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The Theory of Movement: an Introduction Kyle Johnson Crete Summer School of Linguistics University of Crete 16 July 2018 Rethymno

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The Theory of Movement: an Introduction Kyle Johnson Crete Summer School of Linguistics University of Crete 16 July 2018 Rethymno The Theory of Movement: An Introduction Kyle Johnson Crete Summer School of Linguistics University of Crete 16 July 2018 Rethymno Syntacticians of Old developed a simple, but largely e!ective, model of con- De$ned this way, !"#$" requires every phrase to have exactly two elements. "at stituency. "e point of that model is to map strings of words, ormaybemor- is controversial. We won’t ever $nd a need to increase the number of elements a phemes, into larger units. For this class, we can think of those units as semantic phrase can contain. But we will $nd a need to decrease it. So, somewhat unortho- objects, though it will be the syntax that individuates them. "e units are called doxically, I will also allow ()). phrases. ()) !"#$"(α)=γ (#) Goal:De$ne P. www ...wn ← P → {{w i , {w j , wk }},{wk , wm}, ...} α Phrases (indicated with “{}”) are those sets of words that havecompositionalde- Let us understand that when !"#$" takes one argument, that argument must be notations, and behave as units for the syntax and prosody. Likewords,phrasescan awordanditsoutputmustbeaphrase. P themselves be parts of phrases. Two ingredients in are the denotations of the Aworkinghypothesisisthatγ is always the same morphosyntactic category words and phrases and the morphosyntactic category of the words and phrases. as one of its elements. "ere are regularities that seem to govern which element For this class, I’ll assume that words and morphemes come into the syntactic sys- determines that category but I will treat this as an independent, phrase speci$c, tem with their morphosyntactic category speci$ed. A popular way of thinking of rule. "ese are the components that determine which sets of words can be formed P the part of that is responsible for identifying the phrases is Chomsky’s (#(()) into phrases. I’ll call this the “phrase part” of P. !"#$". (-) Phrase Part (*) !"#$"(α, β) ={γ α, β } !"#$"(α, (β))= γ , "e set formed by !"#$" will have a category status which γ is meant to repre- sent. We should understand α and β as variables that range over (possibly trivial) α (β) strings of words, morphemes, and the output of !"#$".Iwillrepresenttheoutput subject to the following conditions: of !"#$" with the somewhat misleading tree notation: a. α and β may be words, morphemes or phrases. (+) γ b. If β is absent, α must be a word and γ aphrase. c. γ is the category of α or β. αβ d. α and β must compose semantically. (+) is misleading because it graphically puts α and β in a linear order. "at order- e. α and β must be certain categories. ing is not part of !"#$" (which is why the set notation is used in (*)). Nonetheless, when the going gets tough, we’re going to appreciate trees. Despite the typogra- What I mean to point to with (-e) are things like the fact that a wordofdeter- phy, therefore, be mindful that (+) corresponds to an unordered set of α and β.(*) miner type in English can only merge with something of nominaltype.Iwillcall becomes (,). a“derivation”aserialapplicationof!"#$" to a set of words. (,) !"#$"(α, β)= γ αβ Kyle Johnson The Theory of Movement: An Introduction 16 July 2018 An example of a derivation is: g. DP T V D NP (.) a. D T V D N P D N D will meet the NP PP she will meet the boy in the store she N P DP b. DP T V D N P D N boy in D NP D will meet the boy in the store h. DP T V DP the N she D will meet D NP c. DP T V D NP P D N store she the NP PP D will meet the N in the store N P DP she boy d. DP T V D NP P D NP boy in D NP D will meet the N in the N the N she boy store i. DP T VP store e. DP T V D NP P DP D will V DP D will meet the N in D NP she meet D NP she boy the N the NP PP store N P DP f. DP T V D NP PP boy NP in D D will meet the N P DP the N she boy in D NP store the N store * Kyle Johnson The Theory of Movement: An Introduction 16 July 2018 ′ j. DP TP h . DP T VP PP D T VP D will V DP P DP she will V DP she meet D NP in D NP meet D NP the N the N the NP PP boy store ′ i . DP k. TP N P DP T VP D DP TP boy in D NP will VP PP D T VP the N she V DP P DP she will V DP store meet D NP in D NP meet D NP the N the N the NP PP boy store ′ j . DP TP N P DP D boy in D NP T VP she the N will VP PP store V DP P DP Or, the derivation can go di!erently at step (g). meet D NP in D NP ′ g . DP T V DP PP the N the N D will meet D NP P DP boy store she the N in D NP boy the N store + Kyle Johnson The Theory of Movement: An Introduction 16 July 2018 k′. TP what the arguments of !"#$" can be so that they must be the elements of the Stage that the application of !"#$" acts on. Let’s add that condition to !"#$". DP TP (I’ve smoothed out the constraints on the relationship between words and phrases in (#3) as well.) D T VP (#3) !"#$"(α, (β))= γ , she will VP PP α (β) subject to the following conditions: V DP P DP a. α and β are elements of a Stage. meet D NP in D NP b. If one of the arguments of !"#$" is a word, γ must be a phrase. c. "e sole argument of !"#$" cannot be a phrase. the N the N d. γ is the category of α or β. e. α and β must semantically compose. boy store f. α and β must be certain categories. (0) Conventions: "is prevents derivations in which !"#$" applies to something that is inside an- a. Words will be represented with X, phrases with XP, and non-word other phrase. It corresponds to something Chomsky called the“ExtensionCon- morphemes with X. dition,” and it puts a useful cap on the kinds of phrases that can be created. P b. Whenoneoftheargumentsof !"#$" is a word, the output is a phrase. "is captures how the phrasal side of is calculated. What we need now is something for the string part. "ere is a language component side to this, and an c. Each step in this series I’ll call a Stage. (.a), the initial Stage, is also apparently universal side. "e standard models right now are heavily in4uenced called a Numeration. by Kayne (#((,). One decision in Kayne is to model strings in terms of a set of It is standard to require !"#$" to bring everything in the Numeration into one ordered pairs. "ese ordered pairs are generated by a procedure that interprets phrase, so let’s add that. the output of D."isputsadirectiononP –itcausesthephrasalparttofeed the string part. I’ll call the procedure that maps the output of D onto a string a (-) a. !"#$" applies serially until its output is a single phrase. “linearization,” and represent it with L . Ithinkthereareinterestingexampleswhichsuggestthat(-)shouldn’tbeenforced, (##) L (P) = {S: S={a<b: a and b are terminals dominated by P} } but for this class we’ll adopt this constraint as well. We can now de$ne a sentence’s !": “a<b” means “a precedes b” derivation: L D (P) is the set, each element of which is a set of ordered pairs a<b, where a and (() (Si ), Si a Numeration, is the series (Si ,Si+,Si+,...,Sm), where: bareterminalsinP."isset,then,isallofthepossiblewaysof ordering the ter- a. each Sk≠i is derived from Sk− by one application of !"#$",and minals in P. For example: b. Sm is a single phrase (i.e., a singleton set). We should think of Stages as sets, and as each step in the derivation as reducing the size of that set by combining its elements. "ere is a variant of (-) which characterizes the arguments of !"#$" di!er- ently, and places a constraint on what a derivation can be. "is de$nition changes , Kyle Johnson The Theory of Movement: An Introduction 16 July 2018 (#*) L ( VP )= We are le5, now, with (#)). (I will henceforth suppress the outer brackets of the set that L produces, and merely list the elements of this set.) V DP (#)) L ( VP )= meet D NP V DP the N meet D NP boy the N { {meet<the, meet<boy, the<boy, the<meet, boy<meet, boy<the}, {meet<the meet<boy, the<boy, the<meet, boy<meet}, boy {meet<the, meet<boy, the<boy} = meet the boy {meet<the, meet<boy, the<boy, the<meet}, {meet<the, meet<boy, boy<the} = meet boy the {meet<the, meet<boy, the<boy}, {the<meet, boy<meet, boy<the} = boy the meet {the<meet, boy<meet, the<boy} = the boy meet ⋮ {meet<the, boy<meet, the<boy} = ?? {the<meet, boy<meet, the<boy}, {meet<the, boy<meet, boy<the} = boy meet the {the<meet, meet<boy, the<boy} = the meet boy {the<meet, boy<meet, boy<the}, {the<meet, meet<boy, boy<the} = ?? ⋮ "e two sets here that have no trivial interpretation as a string can be thrown out {meet<the, meet<boy} if we insist that the sets satisfy Transitivity.
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