Syntax 2 - X' Theory, Wh-Movement, Pronouns: Binding & C-Command Flashcards
The Purpose of X’ Theory
Refine and Improve upon P.S Rules.
Formalises an intuition about closeness, that the complement is closer to X than the specifier, (the complement is more often obligatory).
- this is evidenced by phrases such as ‘very [angry with John] and [worried about Mary]’.
‘endocentric’
contains a head
According to X’ what does every endocentric phrase contain?
How is this represented in rules (for a bare tree
for English ordering)
XP - (specifier) X (complement)
XP > specifier X’
X’ > X complement
What is the maximal projection?
XP
What is the intermedial projection?
X’
Do you need to include XP & X’ if the whole phrase just consists of X?
YES
In X’ theory, are auxiliary verbs a constituent of VP?
NO - different grammatical category:
they can’t be elided
separated in qs and tag qs
behave differently with negatives
Sentences like ‘John [should talk to this man] and [will then get on with his day]’ show that there is a constituent with aux & VP.
TP!
CP >
CP > spec C’
C’ > C TP
(TP is the obligatory complement of C)
How to show adjuncts as distinct from complements in X’?
Use VP as example.
Complement:
VP > (spec) V’
V’ > V complement
Adjunct:
VP > (spec) V’
V’ > V’ adjunct
V’ > V (complement)
How does the difference in structure for adjuncts account for ‘do so’ substitution.
‘Do so’ takes the place of V’. Because there are 2 V’s this explains how the adjunct can be included in or excluded from the substitution.
How to represent determiners in the specifier?
DP > (spec) D’
D’ > D (comp)
Represent possessives e.g John’s cat
NP > DP N’
DP > spec (John) D’
D’ > D (‘s)
N’ > N (cat)
Category of possessives like ‘my’?
D
Non-restrictive relative clause vs restrictive relative clause?
Non-restrictive: the norwegians, who are rich, send their children away. (the norwegians, all of whom are rich, all send their children away).
Restrictive: the norwegians who are rich, send their children away.
(the rich norwegians send their children away, the others don’t.)
Domains associated with different levels of X’ phrases?
CP - discourse domain
TP - anchoring domain (temporal/mood)
VP - thematic domain
Can you stack specifiers?
NO.
How to account for stackable modifiers to the left of X’?
Adjuncts! head final adjuncts.
Any differing letter notations from PS rules?
AP instead of AdjP TP instead of S T instead of Aux CP instead of S' C instead of COMP DP instead of DetP (if that's a thing lol)
category of ‘than’?
than her : preposition
than she is : complementiser
How to deal with multiple auxiliaries?
TP > spec T’
T’ > T (should) TP
TP > spec T’
T’ > T (have) VP
Complexities with temporal adjuncts?
Do you want to apply to VP or whole TP (and which TP). Depends. Probably for other adjuncts too lolz.
locative information TENDS to be
adjunct don’t hold me to it lol do ur best to figure it out
Do we only need building rules in grammar?
No! Movement Rules! These manipulate structures by moving elements into different positions.
How does the X’ schema allow movement
Fronting is possible due to the empty Spec CP position.
Types of Movement Rules:
Head movement, NP movement, Wh Movement
What is head movement?
subject auxiliary inversion - auxiliary moves from T-C leaving trace t
What is NP movement?
Passives
‘Ian invents fish sentences’ > ‘Fish sentences are invented’
What is Wh-Movement?
Moves an XP (in the form of a wh element) to the beginning of the sentence to form (usually) a question.
Object NP can move, as can indirect object NP (preposition stranding), indirect object PP (pied piping), AP & CP. (TP and VP cannot).
Echo questions show where the wh element originates in the sentence. This is where the t is left.
Wh-elements move to spec CP.
Why? If VP expresses the arguments (thematic domain) and TP anchors (tense mood agreement), CP is for clause typing (discourse domain). By moving to CP we show that it is a q not a declarative.
What is vacuous movement?
Questions in which surface structure doesn’t change e.g ‘who saw John’ but Wh-element is moved from subject position to spec CP.
Does Wh-movement still apply in indirect questions?
Yes: ‘I don’t know what John read’
But obvi no aux inversion.
Long distance Wh-movement.
Wh-movement is unbounded:
‘Who did you believe that John said that Mary saw?’
BUT wh-element leaves a t in all spec CPs.
Sometimes FLA children (not just English) repeat Wh in the trace positions. Sometimes used as evidence that this position is filled. (but this is only in complex structures involving 2 or more clauses!)
(Radford, 2004: 156)
Locality conditions / Island Constraints
and what are Islands?
Islands are constituents off of which Wh-elements can’t move.
Left Branch Constraint: Wh movement can’t apply to the left branch of an NP or AP.
Wh-islands: if there is a wh element in spec CP that creates an island. (wh-elements cannot not move past each other).
Complex NP constraint: ‘which girl did you write a song which was about’ (can’t move wh element out of a complex NP < that is a CP embedded in an NP)
Negative islands: moved wh-element must come from the clause which is negated, not a subclause.
Subject condition: if the subject is a CP you can’t extract something from it.
Coordinate structure constraint.
‘which cake did Mary buy?’
What is the category of ‘which’?
D
Is spec position a parameter?
Yeh, though languages love spec left (not if they’re VOS tho).
Difference between whether and if.
Whether can take non-finite complements while if cannot.
Theresa links this to the ‘wh’ nature of the element and also that ‘whether that’ constructions were an option earlier in the history of English.
Exceptional Case Marking:
Bizarre cases in which the subject of an infinitival verb is marked as object case. Caused by ‘raising to object verbs’
Modelled in X’ as having no CP, just a TP complement of V. There would be too much structure between verb and complement.
Distinguish between particle verbs and prepositional complements?
If you substitute a pronoun in for the object, it will go between the 2 elements of a particle verb, but will remain to the right of a verb + preposition.
What is binding?
The dependency between different elements in a hierarchical structure.
What are pronominals and their types?
Pronominals replace an antecedent.
anaphors - an NP that obligatorily takes its meaning from another NP in the sentence (reflexive or reciprocal)
pronouns - an NP that may (but need not) take its meaning from another NP in the sentence (he, she, they)
R-expressions - An NP that gets its meaning by referring to an entity in the world. (or at least a concept lolz) (no antecedent)
What is C-Command?
Constituent command: A formal indicator of relative structural height. (c-commands = binds)
A node X c-commands another node Y iff:
X doesn’t dominate Y.
Y doesn’t dominate X.
The first branching node dominating X dominates Y.
(A node C-commands its sister and everything she dominates.)
What is the binding domain?
The BD for an anaphor A is the smallest XP containing A and either:
- a subject distinct from A
- a finite T
Co-indexing in binding questions?
antecedent should be coindexed with anaphor or pronoun (coindexing is just marking that they have the same referent)
SO, what are the 3 binding principles?
A) An anaphor must be bound within its binding domain.
B) A pronoun must be free in its binding domain. *
C) An R-expression must be free.
- pronouns do not HAVE to be bound at all.
What is symmetric vs asymmetric c-command?
symmetric c-command if A c-commands B AND B c-commands A
asymmetric if one c-commands the other but it is not reciprocated.
What is government?
Node A governs node B if:
A c-commands B
there is no node G such that G is c-commanded by A and asymmetrically c-commands B.
Phrase government & Head government?
phrase government: *there is no NP (or whatever the phrase is) G such that…
head government: *there is no head G such that…
What is an antecedent?
an NP that gives its meaning to another NP in the sentence.
Is C-command just relevant to binding theory?
C-command is also important to Wh-movement: Wh-elements always move to a c-commanding position.
and all movement? investigate?
Could you have a TP without a subject?
Yes in certain cases, embedded TPs can have non-overt subjects:
‘I remember going to the cinema’
‘I wondered whether to
So we can have CP subjects, but what do Haegeman & Gueron say about representing them in X’?
CP adjunction CP > CP CP CP > subject clause CP > C (empty) TP (subjectless sentence) (the subject goes in spec CP?!)
This is due to differing behaviour of CP subjects in other languages like dutch. IT IS THOUGHT THAT A CP SUBJECT HAS A DISCOURSE ROLE - not totally natural sounding, SO MOVE INTO DISCOURSE DOMAIN?
PP subjects can go in spec TP though.
What are VP-shells and why do we need them?
VP1 > V’1
V’1 > V1 (verb! indexed) VP2
VP2 > spec (1st object) V’2
V’2 > V2 (trace of verb) NP (2nd object)
Ditransitive verbs often have 2 objects both with object (complement) properties e.g in I give louise the draft you can passivise as 'louise is given the draft' but you can't substitute I did so the draft. both have complement (object properties)
How does Haegeman represent non-overt subjects?
ec : empty category
and she coindexes them
c-command seems to affect all movement and antecedent, but why is the c-commanding position different elements take different?
is there one type of movement which doesn’t seem to be affected?
discourse domain
temporal / mood domain
thematic domain
then I guess u can also argue that other positions are full
‘lowering’ of tense info to verb (affix hopping!) isn’t c-command related
affix hopping explains verbal morphology without V-T movement.
Also explains auxiliary & inflection (bipartite expression- •• extended exponence: the phenomenon whereby a particular grammatical feature, unit, structure, etc. is realized by more than one formative, or other kind of element. Thus in English the perfect is realized by a form of the auxiliary verb have in combination with a past participle.)
Will you get copulas?
no we haven’t done them :) but lowkey
‘be’ is the only English verb that does V-T movement (unless there is an auxiliary of course).
copulas are also only verbs to take adjectival complements
lowkey ‘baa baa blacksheep’ varieties of English do V-T movement with lexical ‘have’ as well
(have you any wool)
Problems in the Binding Theory
from Haegeman and Gueron
Implicit Arguments: (Chomsky)
*They told stories about them.
They told my stories about them.
(my is an implicit subject and thus the NP my stories about them is the Binding Domain and thus ‘them’ is free within its binding domain.
They heard stories about them.
(is like the first sentence except grammatical - bc the implicit subject is that somebody else is telling the stories)
There is also another one if you want to look back.
If a position in the S-structure is missing, it is
not OVERTLY specified
What is VISH, how to represent it?
VP-internal subject hypothesis: the idea that subjects are generated in spec VP and moved to the temporal/mood domain.
leave a trace t in spec VP!
anything interesting about ‘for him to err is strange’
‘him’ is accusative case as it is in fact the complement of a preposition ‘for’ (and complements of Vs and Ps are accusative), however in this case the P is being used as a C to create a CP subject where ‘him’ is the subject of the subject.
Writing about the hierarchy of TP shells
so the domain isn’t just temporal/mood domain it’s acc ‘anchoring’, and different auxiliaries appear in the following order: STRICT
mood, tense, aspect, voice (would have been being)
Category of whose
D head
It’s just that diachronically it was who’s
What is PRO
used in place of non-overt subjects (e.g in non-finite clauses)
Determining where to put adjuncts
is it in discourse (frankly), anchoring (lately) or thematic (quickly) domain?
Where does ‘right’ or ‘just’ go
spec PP
if it is before a preposition obvi lol
2?
Num or Adj (connects as adjunct)
A lot of?
grammaticalised from NP PP to a phrasal DP
Why does affix hopping happen?! (domain wise)
it was an ugly theoretical assumption - empirically driven.
now the idea is that syntactically relevant features rather than concrete morphemes exist in T and are merely realised in the phonological form.
