1Installment 12a. Commentary, andthe beginning of wh-movement(9.1-9.3)CAS LX 522Syntax IWhile thinking about syntax Before finishing his homework,Ike watched TV. Finish: transitive (Agent, Theme) Agent: ? Theme: his homework Watch: transitive (Agent, Theme) Agent: Ike Theme: TV Ike watched TV is the main clause. Before finishing his homework is a modifier.While thinking about syntax Before finishing his homework,Ike watched TV. Intuitively, it is Ike who was (at least at risk of)finishing his homework. We are not going to have any particular explanationfor exactly how the interpretation tied to the subjectcomes about, but it seems to be. Before he finished his homework,Ike watched TV.While PRO thinking about syntax Before PRO finishing his homework, … This PRO does seem to be controlled bythe subject somehow (*While raining, Ikedashed to the store). The form finishing is not the progressive, itis the present participle, a nonfinite form.Before PRO finishing… T is not finite, so no [tense] feature. It is not the infinitive either. We’ll say this form has the [ing]feature. The [uInfl:] feature of v is matched,valued, and checked by the [ing]feature, resulting in finishing.T′T[ing]TPDPPROCPCbeforeVfinishVPDPhis homeworkv′vvP<DP>v<V>[uInfl:ing]Before PRO finishing… How does PRO get its case featurechecked? Some relevant sentences: Before he finished his homework,Ike watched TV. Before Ike’s finishing of hishomework, tension was high.T′T[ing]TPDPPROCPCbeforeVfinishVPDPhis homeworkv′vvP<DP>v<V>2Before PRO finishing… Given this, the best hypothesisseems to be that the [ing] T alsohas a [null] feature, checkingcase with PRO just like finite Tchecks nominative case withother subjects. [null] = [ucase:null]T′T[ing]TPDPPROCPCbeforeVfinishVPDPhis homeworkv′vvP<DP>v<V>BeforePROfinishing… The only thing left is toattach the modifierinto the main clause…T′T[past]TPDPIkeTPVwatchVPDPTVv′vvP<DP>v<V>T′T[ing]TPDPPROCPCbeforeVfinishVPDPhis homeworkv′vvP<DP>v<V>CPØCBefore his cooking of thet(of)urkey, Ike had never openedthe oven before.On gerunds There is yet another form of the verb that showsup with -ing on the end of it in English: thegerund. A gerund is basically a verb acting as a noun—we’ve been looking at this kind of deverbal nounalready. One way to tell whether you arelooking at a gerund (noun) or not (a verb) is tosee whether it is modified by adjectives oradverbs: Before his quick(*ly) cooking of the t(of)urkey… Before quick-*(ly) finishing his homework…Nonverbal predicates Nonverbal predicatesMain clauses seem to need a T (and a finite one atthat), and in English at least, it seems that wefurther need a v. However, there are sentences in which the mainpredicate really isn’t verbal: Frankie is a pathologist. Boyd is grumpy. Here the verb be seems to be doing not muchmore than “gluing” the subject to the predicate.Nonverbalpredicates This is slightlysticky terrain, butas a firsthypothesis,suppose that Boydis grumpy lookslike this: That is, we havean auxiliary Pred,realized as be, thatmoves to T its [uInfl:] featureis strong whenvalued by a [tense]feature.T′T[pres]TP—CPCØAdjPDPBoydPredbeAdjgrumpyPredP3Zoe is likely to stay in ChileWh-questions Wh-questions are “information-seeking” questions,involving a wh-word. Who, what, when, where, why, HoW, which What will they bake? Observe that what is basically the object of bake.And look how far away it is from bake, the thingthat assigns it a θ-role. Cf also. “echo questions”: I drank WHAT? Also, notice that T has moved to C here too (like itdoes in yes-no questions).[wh] Wh-words are a little bit like pronouns, standingin for whatever category of thing we’d likeinformation about. These interrogative expressions are differentfrom non-interrogative pronouns anddemonstratives. *That will they bake. What, where, when are differentiated from that,there, then in being interrogative. This is a featureof the wh-word: [wh].[wh] A wh-word has the same category as its non-wh-counterpart—therefore, wh-words come inseveral different categories. What [wh, D] Who [wh, D, human] When [wh, Adv, temporal] Where [wh, Adv, locational] How [wh, Adv, manner] Why [wh, Adv, reason] Which [wh, D, uN*]How are wh-questions formed? What we have in English wh-questions is like alimited form of V2. The analysis of wh-questions is the same: The T head moves to C The wh-expression moves to SpecCP Let’s suppose that the reason/mechanism movingT to C is the same as in yes-no questions: We havean interrogative C, with [clause-type:Q]. When the[uclause-type:] feature of T is valued by [Q], it isstrong.What will they bake? To start out, we have a vP and TP as usual. The onlyunusual thing so far is that we have a wh-object what.VPv′T′vvVbakeTPDPtheyTwill[uclause-type:]<V> DPwhat[wh]<DP>vP4What will they bake? The complementizer Chas the informationabout clause-type, andthis is a question. Asbefore with yes-noquestions, we assumethat this C has thefeature [clause-type:Q](or “[Q]” for short). As with yes-noquestions, the[uclause-type:] featureof T is strong whenvalued by Q.VPv′T′vvVbakeTPC′DPtheyC[Q]Twill[uclause-type:]<V> DPwhat[wh]<DP>vPWhat will they bake? As for how what windsup at the beginning ofthe sentence, we willtreat this essentiallylike we treatedGerman V2. In a wh-question, C hasa [uwh*] feature. This forces what tomove into SpecCP tocheck the feature.VPv′T′vvVbakeTPC′DPtheyC[Q,uwh*]Twill[uclause-type:]<V> DPwhat[wh]<DP>vPWhat will they bake? What moves toSpecCP andchecks the [uwh*]feature of C. T moves toC to checkthe (nowstrong)[uclausetype:Q*]feature. (Not pictured here)VPv′T′vvVbakeTPC′DPtheyC[Q,uwh*]Twill[uclause-type:]<V><DP><DP>vPCPDPwhat[wh]Interrogative Q vs. Declarative Q Looking at wh-questions as compared to yes-noquestions, it looks as if there are two kinds ofinterrogative C: “yes-no” C: [C, clause-type:Q] wh-question C: [C, clause-type:Q, uwh*] This is in fact often supposed in the syntaxliterature— and many languages seem to have aspecial particle reserved for yes-no questions (e.g.,English if, Mandarin ma) Adger notes a problem, however:Nothing in our system so far prevents us from using ayes-no C with a wh-word, predicting: