CAS LX 522 The forest vs. the trees Syntax I • Let’s take a moment to look at what we’ve done and lay out where we’re going. • The underlying goal is to lay out a model of Week 4. θ Theory and the Big Picture this subconscious knowledge of sentence structure that we have; a system which predicts what speakers find grammatical and ungrammatical. The forest vs. the trees The forest vs. the trees • All we have from the outset is data and • We started out looking at sentences to see what intuition as to how the system works; we makes a sentence? • Looks like sentences need a subject, kind of look at the data, we draw generalizations, centered around a noun, and a predicate, usually we formulate hypotheses, and we look at kind of centered around a verb. more data to see how the predictions of our • The subject part can have other stuff, not just the hypotheses fared. noun (adjectives, etc.), and the verb part can have other stuff, not just the verb (adverbs, etc.). • So, we laid out some hypotheses as to what the subject and the predicate could contain. The forest vs. the trees The forest vs. the trees • We noticed that the things which can be subjects (we • The fact that pretty much any kind of phrase called then “noun phrases” because of the intuitive centrality of the noun) can also be objects of verbs or that we looked at seemed to have roughly of prepositions, we noticed where the adjectives and the same properties suggested a further, prepositional phrases seem to be able occur with bigger hypothesis about how Language respect to the noun and so forth. works: • Looking deeper, with the idea of constituency in mind, we continued to revise our hypotheses until we came • X-bar theory: The hierarchical structure of up with rules for the noun phrase and the verb phrase sentences is constructed (only) of phrases and the other components of the sentence that seemed that conform to the X-bar template. to share a lot of common properties. 1 The forest vs. the trees The forest vs. the trees • Along the way, we discovered that if we assume • In general, this is how we’ll progress; we consider X-bar theory is right, we probably had mis-named some part of the data, form hypotheses based on the phrase which can be the subject of a sentence the generalizations we see, and then look for data or an object of the verb; based on the evidence that we don’t account for. from possessor phrases, we determined that what we thought was a “noun phrase”, headed by a • Right now, we have the basic tools we need to noun, was actually a “determiner phrase” headed diagram the structures of sentences (categories, X- by a determiner (and containing a noun phrase bar theory), but that’s by no means the end of the headed by a noun). story… The forest vs. the trees The forest vs. the trees • There are several large areas we need to address. • Another major component of syntax is First of all, simply drawing a tree that conforms to movement, which has many complex X-bar theory doesn’t guarantee that we’re going to properties. have a grammatical sentence. • In general, the idea is that sentences like these • Theta theory and subcategorization are the major – John will leave. components of our final theory which help make – Will John leave? sure that our structures are legitimate. These are • Are related in a meaningful way. going to be our main topics today. The forest vs. the trees The forest vs. the trees • The underlying view of the grammatical • That means that there are two levels involved in the system has us starting with something like: generation of a sentence (where we our system is supposed to, in the end, generate all and only the – John will leave grammatical sentences of a language). • …in either case, and if you are trying to • There’s the first level (John will leave), which is form a yes-no question, you will sometimes called the Deep Structure or D-Structure additionally move will from where you see or DS representation of the sentence. it above to where you see it below: • Then, there’s a second level, after any movement – Will John — leave? has happened (Will John leave?), and this is what we pronounce. This is sometimes called the Surface Structure or S-Structure or SS representation. 2 The forest vs. the trees The forest vs. the trees • In fact, there’s even a third level; it’s a level • Everyone bought something conceptually after the one we pronounce. – For every person x: for something y: x bought y. – For some thing y: • Consider: for every person x: – Everyone bought something. x bought y. • These are renditions of the two meanings in a – …I don’t remember what that thing was, though. “logical form”; they differ in whether everyone or – …but they all bought different things. someone comes first. The forest vs. the trees The Y model • The idea is that after S-Structure there can be more movement to yield the Logical Form (or LF). • This overall view of grammar has this shape • There are two possibilities for Everyone bought (something like an inverted Y) something. It’s ambiguous, like I saw the man on the Overt movement DS D-Structure is the hill with the binoculars. underlying form • We might say that one one meaning (every…some…) S-Structure is the surface no movement occurs, but on the other meaning form (modulo phon/morph) SS Covert movement (some…every…) something moves over everyone. Phonology/ • something everyone bought — Morphology PF LF Phonetic Form is Meaning is read the pronunciation off of Logical Form The Y model The Y model • We haven’t been making distinctions, but we have • Given this, we can only say that X-bar theory applies generally been considering sentences that did not contain to SS/DS. However, we will make an additional any (obvious) overt movement. Basically, we have been assumption: Movement is structure preserving. characterizing SS/DS. Overt movement DS D-Structure is the Overt movement DS X-bar theory underlying form S-Structure is the surface form (modulo phon/morph) SS SS Covert movement Covert movement Phonology/ Phonology/ Morphology PF LF Morphology PF LF Phonetic Form is Meaning is read the pronunciation off of Logical Form 3 The Y model The Y model • By movement is structure preserving, we mean that • Theta theory and subcategorization will constrain movement will never change an X-bar compliant structure additional aspects of DS (for example, the into an X-bar noncompliant structure. X-bar theory constrains requirement that hit has a DP object). DS and all representations created by movement (SS, LF). θ Theory Overt movement Overt movement DS DS Subcategorization X-bar theory X-bar theory SS SS Covert movement Covert movement Phonology/ Phonology/ Morphology PF LF Morphology PF LF The Y model The Y model • Binding Theory concerning the interpretation of • Case Theory concerning the placement of noun noun phrases (DPs) like him, himself, and Bill, are phrases (DPs) within a sentence will turn out to be constraints on the form LF takes. basically a set of constraints on SS. θ Theory θ Theory Overt movement Overt movement DS Subcategorization DS Subcategorization X-bar theory X-bar theory SS Case theory, EPP SS Covert movement Covert movement Phonology/ Phonology/ Morphology PF LF Morphology PF LF Binding theory Binding theory The plan But first, some clarifications… • This is an overview of the components of • The introduction of the DP last week the grammar (to a good first approximation, seemed to cause some unrest and confusion. of course), and the plan from here will be to work our way through the components (θ- • As mentioned a few minutes ago, what theory, movement, Case theory, Binding makes this confusing is in part just an issue theory). of labeling. We, sensibly enough, called the kind of phrase that can serve as a subject or • Today: θ-theory and subcategorization. an object, a “noun phrase.” 4 But first, some clarifications… But first, some clarifications… • We discovered that as we • The implication of this is that explored the phrase of which DP subjects like the student or objects DP like the book were never NPs at the noun is the head (the D′ all—they were DPs which contain D′ NP), we shouldn’t include NPs. D NP D NP determiners like the (or the the the possessive ’s) inside; rather, N′ • Of course, NPs still exist! And N′ the D is outside the NP. everything we had previously N discovered about them is still true. N book book The data hasn’t changed. It’s only that NPs are inside of DPs. But first, some clarifications… But first, some clarifications… • One note about DP and the old term • Perhaps a little more shocking is the basic idea of “noun phrase”: You will find that people DP are not as precise about DP as they X-bar theory, which was probably not fully driven should be—even the textbook will home last time. D′ frequently refer to “noun phrase” or even “NP” when it really means “DP”. D NP the • The logic was like this: Looking at NP, VP, and so • The term “noun phrase” (and its N′ forth, we found that the shape of the phrases is abbreviation) “NP” had become very pretty much the same. This suggested a entrenched in the vocabulary of N fundamental property of language, a linguistics—you’ll just have to be awake book as you read.