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Introduction to Transformational Grammar

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Introduction to Transformational Grammar Introduction to Transformational Grammar Kyle Johnson University of Massachusetts at Amherst Fall 2004 Contents Preface iii 1 The Subject Matter 1 1.1 Linguisticsaslearningtheory . 1 1.2 The evidential basis of syntactic theory . 7 2 Phrase Structure 15 2.1 SubstitutionClasses............................. 16 2.2 Phrases .................................... 20 2.3 Xphrases................................... 29 2.4 ArgumentsandModifiers ......................... 41 3 Positioning Arguments 57 3.1 Expletives and the Extended Projection Principle . ..... 58 3.2 Case Theory and ordering complements . 61 3.3 Small Clauses and the Derived Subjects Hypothesis . ... 68 3.4 PROandControlInfinitives . .. .. .. .. .. .. 79 3.5 Evidence for Argument Movement from Quantifier Float . 83 3.6 Towards a typology of infinitive types . 92 3.7 Constraints on Argument Movement and the typology of verbs . 97 4 Verb Movement 105 4.1 The “Classic” Verb Movement account . 106 4.2 Head Movement’s role in “Verb Second” word order . 115 4.3 The Pollockian revolution: exploded IPs . 123 4.4 Features and covert movement . 136 5 Determiner Phrases and Noun Movement 149 5.1 TheDPHypothesis ............................. 151 5.2 NounMovement............................... 155 Contents 6 Complement Structure 179 6.1 Nouns and the θ-rolestheyassign .................... 180 6.2 Double Object constructions and Larsonian shells . 195 6.3 Complement structure and Object Shift . 207 7 Subjects and Complex Predicates 229 7.1 Gettingintotherightposition . 229 7.2 SubjectArguments ............................. 233 7.2.1 ArgumentStructure ........................ 235 7.2.2 The syntactic benefits of ν .................... 245 7.3 The relative positions of µP and νP: Evidence from ‘again’ . 246 7.4 The Minimal Link Condition and Romance causatives . 254 7.5 RemainingProblems ............................ 271 7.5.1 The main verb in English is too high . 272 7.5.2 Incompatible with Quantifier Float . 274 7.5.3 PRO, Case Theory and the typology of Infinitives . 276 8 Rethinking Things 289 8.1 Review..................................... 289 8.2 Towards Deriving XTheory ........................ 294 8.2.1 Kayne’s “Antisymmetry” hypothesis . 294 8.2.2 The “Bare Phrase Structure” proposals . 313 8.3 Embedding the theory in a framework without X Skeleta . 326 Bibliography 347 ii Preface These are the, always evolving, notes from an introductory course on syntactic the- ory taught at the University of Massachusetts. Its target audience is first-year grad- uate students, but no background exposure to syntax is presupposed. These notes augment a set of readings, which are: • Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1965. Chapter 1. • Stowell, T. “Origins of Phrase Structure.” Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981. Chapters 1 & 2. • Sportiche, D. “A Theory of Floating Quantifiers and Its Corollaries for Con- stituent Structure.” Linguistic Inquiry 19 (1988): 425-49. • Pollock, J.-Y. “Verb Movement, UG and the Structure of IP.” Linguistic In- quiry 20 (1989): 365-424. • Vikner, S. Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Chapter 3. • Chomsky, N. “Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation.” In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, ed. Freidin, R. 417- 54. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1991. pp. 417-454. • Kayne, R. “Unambiguous Paths.” In Connectedness and Binary Branching, 129-64. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1984. pp. 129-164. • Abney, S. “The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect.” Doctoral Dis- sertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987. Chapters 1 & 2. • Bernstein, J. B. “Topics in the Syntax of Nominal Structure Across Romance.” Doctoral Dissertation, City University of New York, 1993. Chapter 3. Preface • Larson, R. “On the Double Object Construction.” Linguistic Inquiry 19 (1988): 335-92. • Johnson, K. “Object Positions.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9 (1991): 577-636. • Kratzer, A. “Severing the external argument from its verb,” In Phrase Struc- ture and the Lexicon, eds. Rooryck, Johan and Zaring, Laurie. 109-137. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996. • von Stechow, A. “The Different Readings of wieder “again”: A Structural Ac- count.” Journal of Semantics 13 (1996): 87-138. • Kayne, R. S. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1994. Chapters 1-5. • Chomsky, N. “Bare Phrase Structure.” In Government binding theory and the minimalist program, ed. Webelhuth, G. 383-439. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. iv 1 The Subject Matter Linguistic theory, and so syntactic theory, has been very heavily influenced by learnability considerations, thanks largely to the writings of Noam Chomsky. If we decide that syntactic theory is charged with the duty of modeling part of our knowledge of language, that is that it concerns cognition, physiology or whatever “knowledge” ends up belonging to, then one of the questions that arises is how this knowledge is acquired by the child. A number of considerations combine to make this task look very difficult indeed: the complexity of the acquired grammar, for example, as well as the anemic nature of the data available to the child. In addition, the fact that children appear to learn any particular language with relative ease in a very short period of time and that the course of acquisition goes through a set schedule of stages, makes the acquisition of linguistic knowledge look quite dif- ferent than the acquisition of more familiar domains of knowledge – elementary geometry, for example, or, as you shall see, syntactic theory. How is it that some- thing this complex can, on the basis of such limited information, be acquired with such ease and speed? 1.1 Linguistics as learning theory Chomsky proposed that linguistic theory itself should contribute to solving this puzzle. The classical formulation of his idea (see Aspects of the Theory of Syntax and The Sound Pattern of English) characterizes the situation as follows. Think of a grammar of L (GL) (this is what Chomsky (1986b) calls “I-Language”) as a set of rules that generates structural descriptions of the strings of the language L (Chom- sky’s E-language). Our model of this grammar is descriptively adequate if it assigns 1. The Subject Matter the same structural descriptions to the strings of L that GL does. We can think of the learning process as being the selection from the Universe ofGLs the very one that generates the strings of the L to be acquired. The learning problem can now be stated in the following terms: how is it that the learning procedure is able to find GL when the universe of Gs is so huge and the evidence steering the device so meager. One step towards solving this problem would be to hypothesize that the uni- verse of Gs has structure (i.e, is not so large), and this is the direction that Chomsky takes. This amounts to the claim that there are features of Gs which are built-in: certain properties which distinguish the natural class of Gs from the rest. There is a kind of meta-grammar of the Gs, then, which is sometimes referred to with the label Universal Grammar. Chomsky further hypothesizes that these properties are biologically given: that it is something about the construction of the human brain/mind that is responsible for the fact that the class of Gs are the way they are. This argument, the one that leads from the observation that GLs have features that are too complex to be learned to the conclusion that the universe of Gs is con- strained is often called “The Poverty of the Stimulus” argument. It is a classic from Epistemology, imported with specific force by Chomsky into linguistics and given a biological interpretation. This way of setting up the problem, note, allows for the Universe of Gs to be larger than the learnable Gs. There could be, for instance, constraints imposed by the parsing and production procedures which limit the set of Gs that can be attained. And it’s conceivable that there are properties of the learning procedure itself – properties that are independent of the structure of Gs imposed by Univer- sal Grammar – which could place a limit on the learnable Gs. Universal Grammar places an outside bound on the learnable grammars, but it needn’t be solely respon- sible for fitting the actual outlines of that boundary. It’s therefore a little misleading to say that the set of “learnable Gs” are those characterized by Universal Grammar, since there may be these other factors involved in determining whether a grammar is learnable or not. I should probably say that Universal Grammar carves out the “available Gs,” or something similar. But I will instead be misleading, and describe Universal Grammar as fixing the set of learnable Gs, always leaving tacit that this is just grammar’s contribution to the learnability question. Chomsky proposes, then, that a goal of syntactic theory should be to contribute towards structuring the universe of Gs. He makes some specific proposals about how to envision this in Aspects of The Theory of Syntax. He suggests that syntactic theory should include an evaluation metric which “ranks” Gs. A syntactic theory that has this feature he calls “explanatory.” Thus “explanatory theory” has a specific, technical, sense in linguistic theory. A theory is explanatory if and only if it encap- sulates the features that ranks Gs in such a way that it contributes to the learnability 2 Linguistics as learning theory problem, distinguishing the learnable Gs from the unlearnable ones. This criterion can help the analyst decide whether the model of GL he or she has proposed corre- sponds exactly to GL. In particular, the many descriptively adequate models of GL can be distinguished on this basis: select only those models that are ranked highest by the evaluation metric. This model will meet the criterion of explanatory ade- quacy. It alone will have the properties that enable, under a particular learnability theory, the acquisition of the GL that is being described.
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