1Week 5. Head movementCAS LX 522Syntax IX-bar parametersn Many (most?) languages of the world havesomething like a basic word order, an order inwhich words come in in “neutral” sentences.n English: SVOn Akira ate an apple.n Japanese: SOVn John wa ringo o tabeta.n John top apple acc aten ‘John ate an apple.’X-bar parametersn These two wordorders work nicelywith X-bar theoryas it stands; thedifference can bestated in terms of asimple parameterwhichdifferentiateslanguages as towhether they arehead-initial orhead-final.VeatV¢VPan appleDPTT¢TPAkiraDP-edVtabeV¢VPringo oDPTT¢TPJohnDP-tan Notice that in English,both V and T arehead-initial, and inJapanese, both V andT are head-final. Infact, languages tend tobe consistent in theirheadedness:n Japanese haspostpositions, C comesafter TP in embeddedclauses…n English has prepositions;C comes before TP inembedded clauses…VeatV¢VPan appleDPTT¢TPAkiraDP-edVtabeV¢VPringo oDPTT¢TPJohnDP-taX-bar parametersX-bar parametersn There are also languages in which thebasic word order is VOS, although theyare few in number.n Malagasy: VOSn Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavay.n saw the student the womann ‘The woman saw the student.’n See how we might generate an X-barstructure of this?X-bar parametersn By changing the order of thespecifier and the X¢, we can getVOS order, and by changing theorder of both (with respect toEnglish) we can get OVS order.n Malagasy: VOSn Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavay.n saw the student the womann ‘The woman saw the student.’n Hixkaryana: OVSn Kana yanïmno bïryekomon Fish caught boyn ‘The boy caught a fish’VnahitaV¢VPny mpia-natraDPTT¢TPny vehi-vavayDP[PAST]VyanïmnoV¢VPkanaDPTT¢TPbïrye-komoDP[PAST]2X-bar parametersn So by changing the parameters of head-complement order and specifier-X¢order we can generate the followingbasic word orders:n SVO (spec-initial, head-initial) (English)n SOV (spec-initial, head-final) (Japanese)n VOS (spec-final, head-initial) (Malagasy)n OVS (spec-final, head-final) (Hixkaryana)n And that’s all…The problem of VSOlanguagesn There are quite a number of languages,however, for which the basic word orderis VSO. Irish, Welsh, and Arabic areamong them.n Try as we might, there is no way to set theX-bar parameters to get VSO order—wehave a specifier (the subject) between theverb and its complement.Frenchn French presents asimilar problem;consider the Englishsentencen I often eat apples.n The adverb often is anadjunct, attached at V¢,as seen here.VeatV¢VPapplesDPTT¢TPIDP[PRES]V¢AdvPoftenFrenchn In French the sentence isn Je mange souvent des pommes.n I eat often of.the applesn ‘I often eat apples.’n The adverb souvent appearsbetween the verb and itscomplement; there is no place toput it in this tree.n Moreover, it should be basicallyin the same place as in English,given the structural similarityand the sameness of meaning.VeatV¢VPapplesDPTT¢TPIDP[PRES]V¢AdvPoftenX-bar theory: A sham?n So is X-bar theory not up to the task ofbeing a universal principle of phrasestructure, despite its initial promise inEnglish (and Japanese and Malagasyand Hixkaryana)? Should we scrap itand start over?n Answer: No… There is a way we cansalvage all the good stuff we’ve gottenfrom X-bar theory so far…Movementn Consider English yes-no questions…n To form a question from a statement like:n Bill should eat his peas.n We prepose the modal should to the frontof the sentence, before the subject.n Should Bill eat his peas?n Where is should in this sentence?3Movementn Should Bill eat his peas?n There is one position in our sentence structures sofar that is to the left of the subject, the one where thecomplementizer that goes (C):n I said that Bill should eat his peas.n This is where we expect should to be. It is, after all, amodal, of category T. It is not a complementizer.n Also notice that if we embed this question, shouldstays after the subject, and if is in C:n I wonder if Bill should eat his peas.Movementn All of this suggests that the way to look atthis is that we start with the sentence…n Bill should eat his peasn …as usual, and if we’re forming a yes-noquestion, we follow this up by movingshould to the position of C. If we can’tmove it (in an embedded question, there’salready something in C: if), it stays put.Movementn Given that things do seem to move aroundin the sentence (that is, they start wherewe’d expect them to but we hear themsomewhere else), this gives us a way wemight “save X-bar theory” from Irish andFrench.n Let’s go back and look at French with thisin mind…Frenchn Jean mange souvent des pommes.n Jean eats often of.the applesn ‘Jean often eat apples.’n If we suppose that the Frenchsentence starts out just like theEnglish sentence, we have theunderlying DS (deep structure)representation shown here.n What needs to happen to get thecorrect surface word order?VmangeV¢VPdes pommesPPTT¢TPJeanDP[PRES]V¢AdvPsouventDSFrenchn Jean mange souvent des pommes.n Jean eats often of.the applesn ‘Jean often eat apples.’n Of course—the V (mange) movesup to the T position.n This always happens in Frenchwith a tensed/agreeing verb.This generally doesn’t happen inEnglish.n Hence, the difference in “adverbposition” (really, of course, it’sverb position)tiV¢VPdes pommesPPVi+TT¢TPJeanDPmange+[PRES]V¢AdvPsouventSSWhy does this happen?n Why would a language need to move its verb up totense?n In French, verbs are marked for tense andagreement—past tense verbs look different frompresent tense verbs, which look different fromfuture tense verbs. If the tense information is in T([PRES]), and the verb reflects this, somehow theverb needs to get together with T.n French does this by moving the verb to T.n English does this by moving T (-ed) to the verb.4Pondering about Tn In the DS of every matrix sentence (French orEnglish or anything) there is a TP.n In the example Jean mange souvent des pommes,the tense marked on the verb is present tense. So,we suppose that T was present, which we canmark as being [PRES], i.e. having the feature for“present” on tense. The present tense morphemein French is Ø, so writing the feature is clearer.Featuresn In general, as far as syntax is concerned, we can thinkof the things at the terminal nodes in our tree as being“bundles of features” or “collections of properties.”n The T node has (by definition) the feature “is ofcategory T” for one. Terminal