syntax (topic 2)

Question 1

what is an unbounded dependency and how can it be represented in a tree?

Answer 1

a syntactic dependency while having some distance between the elements dependent on each other

by movement

Question 2

what is the basis of X’-theory? give an example

Answer 2

syntactic rules are not independent, for example headedness governs multiple syntactic rules: in English, heads come before complements, in Korean heads come after complements.

Question 3

what three claims does X’-theory exist of?

Answer 3

• heads combine with complements to make phrases
• the category of the phrase is predictable from the category of the head
• relative order of heads and complements is fixed within a language but may vary between languages (macro-parameters)

Question 4

what is projection from the lexicon?

Answer 4

the lexical specification of a word (information about word class) is projected onto tree structures, specifically X’-structure

Question 5

what are the three broad factors of a grammar?

Answer 5

• universal principles
• general choice points that work throughout a language (macro-parameters)
• information about particular lexical items

Question 6

what are two problems with the rule S –> NP VP? what is the solution?

Answer 6

• S is not related to a head, there is no projection
• no complementation of head and complement

take the subject to be an argument of the verb. the verb has a slot for a complement and a subject (‘specifier’).
[XP [specifier] [X’ [X] [complement] ] ]

Question 7

what is the problem of fitting auxiliaries into the tree structure? what is the solution and what is its justification?

Answer 7

it is not clear whether the verb or the auxiliary should be the head.

solution: letting the auxiliary head its own category, I, which takes VP as complement and the subject as specifier.
justification: modal auxiliaries are in complementary distribution with verbal inflection, implying they are part of the same category.