Advanced Generative Syntax Michael Barrie Sogang University December 2, 2020 2 Contents 1 Foundations of Generative Grammar 7 1.1 Historical Background . .7 1.2 Methodological Concerns . 11 1.3 Syntactic Theorizing . 15 Further Reading . 17 2 The Lexicon, Features, and Phrase Structure 19 2.1 The Lexicon . 19 2.2 Features . 20 2.2.1 Types of Features . 21 2.2.2 Subcategorization . 27 2.2.3 Agree . 28 2.3 Bare Phrase Structure . 31 2.4 Clausal Structure . 32 2.5 Configurationality . 35 Further Reading . 38 3 Ditransitives and the vP Layer 39 3.1 VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis . 39 3.2 Severing the External Argument . 44 3.3 Ditransitives . 47 3.4 vP Refined . 52 Further Reading . 55 4 Nominal Syntax 57 4.1 DP Theory . 57 4.2 Nominalizers and Roots . 59 4.3 Number . 65 3 4 CONTENTS 4.4 Case . 68 Further Reading . 73 5 The Architecture of Syntax 75 5.1 Phrasal Movement and Head Movement . 75 5.2 Transfer and the Interfaces . 79 5.3 Phase Theory . 83 Further Reading . 92 6 Case and A-Movement 93 6.1 Case Assignment . 93 6.1.1 Nominative Case . 94 6.1.2 Accusative Case . 97 6.2 A-Movement . 103 6.3 Unaccusativity . 106 6.4 Ergativity and the Dependent Theory of Case . 110 6.5 Properties of A-Movement . 111 Further Reading . 113 7 A-Bar Movement 115 7.1 Introduction . 115 7.2 Constraints on A-Bar Movement . 115 7.3 The Mechanism of A-Bar Movement . 117 7.4 Wh-in-situ . 121 7.5 Multiple Wh Movement . 127 7.6 Partial Movement and Scope Marking Constructions . 131 Further Reading . 134 8 Raising and Control 135 8.1 Introduction . 135 8.2 Diagnostics for Raising and Control . 137 8.2.1 Idiom Tests . 138 8.2.2 Expletive Subjects . 140 8.2.3 Voice Transparency . 140 8.2.4 Scope Reconstruction . 141 8.3 The Analysis of Raising and Control . 142 8.3.1 GB Analysis of Raising and Control . 142 8.3.2 Raising to Object . 144 CONTENTS 5 8.3.3 Control as Movement . 146 8.4 Partial Control . 148 8.5 Control into Subjunctive Clauses . 154 8.6 Non-obligatory Control . 154 Further Reading . 157 9 Linearization 159 9.1 Introduction . 159 9.2 The Headedness Parameter . 159 9.3 Antisymmetry . 161 9.4 Dynamic Antisymmetry . 168 Further Reading . 170 Index ............................................... 170 Bibliography . 173 6 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Foundations of Generative Grammar 1.1 Historical Background This book is an advanced introduction to generative grammar. It assumes a prior familiarity with general linguistic theory and some familiarity with basic generative grammar. In this introduction we briefly cover some historical aspects of how generative linguistics came into being followed by a discussion of the core properties of generative linguistics. Until the mid nineteenth century linguistic scholarship was dominated by historical linguistics. Scholars such as Sir William Jones, Grimm, and others were concerned with the historical relation- ships among languages and reconstructing proto-languages. In the mid-nineteenth century Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that language is an abstract system consisting of units of sound and units of meaning. This view of language grew into Structuralist Linguistics (l조주X ¸´Y). Structural- ist linguistics attempts to understand languages and dialects in synchronic terms, divorced from their historical predecessors (although structuralists certainly believed that both synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of language were necessary). To be concrete, when students take introduction to linguistics at most universities and are introduced to phonology and morphology, most of the procedures covered are the same procedures developed by structuralists. Structuralist linguistics is the study of how the units of sound and the units of meaning are put together to form language. This view continued to grow both in Europe and in the United States. The structuralist approach began to mesh with similar approaches in China, although similar approaches had already been established in China much earlier (Wang and §Èø, 1989). In North America Structuralist Linguistics blossomed under the work of scholars such as Bloom- field, Haas, Hockett, and Martinet. In Europe, the Prague School led by Jakobson and Trubetzkoy took hold. The two approaches were largely similar, although American Structuralism was influ- enced by advances in behavioural psychology, notably by B. F. Skinner. Meanwhile, in China, Chao Yuen Ren worked with Chinese scholars on Historical Chinese linguistics, integrating both West- 7 8 CHAPTER 1. FOUNDATIONS OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR ern and Eastern approaches to the study of language. What all these approaches had in common was a methodical approach to understanding how the bits of sound and the bits of meaning were put together. Structuralist phonology and morphology came to full fruition under these approaches and was applied to hundreds of languages around the world. Here are two Korean examples of the Structuralist approach to language. (1.1) Allophones in Korean (a) /s/ has two allophones: [s] and [S] (b) /s/ ! [S] / __ i (1.2) Allomorphs in Korean (a) nom has two allomorphs: /-i/ and /-ka/ (b) nom ! [-i] / C __, elsewhere /-ka/ A major shift in the field of linguistics took place in the 1950s with Chomsky’s The Logical Struc- ture of Linguistic Theory (Chomsky, 1955).1 The much shorter Syntactic Structures is a published version of LSLT, which gives a concise discussion of Chomsky’s work. Chomsky harshly refuted the behaviourist approach to language (Chomsky, 1959) and proposed an innate Universal Grammar (UG) as a model for language acquisition. Concomitantly, he proposed that a model of grammar should be able to account for all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. We say that a model consists of a set of rules that generates sentence, hence this approach is called generative grammar (생18법). The first instantiation of Generative Grammar is now referred to as Standard Theory (Chom- sky, 1957, 1965). It consists of a language specific Lexicon and a set of language-specific Phrase Structure Rules (PSR). Here is a basic example for English. (1.3) (a)S ! NP VP (b)NP ! (Det) N (c)VP ! V (NP) (d)N ! {Susan, John, apple} (e)V ! {sees, eats, cries} (f) Det ! {the} These rules are capable of generating the following sentences. 1LSLT was written in 1955, but was not published until 1975. 1.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 9 (1.4) (a) S NP VP N V NP Susan sees N John (b) S NP VP N V John cries (c) S NP VP N V NP Susan eats Det N the apple The following data are problematic for the mini-grammar in (1.3. Our mini-grammar generates the ungrammatical sentences in (1.5) and (1.6), and it fails to generate the grammatical sentence in (1.7). Thus, we say the grammar in (1.3 overgenerates (1.5 and (1.6), and it undergenerates (1.7). (1.5) *Susan cried the apple. (1.6) *The apple sees John. (1.7) Susan eats the apple with a knife. We will not attempt refine our mini-grammar here. For a contemporary, pedagogical approach to Standard Theory, see Larson (2009). Standard Theory involved numerous language-dependent transformations. By the late 1960s Chomsky had already laid out his idea of Universal Grammar. The next revolution in genera- tive grammar, Extended Standard Theory was introduced in Chomsky (1973). Here, Chomsky 10 CHAPTER 1. FOUNDATIONS OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR proposed "Conditions on Transformations", whereby, as the name suggests, transformations were subject to strict conditions. The idea is that the child has a much narrower range of choices to consider during acquisition. It was during Extended Standard Theory that X-Bar Theory became standard (Jackendoff, 1977; Stowell, 1981; Chomsky, 1970). In Stardard Theory, nominalizations were argued to be derived from a common underlying clausal core (Lees, 1960). This argument was based on numerous parallels between clausal and nominal constructions. (1.8) Parallels between clausal and nominal projections (a) The enemy destroyed the city. (b) the enemy’s destruction of the city (c) The actor portrayed himself. (d) the actor’s portrayal of himself Chomsky (1970) argued that while many nominals can be derived from underlying clausal con- structions, not all can, as in the following examples. (1.9) (a) the author of the book (b) Mary’s car Structurally, of course, the nominals in (1.9) and the nominals in (1.8) have the same structure; however, if the nominals in (1.8) are derived from underlying clauses, then we have no way to derive the nominals in (1.9). We don’t want to lose the fact that all nominals have the same basic structure, however. To overcome this conundrum, Chomsky proposed that lexical categories have the same universal phrase structure rules. The PSRs shown here are updated slightly. X stands for any lexical category. (1.10) general phrase structure rules (a)XP ! SpecXP X (b)X ! X ... These PSRs underlie Stowell’s 1981 development of X-Bar.