instance has b een replaced byverb raising in Chomsky s more recentwork
Under lowering movements the trace of movement is not c commanded by
the moved element hence the trace cannot escap e the ECP by means of
b eing antecedent governed by the moved element On the other hand there are empirical di culties facing the assumption
CHAPTER THE GERUND
that all movements are raising movements particularly as concerns a x
hopping In French there is clear evidence for raising of the verb into In
Tensed verbs verbs whichhave merged with the AGR which originates in
In precede negative adverbs but in nitival forms where there has b een
no merging with AGR follow negativeadverbs
a je ne sais pas
je ne pas sais
b ne savoir pas
ne pas savoir
This receives a ready explanation if the verb raises into In to merge with
AGR and fails to do so when no AGR is present and items like pas app ear
between In and VP
In English however no similar evidence has b een discovered and the
evidence in fact app ears to p oint in the opp osite direction In most registers
adverbs can app ear b etween in nitival to and VP indicating that adverbs
do appear between In and VP in English as in French
to thoroughly read the article
If the verb raises to In to merge with AGR wewould predict that
is grammatical when it is in fact ungrammatical
John read thoroughly t the article
V
This app ears to indicate that in English unlikeinFrench AGR lowers to
the verb rather than the verb raising to AGR Thus the fact that the
present analysis and those of Horn etc involvelowering of a xes cannot
be taken to weigh against them We can preserve the ECP by assuming one
of the following ing leaves no trace the trace of ing is not sub ject
to the ECP or the lowering of ing o ccurs in PF where the ECP do es
not apply The third option lowering at PF is least problematic If one
wishes to take either of the rst two courses lowering in the syntax a
caveat is in order Assuming that ing lowerstoVbetween d structure and
s structure means that the representations of are in fact d structure
representations not s structures The s structures and LF s must b e iden
tical to in relevant resp ects though In particular to account for
Case assignment prop erties lowering ing cannot b e allowed to convert the
The argumentpresented here is originally due to Emonds
Note that Case adjacency is not a problem the trace of the verb not the verb itself
is the Case assigner this mustbeso astheverb itself no longer governs the direct ob ject
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
VintoanNinPoss ing and Acc ing wemust assume that syntactic cat
egories once set at d structure cannot b e changed at s structure though
if we follow Leb eaux in taking the ing of Ing of to raise at LF wemust
allow lab els to change b etween s structure and LF Also if welower ing
without leaving a trace we cannot allow the structure created by ing to
b e destroyed by the movementof ing For instance wemust assume that
the LF of the Poss ing construction is
DP
D NP
VP
V ing
Otherwise the selectional prop erties of D would not b e satis ed at LF
An alternativetobothlowering of ing and pre s structure Case assignment
is this let us assume that the ing which a xes to VP or IP is not the
overt morphological a x but a separate abstract element let us write it
ING The structure of e g Poss ing is
DP
D NP
ING VP
V
V
V ing
V raises at LF as a normal case of abstract head raising yielding the LF
ing
This analysis was suggested to me by N Chomsky
CHAPTER THE GERUND
DP
D NP
N VP
Ving N V
V ing ING V
t
At LF wemay assume morphological selectional requirements of ING
guarantee that the verb has the ing a x The s structure and LF of Acc
ing are similarly
ss DP LF DP
N IP N IP
ING DP s I I N DP s I
I VP V I VP
V V ing t V
V ing t
An alternative to head raising is the p ercolation of some feature dis
tinguishing ing say ing for lackofanything more inspired to the
s structure complement of ING Note that this would require that In in
Acc ing inherits the feature ing from its VP complement
Note that under either version of the ING analysis it is still neces
sary to license ING by the morphological conditions not by X bar
theory ING is not an indep endent syntactic head which pro jects a full X
bar pro jection First unless we p ermit ING to b e sp eci ed only for N
and inherit its sp eci cations for the feature F from its complement we
cannot assume the same item ING in all gerunds Acc ing Poss ing and
Ing of Secondly if ING pro jected a full set of X bar pro jections wewould
exp ect much more structure in Acc ing and Poss ing gerunds than we nd
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
For instance wewould exp ect to nd adjectives in Poss ing and p ossessors
in Acc ing
DP DP
D NP DP s D
AP N ING IP
ING VP DP I
V ing I VP
V ing
In conclusion if we assume a separate abstract item ING we can as
sume LF raising of V rather than PF lowering of ing Wemust take
ing
ING to have precisely the characteristics we assigned to ing in the previous
section and the conditions and of that section continue
to b e necessary
f App endix VP and NP Deletion
One of the unexp ected ways that Poss ing and Ing of di er is in their ability
to participate in N bar Deletion whichwemust rename NP Deletion
under the DP analysis Consider
a John s xing the sink was suprising and Bill s e was more so
b John s xing of the sink was skillful and Bill s e was more so
Under the current analysis b oth involve the deletion of an NP under iden
tity with a preceding NP Why then is there a di erence in grammaticality
The rst thing to notice is that John s xing of the sink is actually
ambiguous it can either mean the manner in which John xed the sink
Act reading or the fact that John xed the sink Fact reading
Only under the Act reading is NP Deletion p ossible
a John s xing of the sink was skillful but Bill s e was more so
b John s xing of the sink was surprising and Bill s e was even more so
CHAPTER THE GERUND
The explanation of the contrast in is that a involvesaFact
reading while b involves an Act reading Poss ing di ers from Ing of
in that the Act reading is not available
a John s xing the sink was skillful
b John s xing the sink was surprising
Acc ing also do es not admit of an Act reading and is not sub ject to NP
Deletion
a John xing the sink was skillful
b John xing the sink was surprising
John xing the sink was surprising and Bill e was more so
In Acc ing there is of course the additional factor that there is no NP
present only a VP This raises the question though why VP Deletion
cannot apply in b VP Deletion unlike NP Deletion do es apply to
constructions with a Fact reading
That John xed the sink was surprising but that Bill did e was
more so
In fact VP Deletion applies only to o constructions with Fact readings sim
ply b ecause there are no VP s with Act readings We can explain the failure
of VP Deletion to apply to Acc ing byhyp othesizing that the domains in
which NP Deletion and VP Deletion apply are mutually exclusive NP
Deletion always applies within DP VP Deletion always applies in IP s that
are not within DP Thus the Acc ing construction is in the domain of
NP Deletion not VP Deletion But even if we generalize NP Deletion to
apply to either NP or VP indiscriminately but again within DP it still
will not apply in Acc ing b ecause Acc ing do es not have an Act reading
This account of the application of NP Deletion reduces to three p ostu
lates then
A NP Deletion applies only within DP
B NP Deletion applies only in constructions with an Act reading
C A construction has an Act reading only if it contains an N
Of course not within DP is not precise enough Weshouldsay IP s that are not
on an s pro jection path which terminates in a DP This distinguishes b etween the IP
in Acc ing and IP s in the complement of a noun The latter are within a DP but not
on an s pro jection path terminatingina DP
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
Poss ing and Acc ing di er crucially from Ing of in lacking N hence an
Act reading
Notice that derived nominals are like Ing of in b eing ambiguous b etween
Act and Fact readings As predicted they p ermit NP Deletion only under
the Act reading
a Caesar s destruction of his eet was thorough
Caesar s destruction of his eet was thorough but Antony s e
was more so
b Caesar s destruction of his eet was quite unexp ected
Caesar s destruction of his eet was quite unexp ected and
Antony s e was even more so
Supp ose we adopt Leb eaux claim that Ing of and derived nominals are
distinguished from other nominals in that the a x ing tion etc can
raise at LF creating a VP where an NP had b een at surface structure
translating now into the DP analysis
SS NP LF NP
N VP ing
tion
V ing V
tion
If the a x raises wehaveaFact reading if it do es not wehaveanAct
reading Then we can put forward the complement of
A VP Deletion applies only within IP not in DP
B VP Deletion applies only in constructions with a Fact reading
C A construction has a Fact reading only if it contains a V
CHAPTER THE GERUND
A xes in the Syntax
This analysis in whichwe analyze the various gerunds as involving a xa
tion of ing to maximal categories accounts for the facts extremely well A
natural question then is the place this pro cess has in the grammar more
generally Is ing unique in b ehaving in this manner How do es the pro cess
of a xation in the syntax relate to other structures particularly those
created by functional heads
a The New Morphology
The idea of having a xes o ccupy syntactic p ositions indep endent of their
ro ots is not a new idea byany means cf the classic analysis of A x
Hopping in Chomsky But it is an idea that has come to playa
central role in the new morphology develop ed in works such as Selkirk
Fabb Sproat and esp ecially Baker b
Baker a shows that the syntactic e ects of morphemes are cal
culated in the same order as those morphemes are a xed to the ro ot In
Baker b he gives an explanation for this observation for a certain
subset of cases by prop osing that the ro ot of a complex verb actually b e
generated in a lower clause The fact that the e ects of the outer a x are
felt later is simply a result of the cycle lo osely sp eaking
An example is Baker s treatment of causative The causative morpheme
is generated in the matrix clause and the verb ro ot is generated downstairs
subsequently raising to the causative morpheme
S
NP VP
caus S
NP VP
V NP
b Turkish Gerunds and the Mirror Principle
We see a Mirror Principle of a slightly di erent sort op erating in Turkish
Recall that we had left a few lo ose ends in our discussion of Turkish gerunds
in section a namely the lo cation of some of the a xes such as the case
marker Consider a fairly complex example
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
Herkes ben im Istakoz a bayIl dI g Im I bil iyor
everyone me GEN lobster ACC adore NOM s ACC know PROG s
everyone knows I adore lobster
lit everyone knows of my adoring lobster
The skeleton of the structure of the gerund is
XP
benim X
X YP
Istakoza Y
bayIl
XP receives Accusativecaseundergovernment from outside this suggests
that the case marker I should b e adjoined to XP or it is a functional head
selecting XP Benim receives genitive case as argued from the nominal
AGR Im hence Im must govern benim The obvious site for Im then
is X since Im is nominal AGR presumably X D D selects NP onthe
one hand but the complements of Y are typical verb complements not
noun complements Istakoza is dative here but accusative ob jects etc
can also app ear in gerunds This suggests that Y V and dIg a xes to
YP converting it to an NP This leaves the bare verb stem in the lowest
p osition The complete structure is
KP
K DP
I KP D
benim D NP
Im dIg VP
KP V
Istakoza bayIl
CHAPTER THE GERUND
A kind of Mirror Principle is observed in that if we place the a xes in the
syntactic p ositions whichtheybehave as if they o ccupied as wehave done
in the resulting hierarchy of a xes exactly mirrors the observed
morphological hierarchy with the highest a xes syntactically b eing out
ermost morphologically This is the same kind of syntactic morphological
corresp ondence as we observed in Baker s analysis of causatives
c Generalizing the Mirror Principle
It is tempting to try to generalize the typ e of syntactic accountwhich suc
cessfully yields the Mirror Principle e ect in the case of causatives and
gerunds to all the cases discussed in Baker a A strong hyp othesis
would b e that all a xes o ccupy indep endent syntactic p ositions in a hier
archy corresp onding to the order of their morphological o ccurence This
hyp othesis has a certain attractiveness to it The acquisition of gerund
structures under the current analysis would b e somewhat less of a mys
tery if it were the default case that a xes take phrasal scop e I will not
attempt to seriously evaluate the hyp othesis here though I only note
an a priori di culty in defending it Namely certain of the grammatical
function changing a xes whichBaker a discusses have e ects which
would b e di cult to ascrib e to the presence of a syntactic a x I havein
mind particularly re exive recipro cal a xes It is di cult to see how the
presence of recipr in would bring ab out the syntactic e ect that is
apparently required viz that DP and DP are marked as coreferential
DP is externalized and DP suppressed not allowed to b e overt
Though I should hasten to make clear that the kind of Mirror Principle observed
in Turkish is not the same Mirror Principle that Baker prop osed Baker cast his Mirror
Principle in terms of order of application of morphological and syntactic pro cesses the
order of application of the morphological pro cesses broughtonby a xes mirrors the
order of application of the syntactic pro cesses broughtonby those a xes In Baker s
analysis of causative but not in his analyses of many other morpho syntactic pro cesses
the order that syntactic pro cesses o ccur is also mirrored in the hierarchy of p ositions
morphemes o ccupysyntactically
Even if this hyp othesis could b e established it would still b e necessary to demon
strate that the order in which syntactic pro cesses apply which are broughtonby the
morphemes mirrors the syntactic hierarchy of the morphemes
These are the e ects expressed by Baker s grammatical functionchanging rule
i NP VERB NP NP VERB
sub j ob j sub j ob j
NP NP
Baker a ex
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
IP
DP I
I VP
recipr VP IP
DP V
stem t
The nature of the e ects of the re exive recipro cal morpheme seem to
require that they b e expressed as op erations on lexical argument structure
prop erties not on syntactic structure
Verbal and Adjectival Passive
It is reasonable to exp ect that other verbal a xes would b ehave like ing
in taking varying scop e A p ossibility that deserves mention but which
I will not pursue here is that participial ing derives adjectival categories
from verbal categories in the way gerundive ing derives nominal categories
from verbal categories Arguably participles usually involve a xation of
ing to VP or IP but there are some words in ing that function like
pure adjectives e g seething glowing mentioned earlier These involve
a xation of adjectival ing to V
A p ossibilityI would like to pursue here is that the passive morpheme
en b ehaves like ing in a xing in either the morphology or the syntax
In particular I would like to explore the p ossibility that the di erence
between verbal and adjectival passives is a matter of scop e of en rather
than a matter of category as commonly assumed I prop ose the following
analysis for verbal a and adjectival b passives
CHAPTER THE GERUND
a VP b VP
V AP V AP
be en VP be A
V t en V
close close
a Distribution
The chief di erence b etween this analysis and the standard analysis is that
verbal passive phrases are analyzed as VPs externally in the standard
analysis but as APs in this analysis There are indications that the present
analysis is more adequate
First verbal passivedoesnothave the distribution of a typical VP
Anywhere a verbal passive can app ear an AP can app ear this is not true
of tensed and in nitival VPs
a the do or was closed
the do or was red
b the do or closed in Bill s face on that fateful day has long since
rotted away
the do or full of bulletholes
c closed in the plant has never reop ened
rst fashionable in the miniskirt has b ecome a p ermanent
part of American life
a John came
John busy
b Iwatched John leave
I watched John tipsy
On the other hand as has often b een p ointed out there are a few
contexts in which APs including adjectival passives app ear but verbal
passives do not Such cases in whichverbal passives do not have the
distribution of APs consititute prima facie counterevidence to the present
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
analysis The primary suchcontext is the complement of the verbs seem
remain look sound and a few others
a the do or remained closed by the wind
the do or remained full of bulletholes
b the do or lo oks closed by the wind
the do or lo oks full of bulletholes
the do or lo oks red
One way to dismiss this evidence would b e to claim that the constraint
illustrated in is not VP versus AP but activeversus stative as Levin
Rapap ort note there are some adjectival passives that are ex
cluded in this context apparently b ecause they are not stative the books
remained unsent to the factory However even clearly stativeverbal pas
sives are not go o d John remains known by everyone cf John remains
known to everyone Another p ossibility is that the failure of verbal pas
sives to app ear under remain etc can b e asso ciated with the failure of
active participles to app ear in this context
John s tribute to Bill remained glowing through the years
John remained seething at Bill
cf
John s tribute to Bill remained heartfelt through the years
John remained angry at Bill
What is interesting ab out participles like glowing and seething is that they
are clearly adjectives having undergone semantic drift cf John seethed
at Bil l John s tribute to Bil l glowed I will assume that an account for
the examples of can b e given along these lines hence that they do
not constitute counterevidence to the present analysis
It has also b een claimed that verbal passives are excluded from prenom
inal adjective p osition but here it is much more di cult to test To b e sure
one is dealing with a verbal passive and not an adjectival passive it is usu
ally necessary to include some sort of adjunct likea by phrase but phrases
containing p ost head material are excluded from prenominal p osition on
indep endent grounds
In short the distributional evidence is mixed but app ears to favor an
analysis in which b oth adjectival and verbal passives are APs
CHAPTER THE GERUND
b Internal Evidence
Adjectival and verbal passives are more clearly di erentiated by their in
ternal structure Here the standard analysis and the present analysis are
in agreement verbal passives have the internal structure of VPs adjectival
passives have the internal structure of APs
The rst p ointisthesemantics of the two constructions Verbal passives
frequently denote actions adjectival passives always denote prop erties We
have already seen this as a di erence b etween gerunds where ing a xes in
the morphology e g John s writing on one reading at least it denotes
an ob ject not an action and where ing a xes in the syntax e g John s
writing the letter only denotes an action
Secondly verbal passives can assign Case whereas adjectival passives
cannot Of course this cannot b e demonstrated with the simplest examples
as the case assigned to the direct ob ject is absorb ed in passivization but
this can b e demonstrated with verbs that take double ob jects
a A book was sent John
John was sent a book
b The b o ok remained unsent John
John remained unsent a book
This is straightforwardly accounted for under the current analysis inasmuch
as verbs can assign Case but adjectives cannot in English In a the
ob ject is adjacenttoaverb at s structure but not in b
a en send a b o ok
AP VP V
b send en a b o ok
AP A V
c A Digression On Case Absorption
This raises the question however of what the mechanism of Case absorp
tion is If we assume that the passive morpheme absorbs the verb s
Accusative case we are forced to generate en adjoined to V ifitisad
joined to VP it is to o high to absorb the Accusative case assigned to the
direct ob ject
An alternative is to assume that Accusativecaseisnot absorb ed but re
mains unassigned for some other reason We might follow Rothstein
for example in supp osing that the motivation for NP movement in passive
is not to provide Case for the ob ject but rather so that the highest VP
can satisfy the requirements of Predication is bad b ecause VP is a
predicate whichlacks a sub ject
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
IP
VP
be AP
en VP
kiss Mary
Anumb er of questions arise why can VP s predication requirements not
b e satis ed by a pleonastic Why do es VP not require a sub ject The
most distressing question however arises from consideration of passive con
structions as p ostnominal mo di ers Consider sentence a with p ossible
structures b i ii
a the b oy kissed the girl is John
i the b oy en PRO kiss the girl
AP VP
b
ii the b oy OP en t kiss the girl
AP i AP VP i
We might argue that b i is out b ecause PRO is not high enough to
construe with the boy This could b e solved by using an op erator as in
b ii parallel to the structure the man OP t to x the sink Then we
might claim that the problem is the ECP the sub ject trace is not prop erly
governed This is not defensible however b ecause wewould presumably
assign an exactly parallel structure to the active participle construction
the boy OP ing t kiss the girl whichisgood
Another alternative for the problem of Case absorption is that we adopt
for en the analysis suggested at the end of our discussion of ing lowering
vs verb raising namely that there are two en elements one abstract
whichwe can write EN and one concrete The structure of a verbal
passive is actually
AP
EN VP
V DP
V en
CHAPTER THE GERUND
V raises to EN at LF to satisfy EN s morphological selectional require
en
ment that it b e a xed to a V
This op ens the p ossibility that EN and en divide the prop erties of the
passive morpheme b etween them In particular supp ose that EN has
adjectival syntactic features while en has Case absorption prop erties
en is in the right p osition to make the Case absorption asp ect of pas
sivization felt while EN is in the right p osition to p ermit verbal passiveto
contain a full VP
Wemust b e careful how this is sp elled out though Wemust distin
guish b etween the assignment of Accusative case and the assignmentof
the second Case in double ob ject constructions Wemust haveanac
count under which the former is absorb ed by en but the latter is not A
likely hyp othesis is the following The ability to assign Accusative Case
isaproperty sp eci c to certain lexical items which en can negate sup
p ose for concreteness that Accusative Case assigning verbs have a feature
A and en p ossesses the feature A whichoverrides the stem s sp eci
cation for A in the usual way The ability to assign the second Case
of double ob ject constructions on the other hand dep ends only on syn
tactic category let us assume If a head can license a second ob ject by
assignment then it need only have the syntactic category V in order to
Case assign that ob ject The trace of en has the feature A but is not
sp eci ed for syntactic category The complex verb V en inherits the fea
ture A from en but since en is unsp eci ed for syntactic category the
complex verb inherits the category V from the stem Hence the V com
en
plex do es not assign Accusative case but it do es assign the second ob ject
Case if it takes a second ob ject
This is only a sketch of an account There are many questions left
unanswered suchaswhy the second ob ject Case is apparently assigned
to the rst ob ject in e g a book was given John andwhy the second
ob ject Case is unavailable when there is only one ob ject If the hyp othesis
is to b e defended that the verbal passive adjectival passive distinction is to
b e accounted to a di erence in the scop e of en the details must b e worked
out I leave that for future investigation however
d More Internal Evidence
Returning to the main line of discussion a third wayverbal and adjectival
passives di er is that raising is p ossible with verbal passives but not with
adjectival passives
Assigning Case absorption prop erties to en is reminiscentoftheway that it is
the trace of verb movement not the moved verb which retains the Case assignment
prop erties of the verb that moves
CONCLUSION SYNTACTIC AFFIXATION
a John was known to b e a genius
b John was unknown to b e a genius
This plausibly also follows from the fact that the head is a verb in a
but an adjective in b Arguably adjectives like nouns do not ac
cept reduced clause complements this was argued for nouns in section
I I I follow Levin Rappap ort in assuming that raising adjectives
like likely possible are exceptional and that the non raising adjectives like
obvious are the norm
Fourthly idiom chunks can b e the sub jects of verbal passives but not
of adjectival passives
a Advantage was taken t of the new computers
Tabs were kept t on Jane Fonda
b Advantage remains untaken t of the new computers
Tabs remain kept t on Jane Fonda
This is explicable on the assumption that the parts of an idiom must b e
sisters This is satis ed in a but not in b as a more detailed
examination of the structure makes clear
a en keep tabs
AP VP V
b keep en tabs
AP A V
Under more standard assumptions this account of the absence of raising
and idiom chunks in adjectival passives is not available The assumption by
which these facts are accounted for in the standard analysis e g in Levin
Rappap ort is that adjectival passive di ers from verbal passivein
b eing required to assign an external role This assignment explanation
is also available under the present analysis I do not knowofany evidence
on which to base a decision b etween these two p ossible explanations
There are a handful of other prop erties that are less clearcut in their
implications but suggest that the head of a verbal passiveisaverb but
the head of an adjectival passive is an adjective Agentive by phrases for
example are much happier in verbal passives than in adjectival passives
a the do or was closed by the janitor
b the do or remained closed by the janitor
Also too and similar degree words are more acceptable with adjectival
passives than with verbal passives this would fall out from the current
analysis if we assume they are sp eci ers of adjectives but not of verbs
This assumption runs counter to assumptions I will explore in Chapter IV viz that
degree words in AP are heads like determiners in noun phrases
CHAPTER THE GERUND
a the gravestone was to o damaged bythevandals last nightto
read
EN to o damaged bythevandals to read
AP VP V
b the gravestone remained to o damaged to read
to o damaged EN to read
AP A V
In sum it is at least plausible that the di erence b etween adjectival and
verbal passives is to b e accounted to a di erence in the scop e of en along
the lines of myaccount of the di erences among the three ma jor classes of
gerunds If so this supp orts my account of gerund structure byshowing
that the mechanisms I p ostulated for gerunds have a more general validity
My account of gerunds supp orts the DP analysis in turn in that the
prediction of the existence of precisely three typ es of gerund relies crucially
on an analysis of Poss ing in whichitisheadedby D and D selects a
nominal maximal pro jection
Chapter
Lexical Determiners
Wehave b een concerned to now primarily with the question whether there
is an AGR o ccupying a functional i e In like head p osition in the noun
phrase I b elieve the evidence of section I I from languages that haveovert
AGR in the noun phrase and the evidence provided by the gerund pre
sented in the previous chapter constitute a very strong case for adopting
the p osition that the noun phrase is in fact a DP where D is a nominal
functional element the noun phrase equivalent of In Now in the same
way that Mo dal is the class of indep endent i e non a xal words of cat
egory I and Complementizer is the class of indep endentwords of category
C wewould exp ect there to b e a class of indep endentwords of category
D and the natural candidate is the class of Determiners the choice of
the designation D was of course based on the tenuous hyp othesis that
Determiners are the noun phrase equivalents of Mo dals The question I
would like to address in this chapter is whether this hyp othesis is true Are
determiners of category D Do determiners head the noun phrase
In the rst section I discuss the evidence which b ears directly on the
question whether determiners head the noun phrase First I discuss ev
idence from Hungarian which shows that the strongest piece of evidence
in favor of the standard analysis namely the fact that determiners and
p ossessors are in contrastive distribution in English do es not in fact decide
between the two analyses I then discuss p ositive evidence for the Det as
head analysis One piece of evidence is that when determiners stand alone
they continue to b ehave precisely like noun phrases which is unexp ected
unless the phrase they pro ject is in fact a noun phrase I argue that
pronouns are in fact intransitive determiners However the most con
vincing reason for adopting the Det as head analysis is that the standard
analysis simply do es not provide enough distinct p ositions to accommo date
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
the range of elements which app ear b efore the noun in the noun phrase
Jackendo assumed three bar levels in the noun phrase and he fully
exploited them the Det as head analysis provides the required extra sp ec
i er p ositions under a two bar X bar theory
There are ve ma jor categories which tmy pre theoretic character
ization of functional elements complementizers mo dals determiners
pronouns and degree words If complementizers mo dals determiners
and pronouns head larger phrases CP IP DP and DP resp ectively we
would exp ect degree words to do the same In section I argue that this
is in fact the case that adjective phrases are in fact DegP s This is al
most unavoidable under the Det as head analysis given the high degree of
similarity in English b etween adjective phrase and noun phrase I show
that the DegP analysis p ermits an elegant accountofthevery rich sp eci er
structure of the English adjective phrase
In section I return to a question of the internal structure of the noun
phrase which I had slighted in section namely the p osition of descriptive
adjectives I argue that prenominal descriptive adjectives are the nominal
equivalent of auxiliaries in the verb phrase and as such are syntactic heads
of the noun phrase they app ear in This accounts for a large range of
di erences in the b ehavior of pre and p ost nominal adjective phrases
Determiner As Head
In this section I consider the evidence which b ears directly on the Det
as head hyp othesis First I consider evidence in favor of treating N as
the syntactic head of the noun phrase arguing that it do es not in fact
supp ort the standard analysis over the Det as head analysis In the second
subsection I present a handful of direct evidence in favor of the Det as
head hyp othesis And in subsection three I showhow the Det as head
analysis accommo dates the range of sp eci ers found in the noun phrase the
wealth of which is something of an embarrassment for the standard analysis
inasmuch as the standard analysis only provides one sp eci er p osition for
all these elements
There is actually a fth namely conjunctions Conjunctions havea number of
unusual prop erties and I will not attempt a treatment of their syntax
Adp ositions meet some of the criteria of functional elements though not others for ex
ample adp ositions freely app ear in comp ounds other functional elements are uniformly
excluded from comp ounds Earlier I brie y discussed the p ossibility that adp ositions
divide b etween true adp ositions P which are thematic elements and case markers K
which are functional elements and do not assign roles to their complements
DETERMINER AS HEAD
Arguments for the Standard Analysis
a Selectional Restrictions
There are two ma jor arguments in favor of the standard analysis First
it is the noun head which determines whether the noun phrase meets se
lectional restrictions imp osed on it Selectional restrictions are notoriously
bad criteria for syntactic headship however Consider for example
a large numb er of her friends admire a large numb er of her virtues
a large numb er of her virtues admire a large numb er of her friends
If selectional restrictions determined syntactic headship wewould b e forced
to take friends and virtues to b e the syntactic heads of alarge number of
her friends and a large number of her virtues in This is in fact the
p osition Chomsky to ok in Chomsky he considered a large number
of to b e a predeterminer which precedes the determiner her in Sp ec of
N bar This hyp othesis has since b een generally abandoned as indefensible
For instance of her friends is not a constituent in the predeterminer
analysis yet there is a go o d deal of evidence that it is a constituent in fact
It can b e extracted for instance
Of her friends a large number t admire her virtues
Selectional restrictions only require that wegive an account of the way
that the noun is the semantic head of the noun phrase Wehave already
provided such an account under the Det as head analysis In section I I
we assumed that NP provides a predicate over individuals and that the
determiner is a functor which relates that predicate to the predicate denoted
by the rest of the sentence Consider a simple case like the man admires
sincerity Ifwe abbreviate the predicate x x admires sincerity as F the
selectional restriction it imp oses on its sub ject is this F x animate x
The NP man translates as x man x The binds the variable p osition
in this predicate the translation of the DP the man is x man x Itisa
tautology that man x man x hence it follows that animate x man x
and wehave accounted for the satisfaction of the selectional restriction
imp osed by the predicate x x admires sincerity Similar demonstrations
can b e given for other determiners though I will not give them here
b Determiners and Possessors
The second ma jor argumentinfavor of the standard analysis is that lexical
determiners are in contrastive distribution with p ossessors
An exception to which I will return is every John s every book
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
John s the that some b o ok
Under the standard analysis p ossessors and determiners o ccupy the same
structural p osition hence they cannot co o ccur
In contrast under the Det as head hyp othesis wemust say something
extra to account for the complementarity of p ossessors and determiners
Wemust adopt some constraint along the lines of
AGR in D do es not co o ccur with lexical determiners
Assuming that p ossessors only app ear when there is an AGR in D which
assigns genitive case the inabilityofAGR to co o ccur with lexical deter
miners explains the inability of p ossessors to co o ccur with lexical deter
miners
Because the Det as head analysis requires the added constraint
the standard analysis would app ear to b e minimal
In defense of the Det as head hyp othesis consider rst that do es
not in fact involveintro ducing a new mechanism into the grammar We
already assume a constraint of the form do es not co o ccur with AGR
namely for in nitival to To unlike mo dals precludes AGR Further I
will show that in Hungarian unlike in English determiners and p ossessors
do co o ccur Determiners app ear in precisely the p osition wewould exp ect
if they o ccupy the p osition of D This leads us to conclude that determiners
occupy the D p osition in Hungarian For the sake of cross linguistic gener
ality wewould like the same to b e true in English Under the Det as head
analysis the di erence b etween English and Hungarian is only whether
the constraint applies or not Under the standard analysis on the
other hand English and Hungarian have radically di erent noun phrase
structure Thus the Det as head analysis is in fact the minimal hyp othesis
c Hungarian
In English there is at least one counterexample to the generalization that
determiners do not co o ccur with p ossessors namely every asinJohn s
every wish Ifwe assume that determiners app ear in Sp ec of D wewould
probably take John s every wish to involve an exceptional categorization of
every as a quanti cational adjective parallel to John s many wishes But
then the problem is to explain whywedonothave the every wish an
every wish this every wish Each every wish some every wish etc are
presumably out for semantic reasons The only noun phrase sp eci er that
every co o ccurs with is the p ossessor This would seem to indicate that
the p ossessor do es not app ear in the same p osition as lexical determiners despite app earances
DETERMINER AS HEAD
We might ignore John s every wish as an anomaly an idiom on a par
with in as much as or the be al l and end al l However in Hungarian the
literal translation of John s every wish John s each apple John s which book
are all grammatical as Szab olcsi p oints out
minden
ezen azon
valamennyi
Peter kalap ja
mindket
semelyik
melyik
every
this that
each
Peter s hat
both
neither
which
This makes it clear that we cannot take determiners to b e in Sp ec of D in
Hungarian
The determiners of app ear precisely in the p osition of D
DP
DP D
Peter D NP
minden kalapja
A problem for this hyp othesis is that D has two realizations in
there is the determiner minden but there is also the in ectional ending
ja on the noun A comparable situation in the sentence would b e if there
was a mo dal yet the verb continued to agree with the sub ject AGR do es
co o ccur with mo dals as indicated by the fact that the sub ject continues to
receive nominative case it is only that AGR cannot b e overt when mo dals
are present Admittedly ifAGR were overt wewould exp ect it to app ear
on the mo dal not on the verb
Below section c I argue that there are a xal degs determiners in
English and other languages which app ear on the noun and raise to D at LF I argue that doubly lled D s are prohibited at s structure but
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
not at LF If this hyp othesis is correct it provides an explanation for the
structure In wemust assume that there is an AGRinDats
structure to assign Case to the sub ject Assume that a prohibition against
doubly lled D s holds in Hungarian but it applies at PF in Hungarian
This would p ermit ja to o ccupy D at s structure and Case assign Peter
then lower onto the noun b efore PF
The claim that determiners app ear in the p osition of D in Hungarian is
corrob orated by the fact that Hungarian unlike English app ears to have
an equivalent of Comp in the noun phrase as well as an equivalent of In
There are twoways of expressing the p ossessor in Hungarian either in the
nominative case as wehave seen or in the Dative case
Peter nek a kalap ja
Peter DAT the hat
Peter s hat
Szab olcsi argues that the Dative p ossessor o ccupies the sub ject p osition
of a noun phrase equivalent of Comp which she calls Komp K She
shows clearly that noun phrases like that of form a constituent they
can undergo fo cus movement as a constituent for instance The dative
p ossessor di ers from the nominative p ossessor in that it can b e extracted
whereas the nominative p ossessor cannot
a Peter nek lattam t a kalap ja t
Peter DAT I saw the hat ACC
Peter s hat I saw
b Peter lattam a t kalap ja t
Peter NOM I saw the hat ACC
Szab olcsi ascrib es this assymetry to the ECP claiming that the nominative
p osition cannot b e prop erly governed from outside the noun phrase but
the dative p osition can
In the same way that Hungarian has determiners of category D there
is also one determiner that is arguably of category K namely the de
nite article a z Precisely as wewould predict a z app ears after dative
p ossessors but b efore nominative p ossessors
a Peter nek a kalap ja
Peter DATthehat
Though wewould not necessarily wish to assume it holds in all languages
Horro cks Stavrou make a similar claim for Greek
DETERMINER AS HEAD
b aPeter kalap ja
the Peter NOM hat
That the determiner in b b elongs with the matrix noun phrase and
not with Peter isshown by the fact that in the ma jority dialect from
which the examples of are drawn determiners are unable to co
o ccur with prop er nouns a Peter In all dialects determiners are unable
to co o ccur with pronouns e g a te the you yet determiners are found
in structures like even when the p ossessor is a pronoun a te kalapja
your hat indicating clearly that a b elongs with kalapja not with te
The twotyp es of determiner can also co o ccur
aPeter minden kalap ja
Peter s every hat
To the extent that it is correct to p ostulate the structure DATK
KP
NOM D N for Hungarian noun phrases there seems to b e little
DP NP
choice but to place az in the K p osition as b oth the sp eci er of K and the
sp eci er of D are sp oken for by the twotyp es of p ossessor
In conclusion Hungarian provides rather striking evidence that deter
miners head DP and even KP at least as an option provided byUG In
the ideal case determiners would have the same syntactic b ehavior in all
languages The minimal assumption is thus that determiners head DP in
English the burden of pro of is on those who would wish to make determin
ers heads of noun phrases in Hungarian but sp eci ers of noun phrases in
English
Sundry Evidence For Det As Head
Having disarmed certain arguments against the Det as head analysis I turn
in this section to p ositive evidence for the Det as head analysis
a Dets That Cannot Stand Alone
First there are determiners like the which absolutely require following noun
phrase material and which cannot app ear alone in any capacity There are
few words that so strongly require accompanimentas the and a In the cases
where suchwords are to b e found their inability to stand alone is enco ded as
the obligatory selection of a complement Examples are complementizers
like if which select a sentence prep ositions like of which select a noun
phrase and conjuctions like and which select a range of complements but
Though they cannot b e adjacent in PF a minden kalapja Szab olcsi argues for a
PF rule deleting az when it app ears string adjacent to another determiner
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
must app ear with some complement We can account for the co o ccurence
requirements imp osed by the without intro ducing new mechanisms into the
grammar if weassumethe obligatorily selects an NP complement hence
that it heads the noun phrase DP
b Dets That Can Stand Alone
On the other hand there are other determiners which can stand alone such
as that that man that was sil ly In this case to o the standard analysis
predicts something slightly di erent from what we actually nd Under the
standard analysis the p osition of the determiner is similar to that of an
adjective in that b oth are prenominal non head maximal categories
NP NP
DetP N N
Det N AP N
A
AP can app ear outside of the noun phrase and when it do es so it has its
own distinct b ehavior it do es not b ehave like a noun phrase
a he seems nice
AP
he seems afool
NP
he seems the fo ol
NP
b nice just walked in
AP
the a fo ol just walked in
NP
Under the standard analysis i e wewould exp ect DetP to do
likewise when it app ears outside the noun phrase wewould exp ect it to
b ehave di erently from the noun phrase just as AP do es In fact however
a DetP standing alone b ehaves exactly like a noun phrase
There are a few problematic examples suchasthe up to a year that it takes students
to complete this requirement or John runs the better of the two wherethe app ears
to take a PP and AdvP resp ectively However these examples are to b e explained I do
not b elieve they call into serious doubt the p oint b eing made in the text
Of course there are many complexities that the toy paradigm do es not take
into account but I take the p oint to b e clear enough that a more thorough discussion is
unwarranted
DETERMINER AS HEAD
a he seems the fo ol
he seems that
b the fo ol just walked in
that just walked in
DetP b ehaves exactly like a noun phrase The simplest explanation is
that it is a noun phrase
DetP DetP
Det NP Det
that N that
There is of course an alternative analysis for these structures one
involving an empty noun head
NP
DetP N
Det N
that e
There is some justi cation for such a structure in N bar gapping construc
tions inasmuch as in N bar gapping constructions a noun complement
is left b ehind even though the head noun has disapp eared
There were some pro ofs of Fermat s Theorem in John s new b o ok
and several of the Law of Diminishing Returns as well
When several takes an of complement the interpretation is partitive sev
eral of the problems In if of the Law of Diminishing Returns is a
complementof several its interpretation pro ofs of the Law of Dimishing
Returns is inexplicable We are led to p ostulate an empty head noun
whose content is supplied by proofs
Actually there is at least one way that pronouns like that if they are indeed pro
nouns do not b ehave like noun phrases they cannot b e p ossessors that s paws This
p
is not true of p ersonal pronouns its paws
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
The evidence for an empty noun head is rather weaker in N bar dele
tion constructions in fact several recent analyses e g Nap oli
Lob eck Chao p ostulate no empty head but treat determin
ers in these constructions as pronominal The assumption that there is an
empty noun is esp ecially questionable for the demonstratives which func
tion pronominally in virtually every language regardless of the existence
of a N bar deletion construction in that language
Whether or not there are noun phrases with empty heads if we admit
of any noun phrases consisting solely of determiners without the supp ort
of an empty noun head we are led to adopt the Det as head analysis
c Pronouns
The case for an emptynounheadisweakest in the case of p ersonal pro
nouns In this section I argue that pronouns are of the syntactic category
Det If so they provide a yet stronger example of noun phrases consisting
solely of hence headed by determiners
It is generally assumed that pronouns are nouns If this is the case
however itismysterious why pronouns do not app ear with any noun sp ec
i ers determiners p ossessors adjectives quanti ers measure phrases are
all prohibited
the she that I talked to was nice
my she has always b een go o d to me
dep endable them are hard to nd
many they make housecalls
two dozen us signed the p etition
This distinguishes pronouns sharply from e g prop er nouns which though
they most commonly app ear without sp eci ers can pro ductively app ear
with sp eci ers in the meaning of someone named N or someone resem
bling N
the Mary that I talked to was nice
mySanta Claus has always b een go o d to me
dep endable Marilyn Monro es are hard to nd
manyDoctorWelbys makeyacht calls
two dozen John Smiths signed the hotel register
The resemblance b etween determiner and pronoun is not a new observation It is
noted for instance by Emonds who prop oses to treat pronouns as noun phrases
containing only sp eci ers
DETERMINER AS HEAD
If pronouns were nouns wewould exp ect them to do likewise app earing
in usual noun p ositions with a minor meaning shift We could exp ect the
she that I talkedtoto mean the female that I talked to for instance
Further as Postal observes there are situations in which p ersonal
pronouns also b ehavelike determiners
I Claudius idiot
we tradesmen idiots
you sailor idiot
you idiots sailors
he tradesman idiot
they sailors idiots
There are idiosyncratic gaps admittedly It is not clear that I Claudius
is restrictive or if it is only go o d as an app ositive It is not clear why
the deprecatory usage is bad in the rst p erson it is go o d in German
ich Idiot or why the non deprecratory usage is bad in the second p erson
singular The lack of third p erson forms is arguably due to demonstratives
b eing suppletive in the paradigm those tradesmen those idiots
Another prop erty pronouns and determiners have in common is that
b oth app ear to b e the basic site of the grammatical features of noun phrases
such as p erson numb er and gender the so called Phi features In par
ticular in many languages determiners show the most distinctions in their
in ections more so than adjectives and much more so than nouns In Ger
man for instance determiners display a full paradigm of p erson numb er
and gender marking whereas nouns are marked for the most part only
for numb er And like determiners German pronouns mark a full range
of in ectional distinctions In English and French pronouns are the only
items which still mark case If the determiner p osition is the actual site of
the noun phrase s grammatical features and in particular do es not simply
agree with the noun after the manner of a mo difer this indicates that the
determiner is the head of the noun phrase
Recall that some of the arguments wehave already made rely on the
assumption that D is the site of a noun phrase s referential features In
section I I I our accounts for many of the di erences b etween Poss ing
and Acc ing were based on the presence of a D no de in Poss ing as the
site of p erson numb er and gender features If Determiner is the lexical
It has b een argued that the examples of are merely app ositives If this is
correct the paradigm fails to provide evidence for the categorial identi cationof
pronouns with determiners but the other arguments I present remain una ected
In a few cases dative is marked on nouns in the dative plural regularly in the
dative singular of some nouns obsolescent and genitive is marked on masculine and neuter nouns
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
category which is the lo cus for these features then we are led to supp ose
that D Determiner hence that Determiner heads the noun phrase
More generally pronouns are clearly functional elements They b elong
to a closed lexical class and though they refer they do not describ e they
do not provide a predicate over individuals but merely mark grammatical
features
If we account for the similarities b etween determiners and pronouns by
assigning them to the same lexical category namely D and if we assume
that b oth are accordingly heads of their phrases the structure of illustrative
noun phrases containing pronouns and those containing determiners is as
follows
a DP b DP c DP
D D NP DP D
we we linguists John s D
those those
AGR
we are ready we linguists that is John s
I like those those linguists
In conclusion the Det as head analysis allows us to accountforthe
similarities b etween determiners and pronouns and generate them in the
same p osition without b eing forced to generate all pronouns with empty
noun heads
d Dets As Functional Elements
Thirdly the fact that determiners have the prop erties of functional elements
like complementizers and mo dals suggests that they should receive a parallel
syntactic treatment Determiners are closed class elements They lack de
scriptivecontent i e they do not provide predicates over individuals if
Barwise Co op er are right they are predicates over predicates
at any rate they are quanti cational rather than predicational They
are often stressless in many languages they are clitics French Hebrew
Classical Greek or a xes Norwegian Soninke
One way determiners di er from other functional elements is that determiners some
times app ear without a complement if pronouns are in fact determiners as I have
suggested Possibly though the app earance of functional elements as intransitives
DETERMINER AS HEAD
e Head To Head Movement
Finally another piece of evidence is supplied by head to head movement
Consider examples like the following
a au a le
b everyone every one
If we assume that these morphological mergers are made p ossible by head
movement wemust assume that determiners are the heads of noun phrases
Otherwise the ECP will b e violated at least in b the moved head
do es not c command hence do es not govern its trace under the standard
analysis a but do es under the Det as head analysis b
a NP b DP
DetP N D NP
Det N D N N
Det N t every one N
every one t
There is some evidence which supp orts the analysis b Most
adjectives cannot stand alone when they app ear p ostnominally
a man clever
a p erson go o d
Systematic exceptions are observed with everyone someone everything
something
someone clever something clever
someone go o d something go o d
everyone clever everything clever
everyone go o d everything go o d
in a pronominal usage constitutes a systematic exception to the otherwise general re
quirement that they take an obligatory complement It has b een argued Nap oli
e g cf Lob eck Chao that Sluicing and VP Deletion are instances of
Complementizers and In s resp ectively b eing used intransitively as pronouns
As p ointedouttomebyR Kayne p c
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
This is explained under the analysis b The structure of the examples
of is as in
DP
D NP
D N AP N
some one good N
t
The Range of Sp eci ers
a TwoBars vs Three Bars
What is p erhaps the most p ersuasive motivation for assuming determiners
head noun phrases however is somewhat indirect and theory internal The
version of X bar theory which is implicitly adopted in most currentwork
and explicitly argued for in Stowell is quite restrictive The standard
analysis fails to conform to it If the standard analysis is mo di ed to
conform to the letter if not the spirit of X bar theory it is still inadequate
to account for the full range of English nominal sp eci ers If we assume
that determiners head the noun phrase on the other hand we conform to
X bar theory strictly interpreted and we are able to account for the full
range of English sp eci ers
To b e sp eci c I take the most widely accepted version of X bar theory
to include these two clauses
A All non head no des are maximal pro jections and
B Two bar pro jections are maximal pro jections for all categories
what we might call the Uniform Two Level Hyp othesis to
adapt a term from Jackendo
Residual questions for whichIhavenoanswers are Why do es the morphological
combination of e g some and one yield someone and not one some on the pattern of
girl chaser chase girls in grown grow in and Why is this an exception to the
general rule that functional elements never app ear in morphologically complex words
in any language With resp ect to determiners cf the well known examples New York
lover vs The Bronx lover
DETERMINER AS HEAD
What I mean by the standard analysis of the structure of the noun
phrase is the structure
NP
DET N
N
Interpreted strictly the X bar requirement A that non head no des
b e maximal pro jections rules out the structure inasmuchasDETis
a non head which is not a maximal pro jection To preserve X bar theory
wemust mo dify the standard structure for the noun phrase to
NP
DetP N
Det N
But the structure is made highly susp ect by the fact that DetP under
this analysis never contains any material except Det It is di cult to
motivate a phrasal no de XP where there is no memb er of the class X which
ever takes sp eci ers or complements If it means anything to b e a phrasal
no de it is that the no de in question dominates more than one word at
least p otentially This is the sense in which the standard analysis can b e
made to conform to the letter but not the spirit of X bar theory
The prop erty B of X bar theory the Uniform Two Level Hyp othesis
raises unsolved problems under the standard analysis of noun phrase struc
ture in that the standard analysis simply do es not provide enough distinct
p ositions to accommo date the full range of nominal sp eci ers The most re
cent and most thorough study of the phrase structure of the noun phrase
and related categories particularly AP is Jackendo Jackendo
showed that the sp eci er systems of nouns and adjectives far from b eing
sparse and uninteresting circumscrib e a highly articulated range of struc
tural distinctions Jackendo assumed there were three bar levels in all
categories and made full use of the range of distinctions that hyp othesis af
forded in his analysis of noun phrase sp eci ers The problem of accounting
for this range of distinctions under a two bar hyp othesis has not previously b een addressed
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
b Noun Phrase Sp eci ers
Let us consider the range of sp eci ers in the noun phrase Determiners
and p ossessors wehave already considered they alone exhaust the single
sp eci er p osition provided under the standard analysis Descriptive ad
jectives co o ccur with determiners and p ossessives prenominally It is not
clear that they are sp eci ers however they are usually considered to b e
adjoined to N bar I will return in section to the question of the p osition
of prenominal adjectives in the noun phrase
Between determiners p ossessors and descriptive adjectives we nd a
range of elements There are quanti er phrases as in the many good men
the little soggy ricewehad There are also four distinct constructions
which according to Jackendo involve a noun phrase in this p osi
tion measure phrase semi numeral numeral and group noun These are
illustrated in the following
a two parts steel measure phrase
one half garbage
b two dozen roses semi numerals
a million stars
c three men numerals
six eggs
d a group of men group nouns
a bunch of mistakes
To accommo date these elements Jackendo assumes a second lower
sp eci er p osition in the noun phrase
N NP
Possr D N
QP N
NP
N
It is sometimes di cult to show that the noun phrases of actually
app ear in this lower p osition b ecause they vary in their ability to app ear
with an overt higher determiner There app ears to b e a constraint ruling
out two determiners in a row making go o d examples illustrating the struc
ture di cult to nd Jackendo and Selkirk note the
DETERMINER AS HEAD
contrast in numb er agreementbetween examples like that threeweeks and
those threeweeks attributing it to attachmentofthat
N N
D N D N
those NP N NP N
three weeks D N weeks
that three
Examples which clearly show semi numerals and quanti ers to b e full
phrases app earing b elow the p osition of the determiner are the following
Selkirk and Jackendo overlo ok examples of this sort
a the nearly a dozen men who fell
the precisely a thousand pap er birds we folded
b the nearly as many men who didn t fall
If we wish to preserve the standard analysis wemust assume that these
QP s and NP s do not o ccupyalower sp ec p osition One p ossibilitywould
b e that they are simply a sp ecies of prenominal adjective There are a
number of ways that they di er from descriptive adjectives though that
render this hyp othesis untenable First though Q s are in fact a variety
of adjective the noun phrases are clearly noun phrases not adjectives If
they pattern with descriptive adjectives it is not at all clear whywe cannot
have descriptive noun phrases here such as
the nearly a do ctor medical student
Further though there are ordering restrictions on descriptive adjectives
that are not syntactic Dixon for example identi es seven seman
tic classes of descriptive adjective and argues that the preferred order of
prenominal adjectives is determined by their memb ership in these classes
these semantic ordering restrictions are generally very weak and are of
ten violated for the sake of emphasis The requirement that QP and NP
precede descriptive adjectives cannot b e so readily violated
a fancy new car a NEW fancy car
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
the many honest men
the HONEST manymen
Third descriptive adjectives can b e iterated even within semantic classes
this is of course one of the original motivations for generating them adjoined
to NOM N bar Quanti ers and measure noun phrases cannot b e iterated
a large round red smo oth ball
the few six men
I submit that the inability to iterate quanti er measure phrases is that
they receivea role from the noun whereas descriptive adjectives are sim
ply predicated of the noun and hence can b e iterated ad libitum In par
ticular I take plural and mass nouns to translate as
N x Meas d x
N
where Meas d x i f d f x under a measure f p ossibly one of many
N
determined by the meaning of N For example the translation of two cups
rice is
rice x Meas two cups x
rice
where rice is true of arbitrary quantities of rice and at least one p ossible
measure for rice is f such that f d f x i d and x are equi voluminous
Under this account measure phrases di er from descriptive adjectives
in that measure phrases are genuine arguments of the head noun
I conclude with Jackendo that it is necessary to havetwo distinct
sp eci er p ositions within the noun phrase one for p ossessors exter nal ar
guments and one for quanti er phrases measure phrases Jackendo as
sumed three bar levels in order to accommo date b oth sp eci er p ositions
illustrates how the DP analysis makes ro om for the extra p osition
under a Two Bar X bar theory
Jackendoff N NP DP DP
D N D
N D NP
N N
N
DETERMINER AS HEAD
My analysis is not merely a translation of Jackendo s analysis into a
Two Bar DP analysis however It is an advance over Jackendo s analysis
in that there is no need for phrase structure rules not even the fairly gen
eral schema which Jackendo assumes Wehave already seen in detail how
the sub ject of D is licensed via an interaction of Case and theory IfIam
correct the lower sp eci er is also licensed by theory The elements which
can app ear in this p osition are precisely those which satisfy the Measure
role I assume that the Measure role is left directional hence the re
quirement that its recipients app ear in sp eci er p osition not complement
p osition and I assume that measure phrases are not Case assigned by the
noun but have their own inherent Case
c Pseudo Partitive
Finally there is one p oint on which I take issue with Jackendo s analysis
Namely following Selkirk Jackendo assumes that group nouns see
d also o ccupythelower sp eci er p osition in the noun phrase Sp ec
of NP under the DP analysis
DP
NP
DP of N
a group men
I am reluctant to adopt this analysis b ecause it requires one to assume
a dangling of which do es not take a complement The ma jor though not
the only evidence which Selkirk adduces for this construction which she
calls the pseudo partitive is that the of N of the pseudo partitiveisnot
extractable whereas the of DP of the sup er cially similar partitive con
struction is extractable
a a numb er of men like anchovies PSEUDO PARTITIVE
of men a number t like anchovies
a number t were killed of men who like anchovies
b a numb er of the men like anchovies PARTITIVE
of the men a number t like anchovies
a number t were killed of the men who likeanchovies
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
Jackendo adapting Selkirk s analysis explains these facts by treating par
titives as involving a simple noun phrase with a PP complement and as
signing pseudo partitives the structure The of phrase cannot b e
extracted in pseudo partitives very simply b ecause it is not a constituent
I claim that partitives and pseudo partitives have the same structure
D N of DP The di erences in extractability can b e accounted
DP NP PP
for by non structural di erences in the of PP s In particular let us supp ose
that the noun phrase under of in partitives is referential i e the men in
a number of the men but the noun phrase under of in pseudo partitives
is predicational i e men in a number of men The former is assigned a
role but the latter is not Instead it is on a par with predicational of
DP in examples like
a a monster of a machine
afoolofalawyer
a little slip of a girl
b acoatofwool
a coat of red
None of these of PP s can b e extracted either
a of a machine it was a monster t
of a lawyer he was a fo ol t
of a girl she was a little slip t
a monster t was delivered of a machine
that fo ol t showed up of a lawyer
a little slip t came in of a girl
b of wo ol I have a coat t
of red I have acoat t
a coat t iswarm of wo ol
a coat t was lost of red
Possibly ifno role is assigned to these PP s as I claim the ECP is
violated if they are extracted The same explanation extends to the non
extractability of the PP in pseudo partitives a
In this way we can give an account for the prop erties of the pseudo
partitive without assuming a dangling of as in Selkirk and Jackendo s analysis
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
The Adjective Phrase
In this section I examine the adjective phrase and a nal category of
functional element namely Degree words As Jackendo notes the
adjective phrase has a sp eci er system that parallels that of the noun phrase
in manyways and rivalsitinrichness I show that analyzing the adjective
phrase as a pro jection of Deg allows us to accommo date the varietyof
adjectival sp eci ers under a two bar X bar theory
Deg as Head
A corollary of analyzing noun phrases as DetP s is that determiners are
found only in noun phrases This corollary app ears to b e falsi ed by AP s
suchas
this big
that big It was
all red
In fact these are arguably not determiners but rather elements that are
ambiguous b etween determiners and Degree elements Deg such as
so big
as big
to o big
howbig
big enough
Nonetheless if we adopt an analysis in which determiners are the head of
noun phrases wemust either analyze Deg s as the head of adjective phrases
or explain why they di er from Det s I will take the former course here
and consider the consequences of analyzing adjective phrases as DegP s
An immediate problem is that not only adjectives strictly sp eaking can
app ear with degree words but other categories as well
a to o many Q
as much
few enough
b to o quickly Adv
as hungrily
passionately enough
c far down the road P long after dark
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
d as under the weather as anyone I haveever seen P
to o o the wall for mytastes
c and d can b e eliminated fairly easily as irrelevant d arguably
involves an exo centric comp ound functioning as an adjective i e under
A
the weather o the wall First only a restricted set of idiomatic PPs
A
shows this b ehavior cf John was as in the running as any other candidate
Second the degree word do es not mo dify the head prep osition but the
entire phrase in contrast to the examples of c Consider
a they went far down
long after they discovered the truth
b the p o or b oywas so under
he was to o o
Concerning the examples of c observe that these degree words
di er from the degree words of a b in b eing able to take other degree
words
a as to o sick
to o as happy
b as far down the road
to o long after dark
The degree words in PP s are not Deg s but QP s such as are illustrated
in a QP s app ear not only in the sp eci er of PP as far down the
road but also of AP asin as much toobig furthermore far and long
are not limited to app earing in PP s far toopermissive long overdue
I discuss the p osition of QP s shortly Jackendo also classi es the
PP sp eci ers of as QP s noting that they alternate with noun phrase
measure phrases as is typical for QP s six miles down the road cf six
inches toobig
Adjective Adverb and Quanti er
As for the remaining two examples of non adjectives taking degree words
quanti ers and adverbs I claim that these are in fact sub classes of ad
jectives For concreteness I distinguish them from adjectives prop er by
using the features Q and Adv quanti ers are Q Adv adverbs are
Q Adv and adjectives prop er are Q Adv Quanti ers di er from
adjectives prop er primarily in their semantics in supp orting the partitive
construction and functioning as pronouns Adjectives take on at least the
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
latter two prop erties in the comparative and sup erlative the older of the
two the oldest of the men Adverbs di er from adjectives primarily in
taking an ly su x and mo difying verbs instead of nouns With regard to
their internal structure adjective phrases and adverb phrases are virtually
identical as has b een frequently noted e g byBowers a Both ad
jectives and adverbs take the same degree words including comparative and
sup erlative forms and b oth are mo di ed by adverbs e g su ciently quick
su ciently quickly Manyadverbs do not even di er from the corresp ond
ing adjectiveby taking ly and ly is always lacking in the comparative and
sup erlativeofadverbs If we follow Larson b in taking ly to b e a
Case assigner for adjective phrases then the internal structure of adjec
tive phrases and adverb phrases is indeed identical as b oth are the same
category Let us follow Larson in assuming that adjective phrases like
noun phrases require Case Adjective phrases acquire Case by agreeing
with Case marked noun phrases Certain nouns and adjectives are lexically
marked with a feature C which Larson assumes Case marks the phrase
which b ears it These are the bare NP and bare AP adverbs like I
left yesterday he runs fast Larson assumes that ly is a prep ositional
adjective Case marker Wemay take it to b e a su x like ing that a xes
to an adjective phrase and provides it with the intrinsic Case feature
C
N F Adj C adverb phrase
N F Adj C
adjective phrase
ly
so quick
If this is correct we can disp ense with the Adv feature replacing it with
the intrinsic Case feature C which also distinguishes bare NP adverb
nouns from other nouns
As we pro ceed the fact that adjective phrase quanti er phrases and
adverb phrases are identical in internal structure will b ecome abundantly
clear I conclude that they are subvarieties of the same syntactic category
N Adj
One piece of evidence weighing against the DegP analysis is that certain
adjectives resist all degree words For example
Larson gives the feature as F not C I have altered his notation to avoid
confusion with the functional element feature F
See Larson
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
everyone here tested for drugs has come up negative
AP
as tested for drugs as anyone else
to o tested for drugs for there to b e anychance of error
more tested for drugs than me
so tested for drugs that I think I m going to scream
If adjective phrases are consistently DegP s there must b e an empty Deg
even in cases such as these The app earance of an empty Deg is not
disturbing I assume an empty Deg in all adjective phrases consisting just
of an adjective just as I assume an empty D in all noun phrases without
an overt determiner What requires explanation is whyanovert Deg can
never app ear with these adjectives
Adjectives which resist degree words app ear to b e rather consistently
participles particularly past participles as in Perhaps their inability
to app ear with degree words generalizes with the inability of gerunds to
app ear with determiners the singing the song Unfortunately however
the analysis of adjectival passives I gave in section I I I groups adjectival
passives with Ing of gerunds not Poss ing gerunds Ing of gerunds do ap
p ear with determiners the singing of the song Ileavethisasanunsolved
problem
One nal question raised by the prop osal that adjective phrases are
uniformly DegP s is that unlike noun phrases adjective phrases usually
app ear without a Deg This is probably semantically motivated though
and do es not re ect any di erence in syntax The twotyp es of noun phrase
with which adjectives have the most in common frequently app ear without
determiners namely mass plural noun phrases gradable noun phrases
i e noun phrases that like adjectives take measure phrases and predicate
nominals which uniformly lack determiners in many languages e g most
Indo Europ ean languages and sp oradically lack determiners in English
Henceforth I assume that adjective phrase quanti er phrase and ad
verb phrase are all actually DegP s Deg selects AP in the same
Adv Q
way Det D selects NP In referring to adjective phrases I will follow the
same conventions as with noun phrases adjective phrase is used in its
pre theoretic sense it refers to AP under the standard analysis DegP un
der the DegP analysis AP denotes di erent no des under the standard
analysis and under the DegP analysis AP under the DegP analysis corre
sp onds roughly to A bar under the standard analysis DegP corresp onds
to AP QP AdvP under the standard analysis
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
The Subject of Deg
If noun phrase and adjective phrase are similar in b eing headed by a func
tional category it is fair to ask if they are similar in taking sub jects There
are a numb er of phrases which can app ear in Sp ec of Deg quanti er phrases
and noun phrase measure phrases for instance
a much to o good
DegP AP
DegP Q
far to o p ermissive
he was little er kind than b efore
b six miles to o far
DegP DP AP
a little er kind
ten times as fast
Another class of phrases that app ear in this p osition which Jackendo
do es not take note of are AdvP s
quite as nice
entirely to o naive
nearly so friendly
To b e precise the structures I prop ose are these
There are also a few cases where adjectives app ear to take adjective phrases or PP s
as measure phrases
i a close to a year overdue
nigh on a year long
less than an inch to o wide
more than a mile o the mark
b up to a year overdue
under an inch long
over a mile long
One op en question is whether the prop er bracketting is not in fact e g close to a
year overdue less than an inch too wide over a mile long despite the fact that
prep ositions do not usually take adjectival complements close to overdue less than
too wide I will not attempt a prop er analysis of these examples
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
DegP DegP
DegP Deg DegP Deg
Q Adv
Deg AP Deg AP
AP AP
Q too tall Adv as nice
much quite
Degree words in quanti er and adverb phrases b ehave identically as
predicted
a much to o little
ten times as many
precisely as few
b muchtooquickly
ten times as passionately
precisely as densely
Also itisworth noting that this is the same range of elements which
app ears in the sp eci er of P
a much to his liking
far down the road
little to the p oint
b six miles down the road
ten times around the track
ten years after graduation
c precisely in the middle
nearly o the chart
practically at the end
IfollowJackendo in taking these phrases to b e in the sp eci er of P
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
PP
DegP P
DP
P DP
The sp eci er phrases of and are obviously not sub jects of
the same typ e as the sub ject of the sentence or sub ject of the noun phrase
there is no Case assigning AGR for instance When they are noun phrases
they are noun phrases which are intrinsically Case marked they can often
app ear as adjuncts in the VP
they ran six miles
they ran around the track ten times
I assume that they are marked however in the same way that measure
phrases in the noun phrase are marked The case for marking of measure
phrases within the adjective phrase is in fact somewhat clearer than in
the noun phrase Measure phrases in the adjective phrase alternate with
p ostp osed PP s
a much to o go o d
to o go o d by far
b much to o slow
to o slow by an order of magnitude
They can also b e extracted out of the adjective phrase unlike e g adverbs
howmany inches is the do or t wider than b efore
how many miles is the course t long
how su ciently is the do or t wider than b efore
Let us consider rst the simpler case of measure phrases with p ositive
adjectives
six feet tall
Though admittedly rather sp oradically Also sp eci ers of too cannot b e very easily
extracted how many inches is he t too tal l to serve on a sub
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
Itake the semantics of adjectives to b e similar to that of mass nouns
tal l denotes a certain quantity of tallness in the waythat rice denotes
a certain quantity of rice This corresp onds with the approachtoverb
meanings esp oused earlier in section I I where a verb like destroy was
taken to have the same denotation as its nominalization destruction The
two di er only syntactically not semantically In the same way here I
take the adjective tal l and its nominalization tal lness to denote the same
thing a certain quantity of abstract stu Or more precisely the DegP
tal l denotes a certain quantity of tallness the adjective tal l is a predicate
over individual quantities of tallness On this view then verbs nouns and
adjectives are all rst order predicates i e predicates over individuals
They di er only in the kind of individual that makes up their denotation
Verbs are predicates over situations nouns are predicates over ob jects and
adjectives are predicates over attributes The union of situations ob jects
and attributes is the universal set of individuals
The adjective tal l translates as
tall e Meas m e Theme x e
Meas and Theme are b oth roles As with mass nouns Meas m e i
f e f m for the relevant measure function f
A phrase where these roles have b een assigned e g John is six feet
tal l translates as
tall e Meas six feet e Theme John e
i e John p ossesses a tallness which is equi metric with six feet
Too suppresses the adjective s Measure role and adds one of its own
John is six inches too tal l translates as
tall e Theme John e To o six inches e tall
where To o m e F i the measure of e equals s concatenate m wheres is the
maximal satisfactory measure for the attribute F That is John s tallness
exceeds the maximal satisfactory tallness by six inches
To b e more precise Meas and Theme are actually classes of roles as argued
bye g Marantz or rather functions from words to individual roles We
should write more prop erly Meas m e i f e f m Given this re nement
tall tall tall
we can account for the semantic ill formedness of e g six feet intel ligent the measure
function of intelligence is unde ned for the measurement six feet i e f six
intelligent
feet is unde ned Di erentwords mayhave the same measure function For example
f f hence the well formedness of e g John is as tal l as Bil l is wide But
tall wide
f f hence the ill formedness of John is as tal l as Bil l is intel ligent
tall intelligent
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
This sketch has not b een intended as a serious semantic account Rather
it is a cursory examination of the relation b etween measures and attributes
to illustrate that Meas has as go o d a claim to role status as any other
relation
If six inches is marked by too in six inches too tal l though it still is
not quite a true sub ject As noted there is no indication of agreement
between too and the measure phrase Also Sp ec of Deg is not a valid
landing site for movement That is there are no examples like
Your symptoms are rub ella s indicative t
cf indicative of rub ella
Syntactically I b elieve this is mostly an accidental gap though there are
semantic motivations Syntactically the AGR we nd in the English noun
phrase seems to b e a rather marked element There are few languages
with true overt noun phrase sub jects They are non existent in Romance
languages Even other Germanic languages havemuch stronger restrictions
on the elements that can app ear in sub ject of noun phrase in German for
instance it is more or less restricted to prop er names Since noun phrase
like adjective phrases are marked in themselves they are lacking in many
languages it is not surprising that their internal structure lacks the more
marked asp ects of noun phrase internal structure
On the semantic thematic side the markedness of sub jects in adjec
tive phrase is surely ampli ed by the fact that adjectives are uniformly
non agentiveintheir structure Possibly adjectives are uniformly un
accusative as suggested for instance by the fact that the external argu
ments of adjectives can systematically app ear as internal arguments when
the adjectives are nominalized the happiness of Bil l cf the destruction of
Caesar If such an analysis can b e defended the lack of a sub ject p o
Agent
sition in adjective phrases would correlate with the fact that it would never
b e needed except for passives like rubel la indicative your proposal
supportive
Extent Clauses
Degree words license various typ es of extent clauses
big that I couldn t see over it so
as big as John said as a house
to o big to use
er big than the other one was than the other one
On the other hand ing nominalizations of non unaccusative intransitiveverbs
have the same prop erty the crying of the baby the shooting of the hunters
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
These clauses are not p ermitted when the degree word is absent
big that I couldn t see over it
big as John said
big to use
big than the other one was
Further the various typ es of clause are sp eci c to one degree word Even
if a degree wordispresent if it is the wrong degree word the clause is not
p ermitted
to o big that I couldn t see over it
as big than the other one was
bigger to use
These facts clearly illustrate that the extent clauses are licensed by partic
ular degree words
As has b een frequently noted the relation b etween degree words and
the clauses they license is very similar to the relation b etween a de nite
article and relative clause The de nite article often app ears to b e licensed
by the relative clause
a the Paris
the Paris that I love
b the b o ok of John s
the b o ok of John s that I read
There are clearly di erences b etween this case and that of extent clauses
however First in the examples just given it is the relative clause which
licenses the article not vice versa Relative clauses can app ear with other
determiners and even when no determiner app ears
a b o ok that I read
that b o ok that I read
b o oks that I read
On the other hand relative clauses are prohibited with p ossessors
John s b o ok that I read
my b o ok that I lost
We can claim that the di erence b etween relative clause and extent clause
is only that the relative clause is less sp eci c to a particular determiner It
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
can b e licensed by a range of determiners including the empty determiners
that app ear with mass and plural nouns But it is not licensed by AGR
D
As Jackendo p oints out the paradigm is also somewhat mislead
ing in that it is not only a relative clause which p ermits the determiner to
app ear but any restrictive mo di er
the Paris of the Thirties
the b o ok of John s on the table
In resp onse note that there are a core of cases where this is not true
up to a year that it has taken p eople to complete this requirement the
this up to a year that it has taken
your up to a year that it takes you to complete such pro jects
In conclusion it do es seem that there is a sp ecial relation b etween de
terminer and relative clause which parallels the relation b etween degree
word and extent clause This supp orts the hyp othesis that the two o ccupy
parallel structural p ositions
An advantage of the DegP analysis emerges when we consider the ques
tion of how the relation b etween degree word and extent clause is expressed
structurally It is most economical to generate the extent clause as a sis
ter of the degree word which licenses it this p ermits us to express the
co o ccurence restrictions b etween degree word and extent clause as normal
complement selection The account adopted by e g Selkirk is to
generate the extent clause adjacent to the degree word and extrap ose it
to the end of the adjective phrase e g as as a house big as big as
a house Likewise for relative clauses the that I read book the book
that I read The DegP analysis op ens another p ossibility we can generate
the extent clause as sister to the degree word in its surface p osition
DegP DP
Deg AP CP D NP CP
as A as you want the N that I read
big book
Admittedly thisisa very curious construction whose syntax is not at all clear It
app ears to involve the exceptional selection of a PP by the determiner
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
In this way the DegP analysis allows us to preserve the selectional rela
tion b etween degree word and extent clause without assuming systematic
obligatory displacement of extent clauses from their d structure p osition
In fairness though wemust observe that this analysis do es not elimi
nate all cases of extent clause extrap osition Extent clause extrap osition is
necessary even under the DegP analysis for examples like
a a more b eautiful woman than I d ever seen
b as much to o much as last time
Two Sp eci ers in the Adjective Phrase
If we could show that there are two distinct sp eci er p ositions in the ad
jective phrase as in the noun phrase that would constitute supp ortive
evidence for the DegP analysis inasmuch as the DegP analysis but not the
standard analysis provides a sp eci er p osition b oth under DegP and under
AP
Consider for example adjectives with adverbs but without degree words
as in
thoroughly b efuddled
hop elessly lost
entirely dark
understandably distressed
obviously content
Is the structure that of a or b
a DegP b DegP
DegP Deg Deg AP
Adv
Deg AP DegP A
obviously Adv
content content
obviously
It is di cult to nd clear cases of degree words co o ccuring with fol
lowing adverbs where the structure is clearly that of b Usually itis
at least arguable that the degree word has scop e over the adverb not the
adjective
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
a so thoroughly b efuddled
b to o obviously content
c so heavily favored to win
Consider for instance the contrast
he was to o content to get up
he was to o obviously content to get up
cf he was to o obviously content for us to have the heart to disturb
him
Likewise adjectival passives aswehave seen do not accept degree words
so favoredtowin indicating that the structure of c is as given there
In other cases the unavailability of degree words seems to b e traceable
to the adverb involved
to o entirely mixed up
cf to o mixed up
entirely mixed up
to o entirely
so always right
cf so right
always right
so always
But since the adverb contributes to the meaning of the AP even under
b this do es not seem to constitute decisive evidence in favor of a
The question extends to the other two categories app earing in Sp ec
of Deg viz measure noun phrase and quanti er phrase Wehave for
instance
a two miles long
three years old
b much alike
little di erent
Here there are clear meaning di erences two miles is clearly dep endenton
too in two miles toolong but on long in two miles long On the other hand
b is somewhat misleading in that alike and di erent are the only adjectives
which take non comparative non sup erlative quanti ers
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
if there is an emptyDegin two miles long withtheinterpretation p osi
tive degree the di erence in interpretation can b e accounted for without
assuming a di erence in syntactic attachment
With the measure phrases a preceding degree word is imp ossible
a to o two miles long
as three years old
b to o miles long
as years old
The a examples are arguably semantically ill formed b eing doubly sp ec
i ed Even without a numeral in the noun phrase though the examples
are still bad as the b examples show
The imp ort of the discussion so far is that it is di cult to nd clearcut
examples deciding one way or the other However I b elieve the example
do es give clear indication that the lower sp eci er p osition is necessary
If it s already needlessly long it won t hurt to make it six inches
more needlessly long will it
In this case need lessly is clearly within the scop e of more yet more mo di es
long not need lessly
I conclude that the adjective as well as Deg takes adverb quanti er
and measure noun phrase sp eci ers The full structure of the adjective
phrase excluding complements is then
The only exceptions are examples that are arguably adjective comp ounds suchas
eons old as eons old as the cities of Babylon Eons old is di erent from e g years old
in that it can app ear inside a noun phrase despite b eing plural
i an eons old statue
a years old statue
cf
six years old
a six years old b oy
a six year old b oy
THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE
DegP
qp Deg
mp
advp Deg AP
qp A
mp
advp A
where qp mp and advp are abbreviations for DegP DP
Q measure
and DegP resp ectively
Adv
Overview of Structures
To sum up these last two sections I give in the full range of sp eci er
structures whichJackendo argues for
N Deg
Art N Deg
N
Q A N Q Deg
N N
N Deg
A Q
Deg A Deg Q
Q A Adv Q
N
Adv A Q
Adv P
Deg Adv P
Q Adv Q P
Adv N
Adv Adv P
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
I have added the Adv under Q I b elieve Jackendo omitted it only
b ecause he had not intro duced the category Q in the chapter in which
he discussed adverbs Clearly there are adverbs in QP su ciently many
exceedingly few
Under the DP and DegP analysis the structures of translate
into those of again recall that mp qp and advp abbrevi
ate DP DegP and DegP resp ectively
measure Q Adv
DP DegP Q Adv
DP D mp Deg
qp
D NP advp Deg AP Q Adv
mp DegP N mp A
qp qp
N advp A
PP
mp P
qp
advp P
These structures di er in empirical predictions from Jackendo in that
they con ate adjective phrase adverb phrase and quanti er phrase all as
DegP and predict that there should b e measure phrase quanti er phrase
and adverb phrase sp eci ers in all three Adverb phrases are attested in all
three but measure phrases are not attested in adverb phrases or quanti er
phrases and quanti er phrases are not attested in quanti er phrases The
lackofquanti er phrases in quanti er phrases is not surprising there are
only two adjectives di erent alike that take quanti er phrases and only
one adverb di erently The lack of measure phrases I leave unaccounted
for
In conclusion the DP DegP analysis is quite adequate to capture the
full range of English sp eci er structures in fact it makes ro om in a two
bar X bar theory for the distinctions whichJackendo needed three bars
to make
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
The Position of Prenominal Adjectives
Two Hyp otheses
Having considered the internal structure of the adjective phrase I would
like to return to a question we p ostp oned in section namely the place of
prenominal adjective phrases within the noun phrase
Jackendo assumed prenominal adjective phrases were sisters of N
Translating into the DP analysis
DP
D NP
qp ap ap N
N
There are two problems with this analysis it esp ouses an arbitrary
numb er of sp eci ers of N and it do es not capture the scop e relations
between the sp eci ers of N This is most clear with syncategorematic
adjectives Consider the example an al leged lb canary Ifal leged
lb and canary are all sisters wewould exp ect the op eration bywhich
N
their meanings are combined to b e asso ciative and commutative Obviously
though an alleged lb canary is not the same thing as a lb alleged
canary the latter weighs lbs while the former might not
A second and mucholder hyp othesis is that prenominal adjective
phrases are adjoined to a nominal pro jection presumably N bar
DP
D NP
qp N
ap N
ap N
N
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
A problem with this analysis is that it esp ouses adjunction in the base
and furthermore adjunction to a non maximal category Anembarassing
question is why there are no elements adjoined to any other single bar
pro jection at d structure not to V P A I C etc
A problem for b oth of these hyp otheses is that there is a range of evi
dence which suggests that prenominal adjectives are in some sense heads of
the noun phrases in which they app ear I present this evidence in the next
section
Adjective as Head of NP
a To o Big a House
There is one set of examples in which it app ears wehavenochoice but to
take adjectives as heads of noun phrases
to o big a house
yea long a sh
howold aman
to o smart a racco on
Examples like this are not discussed byJackendo though they are dis
cussed at length by Bresnan What sets these examples apart is
that the noun phrase app ears to b e a complement of the adjective In some
dialects including myown there can b e an interp osed of
to o big of a house
as nice of a man
how long of a b oard
This suggests a structure like
DegP
Deg AP
too big PP DP
of a house
The only alternative app ears to b e to take toobigto b e some sort of sp eci er
of a house p ossibly
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
DP
DegP D
too big a NP
of house
This leaves of dangling though without a satisfactory attachment site
What is remarkable ab out the structure is that despite b eing
headed by an adjective the phrase as a whole b ehaves like a noun phrase
not like an adjective phrase
a Ilive in to o big of a house
b Ilive in a mansion to o big to clean
I live in a mansion to o big of a house
This indicates that it is p ossible for an adjective to pro ject a phrase which
is interpreted like a noun phrase but only when it takesanounphrase
complement I live in too big An explanation ready at hand is that the
relation b etween big and a house in too big of a house is f selection and
that the adjective inherits certain nominal features from the noun phrase
it f selects This hyp othesis explains two additional facts Adjectives
are not Case markers yet the noun phrase app ears without a prep osition
in too big a house If the noun phrase is f selected it is not an argument
hence do es not require Case The noun phrase complementmust b e
predicative not referential and it cannot b e extracted
a I live in to o big that house
b whichhouse doyou live in to o big of t
a house I live in to o big of t
This indicates again that the noun phrase is not an argument f selected
complements are in general not arguments
In sum examples like too big of a house indicate that devices are
necessary which p ermit adjectives to head phrases that b ehave like and
are interpreted like noun phrases The indep endent need for such devices
op ens the way for an analysis of prenominal adjectives in which they head
the noun phrase they app ear in In the next subsections I consider evi
dence that suggests that some such analysis is the right analysis Most of
The interpretation of a would b e I live in that house which is to o big
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
the facts I consider involve di erences in the b ehavior of prenominal and
p ostnominal adjectives If b oth are simply syntactic and semantic mo di ers
of the head noun di ering only in which side of the noun they app ear on
these di erences are not exp ected
b Complements
Prenominal adjectives di er from p ostnominal adjectives in that prenominal
adjectives may not have complements whereas p ostnominal adjectives must
have complements
a the proud man
the proud of his son man
b the man proud
the man proud of his son
There are exceptions to the requirement that p ostnominal adjectives have
complements First it is su cienttohave conjoined adjectives p ostnom
inally a man bruisedandbattered Second it is sometimes su cientto
have a sp eci er for the adjective a sh this big asteak just right Third
there are a handful of adjectives which can app ear p ostnominally with
out complements a man alone the man responsible six dol lars even
the example fol lowing etc Fourth inde nite pronouns p ermit p ostnomi
nal adjectives without complements as noted by Smith someone
bold something terrible etc though if our analysis in section d is
correct these last examples only app ear to involve p ostnominal adjectives
and actually involve prenominal adjectives where the noun has b een raised
to D
If prenominal adjectives f select NP as complement the lackofthe
adjectives usual complements is explained
DP
D AP
a A NP
proud man
An analogy that is suggestive is that of auxiliary verbs It is sometimes
supp osed that auxiliary verbs are verbs that take VP s and pro ject VP s
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
Averb like have can take e g a noun phrase when it app ears as a main
verb but not when it app ears as an auxiliary in the same way we might
supp ose adjectives cannot take their usual complements when they app ear
as auxiliary nouns Wehave already noted the very close syntactic simi
laritybetween A and N Plausibly adjectives are defective nouns let us
supp ose that they lack only one feature say substantive to b e nouns
If prenominal adjectives are like auxiliary verbs and take an NP comple
ment it is conceivable that they inherit their complement s substantive
sp eci cation and hence pro ject a category that is featurally indistinct from
an NP
c Mere and Utter
There are certain adjectives suchasmere and utter that app ear only in
prenominal p osition never in p ostnominal or predicative p osition
the utter indignity cf the big ball
the indignityisutter the ball is big
the indignity utter and unrelenting the ball big and round
We could say that these adjectives are exceptional only in obligatorily f
selecting an NP complement
d Semantics
Something must b e said ab out the semantics of adjectives when they f
select noun phrase complements Wehave assumed that adjectives denote
attributes yet obviously a big house or toobigahouse do es not denote
a quantity of bigness but rather a house Obviously big has di erent
semantic values dep ending on whether it f selects a noun phrase or not
Let us supp ose that there is a general function Aux converting adjective
meanings to auxiliary noun meanings as a rst approximation
Aux F e G a F a e G e
For example the translation of black cat will b e
A NP
Actually featurally indistinct is probably to o strong It app ears that prenominal
adjectives do app ear with degree words as we will discuss b elow If degree words take
prenominal adjectives as complements and prenominal adjectives are featurally indis
tinct from NP s wewould exp ect degree words to take NP s as complements whichis
of course false Therefore wemust consider prenominal adjectives and NP s distinct
Determiners are not sensitive to the distinction but degree words are
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
Aux black cat
e G a black a e G e cat
e a black a e cat e
where black a e i black a Theme e a
If the function Aux seems just a ploy for making adjectives t semanti
cally into an unwonted syntactic frame there is a class of adjectives the
syncategorematic adjectives whichintheirbasic meaning must takeNP
as argument A standard example is al leged The meaning of the adjective
al leged is derived from the meaning of the verb al lege in a manner something
along the following lines
alleged x F e y allege e Fx y
where allege e P x i allege e Theme P e Agent x e i e e is a
situation of x alleging that P The translation of al leged Communist is
x e y allege e Communist x y
It is sometimes p ossible for syncategorematic adjectives to app ear in
p ositions other than prenominal p osition i e without an NP complement
In these cases wemaytake the adjectivetobe intransitivized by supply
ing the ob ject from context That is the intransitivized reading for al leged
is
x e y allege e Fx y
where the predicate F is supplied from context Thus the translation of a
Communist al leged but not proven is
Y Y xGx where
G x Communist x alleged x proven x
x Communist x e y allege e Fx y
where context determines that F Communist
This accounts for the di erence in meaning b etween a Communist al
leged but not proven andan al leged Communist but not a proven Commu
nist The former denotes a Communist but the latter may fail to denote
aCommunist as predicted by the translations wehave assigned to these
noun phrases and resp ectively This indicates that for the
syncategorematic adjectives prenominal and p ostnominal adjectives di er
precisely in whether they take the NP as an argument or not
If there is a class of adjectives which take NP s as complements in a
non vacuous manner the syncategorematic adjectives then the semantic
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
typ e raising function Aux b ecomes rather less suspicious in that it is
not simply a warping of the semantics of adjectives to make them t an
unintuitive syntax but rather the optional assimilation of one class of
adjectives to the semantic structure of another indep endent class so that
b oth may app ear in the same syntactic structure
e Comparatives
Another di erence b etween pre and p ost nominal adjectives is illustrated
in the following contrast discussed at length by Bresnan
a I havenever known a taller man than my mother
b Ihavenever known a man taller than my mother
Bresnan assumes that the identity of the deleted phrase in the than clause is
determined by the phrase to which the than clause is adjoined at s structure
In a the clause adjoined to is a tal ler man hence the reconstructed
than clause is than my mother is a X tal l man In b on the other
hand the than clause is adjoined to tal ler and the reconstructed clause is
than my mother is X tal l
If it is the s structure p osition of the than clause which determines its
content however it is di cult to account for sentences like
a taller man arrived than Bill
In this case than Bil l is presumably adjoined to the sentence a tal ler man
arrived Reconstruction of the than clause yields the nonsensical than Bil l
was an X tall man arrived This indicates that the than clause must
b e reconstructed at LF after the than clause itself has b een restored to
its pre s structure p osition in the noun phrase If the than clause can b e
restored to the p osition of one of its traces b efore having its internal struc
ture reconstructed however we should b e able to move than my mother in
a backinto the AP from which it came b efore we reconstruct it
a taller than my mother man
a taller than my mother is X tall man
Thus Bresnan would incorrectly predict that a tal ler man than my mother
do es have a non anomalous interpretation
Under the analysis in which adjectives take NP complements on the
other hand the explanation is straightforward at all levels of representa
tion er has scop e over tal l man in a but only over tal l in b it
is the scop e of er not the attachmentofthan S that determines how the
than clause is to b e reconstructed
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
a a er tall man than my mother
AP NP
b a man er tall than my mother
AP
It is the scop e of er not the attachmentofthe than clause that determines
howthe than clause is to b e reconstructed
f Determination of Noun Phrase Typ e
A prenominal adjective can determine the typ e of the noun phrase in a way
that p ostnominal adjectives cannot There is a contrast b etween predica
tive the term used by Bresnan and non predicative noun phrases
Certain contexts select for one or the other Bresnan uses the ob ject p osi
tion of know for instance when it is not emb edded under a mo dal or neg
ative as a context that selects non predicative noun phrases I ve known
many dogs I ve known a dog like Fido Under a negativeormodal
b oth are p ermitted I ve never known many dogs I ve never known a dog
like Fido Now consider
a I venever known a smarter dog than Fido
I veknown a smarter dog than Fido
b I venever known a dog smarter than Fido
I ve known a dog smarter than Fido
Noun phrases with prenominal comparatives count as predicative in the
desired sense hence are barred from complement p osition of non negative
know but noun phrases with p ostnominal comparatives are p ermitted in
this p osition Noun phrases with pre determiner AP s b ehavelike noun
phrases with prenominal adjectives I ve never known as smart of a dog
as Fido I ve known as smart of a dogasFido
It app ears that the predicative nature of the comparative adjective
p ercolates to the enclosing noun phrase from prenominal p osition but
not from p ostnominal p osition Determining the features of the enclosing
phrase is a prop ertytypical of heads
g Idioms
For completeness sake I will mention a nal di erence b etween pre and
p ostnominal adjectives though I have no explanation for it Certain adjec
tives in idiomatic usages are excluded from prenominal p osition
a a thrown party
p
cf a thrown ball
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
b a party thrown on Saturday
the party planned and the party thrown were twovery di erent
parties
If this do es not provide evidence for the adjective as head analysis it do es
emphasize the p oint that there are substantial di erences b etween pre and
p ost nominal adjectives
TwoMore Hyp otheses
a AP vs DegP
If we adopt the hyp othesis that prenominal adjectives f select NP com
plements there are twomajorvariants to cho ose b etween di ering as to
whether a prenominal adjective phrase is a DegP or a bare AP
a DP b DP
D AP D DegP
A NP Deg AP
N A NP
N
a seems a priori preferable for the following reason Wehave as
sumed that D necessarily selects a F category in order to explain the
ill formedness of e g the each boy eachboy is a F category hence
DP
not a legitimate complement for the Note that the problem is not se
mantic the word for word translation of the each boy is grammatical in
Hungarian If this is correct it rules out the structure b DegP is a
F category In fact if prenominal adjectives inherit the feature subst
from their NP complements the AP s in are featurally indistinct from
NP s and the DegP in b is featurally indistinct from DP
This app ears to b e corrob orated by examples like the following
a a to o tall man
a so big sh
cf
b a man to o tall to b e a submariner a sh so big
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
The non app earance of Deg s do es not entail the elimination of the Sp ec
of AP however And in fact we nd e g adverbs in prenominal AP
DP
D AP
a DegP A
very A NP
big dog
More subtle yet more striking evidence against b and in favor of
a is provided by the fact that all marked sp eci ers of degree words
are excluded in prenominal p osition
a six millimeter s to o narrow lens
your six gram s to o heavy counterbalance
a six time s as e ective medication
a several second s quicker time
cf
six millimeters to o narrow
six grams to o heavy
six times as e ective
several seconds quicker
This is not the result of a general prohibition against measure phrases
buried inside prenominal adjective phrases If the measure phrase is more
deeply buried the examples improve even though they b ecome more dif
cult to pro cess
their six millimeters to o narrowly ground lens
your six grams to o heavily weighted counterbalance
a six times as e ectively administered medication
Further if the measure phrase is not in the sp eci er of the degree word
but in the sp eci er of the adjective itself it is acceptable
Admittedly when the measure phrases are plural their acceptability degrades sub
stantially
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
a six inch long p encil
a six millimeter wide lens
a several month long hiatus
This otherwise mysterious array of facts is predicted under the analysis
a The examples of are ungrammatical b ecause there is no Deg
allowed hence no Sp ec of Deg for measure phrases to o ccupy In contrast
the examples of and have the analyses which are well
formed
DP DP
D AP D AP
a DegP A a DP A
DP Deg A NP six inch A NP
six times Deg AP administered N long pencil
as effectively medication
The facts of not only supp ort a over b they also
supp ort a over the other two p ossible analyses of prenominal adjective
attachment discussed at the b eginning of this section As far as I can see
the only analysis that can account naturally for is a
b Quanti ers
If we adopt the analysis a wemust reconsider the p osition of quanti
ers If quanti er phrases app ear in Sp ec of N and prenominal adjectives
take NP as complement we predict that quanti ers are grammatical fol
lowing adjectives but ungrammatical preceding adjectives
i a six inches long p encil
a six millimeters wide lens
etc
By the same token singular measure phrases are not very go o d in predicate ap s
ii the p encil is six inch long
the lens is six millimeter wide
etc
Ihave no explanation
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
DP DP
D AP D AP
A NP qp A
qp N A NP
N N
Of course just the opp osite is in fact the case
The alternative is to revise our earlier analysis and assume that quan
ti ers like descriptive adjectives app ear on the path that leads from DP
to N
DP
D QP
exceedingly Q
Q AP
many very A
A NP
beautiful women
There is some evidence in favor of this analysis In particular there is
evidence that comparative and sup erlative adjectives are quanti ers We
have already seen evidence that comparatives and sup erlatives takeanNP
complement therefore wehave p ositive evidence that at least some quan
ti ers take NP complements
This is the evidence that comparative and sup erlative adjectives are
quanti ers comparatives and sup erlatives must precede all descriptive
adjectives
a big fancy car the big fancy car
a big fancier car the big fanciest car
a fancier big car the fanciest big car
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
comparatives and sup erlatives license partitives and missing noun heads
the b etter of the two will win
the b est of all will win
This is otherwise a prop erty solely of determiners and quanti ers
each of the men will win
several of the men will win
many of the men will win
few of the men will win
the many go o d of the men will win
an old of the men will win
b eautiful of the women will win
The analysis provides us with a simple characterization of the ele
ments that license missing noun heads and partitive We can say that there
is a unique emptynounwhich takes the partitive of phrase as an optional
complement N Determiners and quanti ers select N but descriptive
e e
adjectives do not Under this account there is a hierarchy of selectional
prop erties
D selects NP AP NP QP
e
Q selects NP AP NP
e
A selects NP AP
Given these lexical selection prop erties we correctly predict a large part of
the range of internal noun phrase structures
c Problems
The analysis I have argued for a supplemented with app ears
to account most successfully for the broadest range of data of the four
analyses I have considered in this section However there are a couple
of di cult residual problems One is that we are left with no sp eci ers
within NP I consider this problem minor for two reasons if adjectives
corresp ond to auxiliaries and NP corresp onds to VP then the absence
of sp eci ers of NP corresp onds to the absence of obvious candidates for
Sp ec of VP the lack of Sp ec of NP might seem to undermine one of
our arguments on b ehalf of Det as head presented in section that there
There are of course the examples like the poor but these are quite restricted in
English they are p ossible only when they t the template the A Cf a poor is
pl
among us poor are always among us the old poor are always among us etc
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
are to o many sp eci ers in the noun phrase for the standard analysis to
accommo date But wehave only eliminated Sp ec of N by adopting an even
more radical version of the Det as head analysis one in which adjectives
are heads of noun phrases as well Further even if wehavenoSpecofN
we do still have sp eci ers of complements of D namely whenQPorAP
are complements of D
A more serious problem is that we are left with no analysis for examples
like the following
the nearly as many men who didn t makeit
a nearly as devastating attack
These examples suggest that the ill formedness of examples like a too
beautiful woman is the result of a surface constraint against adjacent D s and
Deg s not the result of a structural constraint against DegP complements
of D
I will suggest a p ossible approach to this problem though I must note
from the outset that my solution is not fully satisfactory
A rst observation is that Deg s vary widely in their ability to app ear
in structures like In my judgment the b est examples are with er
and est or more and most as degree words these are go o d even without
an intervening adverb With an intervening adverb as is rather go o d and
too sometimes other Degs suchasso that are never go o d
I havenever b efore encountered a nearly so virulent strain
I havenever b efore seen a quite that b eautiful woman
cf
p
I havenever b efore encountered a strain nearly so virulent
p
I havenever b efore seen a woman quite that b eautiful
Let us b egin with er and est Asmentioned these Deg s app ear con
sistently under determiners even without an intervening adverb
the b etter man
the b est man
There are even examples that seem to show that er and est app ear
under Deg s
a he do es it the b est of all
b he ran the quicker of the two
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
c the quicker you run the quicker I ll catchyou
d the b etter to eat you with
All of these phrases function as adverbs not arguments For this reason
their structure would app ear to b e e g
DegP
Deg AP
the best
i e the like that can function b oth as a Det and as a Deg I do not adopt
this analysis however b ecause of the fact that partitive of is licensed in
these structures see a b I have assumed that partitive of is licensed
only byN this requires the structure for the examples
e
DP
D AP
the A NP
better N PP
e of the two
We can take these to b e bare NP adverbs as Larson christens
examples like yesterday The prop er semantics are obtained by allowing N
e
to range over adverb meanings manners sp eeds etc
The abilityof er and est to co o ccur with determiners seems clearly to
b e related to the fact that they are a xes It is rather reminiscent of cases
of doubled determiners in languages like Norwegian and Soninke that have
a xal determiners In Norwegian doubled determiners are not normally
grammatical but doubling do es o ccur when the second determiner is the
de nite a x en
denne hver sko
this each sho e
Data from Hellan
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
denne sko en
this sho e the
Similarly in Soninke a Mande language of Mali doubled determiners are
p ermitted when the second determiner is the a xal de nite determiner
ke samaqe n
this snake the
These examples suggest that there is a constraint against doubly lled
Det s at s structure but not at LF The a xal determiner can raise at LF
yielding e g
denne en sko t
DP D i NP N i
A similar pro cess is necessary in English if we are to assume that the de
terminer is the site of Phi features as I suggested earlier hence that the
plural morpheme must raise into a p ossibly lled Det at LF
Let us return to comparatives and sup erlatives now We can assign the
following well formed LF to comparatives and sup erlatives under determin
ers
a er pretty t girl
DP D i AP i NP
If this is correct it implies that examples like as prettiest are not
ungrammatical b ecause there are two Deg s er should b e able to raise
into a lled Deg in the same way it raises into a lled Det but rather for
semantic reasons presumably for the same reasons that examples like very
so pretty are out
The structure is not available for Deg s other than er and est
b ecause other Deg s must b e base generated in the Deg Det p osition not
a xed to adjectives
However more and most behave just like er and est with resp ect to
their ability to app ear under determiners
a more b eautiful woman
the most b eautiful woman
One p ossibility is that these are simply quanti ers in Sp ec of A the com
parative and sup erlativeofmuch As has long b een puzzled over though
Bresnan Jackendo this leaves unexplained why much
Data from myown eld work conducted in
The intended reading is not as much prettier where as takes scop e over er not
pretty but rather something like as pretty whichistosay the prettiest
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
in the p ositive degree is ill formed in these examples a much beautiful
woman
Iwould like to suggest that more and most are exactly like er and est in
every resp ect except that they are not phonological a xes In particular
I suggest that they are syntactic a xes much like ing They a x to
AP and raise into Deg Det at LF in this way they escap e the s structure
prohibition on doubly lled D
SS DP DP
D AP D AP
more AP A NP
A NP A er N
N
LF DP D a more i AP t i AP beautiful woman
The subtree more AP is licensed by morphological conditions not by
AP
X bar theory More is not adjoined to AP rather it is the head of more
AP
AP in the same waythat er is the head of A er Hence more o ccupies
A
an A p osition not an A bar p osition and its raising into Deg Det is prop er
movement
In short I prop ose that there are certain elements more and most
which are not phonologically a xes but nonetheless b ehave syntactically
like a xes
Possibly a similar analysis can b e applied to problematic cases like a
nearly as devastating attack As I noted only certain Deg s can app ear
in these structures and then only sp oradically and with large variances in
sp eaker judgments There also app ear to b e idiosyncratic PF constraints
on the pro cess In addition to the prohibition against string adjacent Det s
and Deg s there is a prohibition against mono syllabic adjectives in this
construction a nearly as long interview vs a nearly as lengthy inter
view These facts suggest that whatever pro cess is involved it is rather
marked A reasonable hyp othesis is that Deg s other than more and most
are sp oradically reanalyzed as syntactic a xes as more and most havedone
completely As is fairly susceptible to this reanalysis too somewhat less so
and so and that not at all
Some tenuous supp ort for this hyp othesis is supplied by examples like
his too eager grin where too actually app ears adjacent to a determiner but
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
there is a strong intuition that it forms a comp ound with eager in some
sense Under the presenthyp othesis it comp ounds with eager in that it
is a syntactic a x on the AP headed by eager
A nal stumbling blo ck is the fact that not only adjectives and quanti
ers but also measure nouns t into the paradigm of anearly as devastat
ing attack Consider
the a dozen men who came
the nearly a dozen men who came
In this case there are two courses op en to us We might assume that a
reanalyzes as an a x on dozen Alternatively itmay b e that a dozen is in
fact an NP notaDP Perlmutter argues that a is not a determiner
but a reduced form of the numeral one Whether his analysis is correct
or not there are certain advantagesthataccruetotakinga to have some
analysis other than as a determiner There is a class of phrases of the form
aA NPthat are set apart from argumental noun phrases in a number of
ways Examples are
to o big a house
a monster of a problem
two of a kind
Semantically these phrases are predicates not arguments The examples
of are interpreted very roughly as
to o big x house x
monster x problem x
two X of a kind X
In particular the a phrases do not intro duce a separate variable ranging
over ob jects but are simply predicates which are applied to the variable
intro duced by the matrix phrase
Corresp ondingly these phrases can never b e extracted
a house that s to o big of
a problem that s a monster of
a kind they re twoof
only to o big of was available of a house
a monster of came up of a problem
two of were there of a kind
THE POSITION OF PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES
Both of these facts would b e explained if the a phrases in question were
NP s not DP s NP s are predicates not arguments NP s cannot b e extra
p osed like DP s If this is correct we can take nearly a dozen in the nearly
a dozen men who came to b e an NP not a DP
An added b ene t is that singular and plural dozen di er markedly less
under this analysis than under most analyses Consider the paradigm
a dozen men
dozens of men Pseudo partitive
dozens of the men Partitive
Under the current analysis the structures are
a DP b DP c DP
D NP D NP D NP
N NP N KP N KP
dozen men dozens of NP dozens of DP
men the men
Dozen di ers from dozens only in that it f selects an NP rather than a
KP Dozens f selects either an argumental KP one containing a DP or a
predicative KP one containing an NP recall that pseudo partitives i e
b cannot b e extracted whichwould b e explained if they are NP s
p
not DP s severaltwere asked of the questions concerning electro
magnetism
In its current state this solution to the problems which face the Adj
as head analysis is based on somewhat scanty evidence and to that extent
sp eculative I must leave re nements or a new and more adequate solution
to future research
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
Conclusion
To sum up the Det as head analysis is thoroughly defensible and has a
number of advantages over the standard analysis The chief motivation
for adopting the Det as head analysis is conceptual however The DP
analysis p ermits us to preserve the same restrictivecharacterization of X
bar theory which motivates the IP analysis of the sentence and the Det
as head analysis involves assigning determiners an analysis which parallels
current analyses of other functional elements such as complementizers and
mo dals Further the Det as head analysis provides ro om for the full
range of sp eci ers found in the noun phrase
Supp ort for this analysis of determiners is derived from examination
of the adjective phrase In English noun phrase and adjective phrase
have a great deal in common including the existence of degree elements
as adjective phrase correlates of determiners in the noun phrase I argue
that degree elements are exactly parallel to determiners and accordingly
head the adjective phrase DegP This provides two distinct sp eci er
p ositions in the adjective phrase in addition to the p osition of the degree
word and I argue that as in the noun phrase all p ositions are exploited
More generally I argue that there are two ma jor dichotomies of syn
tactic categories functional elements F vs thematic elements F and
nominal elements N vs verbal elements N I havegiven lengthycharac
terizations of the distinction b etween functional and thematic elements the
most imp ortant structural di erences are that functional elements do not
p ossess a distinct index from that of their complement and that functional
element p ositions are sites for AGR hence functional categories but not
thematic categories freely takeovert sub jects
The functional thematic and nominal verbal dichotomies are extremely
robust much more so than the alleged dichotomybetween V elements
V A and V elements N P For this reason I challenge the traditional
four ma jor categories N V A P also b ecause the notional category ad
jective do es not corresp ond to a single category with a stable syntactic
characterization but rather to two distinct categories one a sub category
of verbs the other a sub category of nouns the latter b eing predominate in
English
My discussion of the feature comp osition of syntactic categories is spread
throughout the thesis I would like to sum up here I recognize at least
ve features F N Adj Q C F and N are the ma jor features
Adj distinguishes nouns from nominal typ e adjectives presumably we
should also use it to distinguish verbs from verbal typ e adjectives C
Another p ossibility is to distinguish nouns and nominal typ e adjectives by a feature
CONCLUSION
distinguishes inherently Case marked elements i e adverbs including
bare NP adverbs bare adjective adverbs and adverbs in ly It is rel
evant only for F N categories Q distinguishes quanti cational and
descriptive adjectives It is relevant only for F N Adj categories
The complete set of distinctions for the features F N and Adj is
the following
Adj Adj
N N N N
F V P N A Q Adv
F I C D K Deg
It is not clear where P b elongs Perhaps languages di er as to whether
P is N or N I am thinking particularly of languages likeMayan where
P s are very similar to nouns
It is not clear what feature distinguishes I from C and D from K but
presumably it is the same feature in b oth cases
Possibly there are F N Adj elements in other languages i e verbal
typ e adjectives It is not clear that there are F N Adj elements in any
language
To rep eat the central claim emb o died in the distribution of categories
is that there are two ma jor dichotomies functional vs thematic
elements and nominal vs verbal elements and that functional elements
o ccupy a uniform structural p osition in b oth nominal and verbal systems
The thrust of the presentwork is that the nominal system is not defective
but p ossesses a functional element D on a par with the functional elements
I and C of the verbal system
Aux whichwewould also use to distinguish verbs and auxiliaries I have not taken
that p osition here b ecause I have claimed that only prenominal adjectives pattern with auxiliaries
CHAPTER LEXICAL DETERMINERS
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