CAS LX 522Syntax IWeek 3a.!-roles, feature checking(3.5-5.6)Previously, in LX522... •Last time, abstract stuff about trees:•They are built of branches and nodes, the nodes are related in terms of dominance, motherhood, sisterhood.•They are constructed from the bottom up by taking two things and putting them together (Merge), to form a new syntactic object that has the features of the head.This is a proposition•Let’s try to ground this a bit more now, to make it clearer what problems we’re solving here.•A primary—and perhaps the most important—type of sentence is that which represents a proposition.•A proposition is the kind of thing that can be true or false (basically).Truth and Verbs1) Michael swam.•Michael : refers to an individual; it is a name, a label. It is complete.•Swam : describes an action that can be undertaken by someone, or a property that someone can have. Someone. Swam can’t be true—it needs an individual, then it can be true (or false).Predicates and arguments•Suppose the construction of a proposition to be the end result of a (common kind of) sentence construction.1) Michael swam•Swam needs an individual to be true or false. Fortunately, Michael is an individual. So, combining swam (predicate) and Michael (argument) gives us a proposition, that can be true or false.Verbs and participants•Intransitive (1-place): Sleep1)Bill slept.2)*Bill slept the book.•Transitive (2-place): Hit3)*Bill hit.4)Bill hit the pillow.•Ditransitive (3-place): Put5)*Bill put.6)*Bill put the book.7)Bill put the book on the table.•Weather (0-place): Rain8)It rained.Verbs and arguments•The “participants” in an event denoted by the verb are the arguments of that verb.•Some verbs require one argument, some require two arguments, some require three arguments, some require none.•Intuitively, the number of arguments is the number of things that a verb needs in order to make a proposition (something that can be either true or false).Predicates•We will call verbs the predicates. They define properties of and/or relations between the arguments.1) Bill hit the ball"There was a hitting, Bill did the hitting, the ball was affected by the hitting.•Different arguments have different roles in the event. (e.g., The hitter, the hittee)Thematic relations•The thematic relation that the argument has to the verb—the role it plays in the event—will prove useful in describing the behaviors of different classes of verb.•One thematic relation is agent of an action, like Bill in:1) Bill kicked the ball.Common thematic relations•Agent: initiator or doer in the event•Theme/Patient: affected by the event, or undergoes the action1) Sue kicked the ball. •Experiencer: feel or perceive the event3) Pat likes pizza.•Proposition: a statement, can be true/false.3) Bill said that he likes pizza.Common thematic relations•Goal:1) Chris ran to Copley Square.2) Pat gave the book to Tracy. (Recipient)•Source:3) Mary took a pencil from the pile.•Instrument:4) Ed ate the burrito with a plastic spork.•Benefactive:5) Pat cooked dinner for Chris.•Location:6) Betsy sits under the tree on Wednesdays.Thematic relations•Armed with these terms, we can describe the semantic connection between the verb and its arguments.•Ray gave a grape to Bill.•Ray: Agent, Source, …•A grape: Theme•Bill: Goal, Recipient, …Required vs. optional•Things with certain thematic relations don’t seem to be needed by a given verb, but can be there. E.g., location.1) Pat screamed (in the library).•Others, like theme/patient, goal, or agent, often do seem to be required. (“Required” means even if left out, there is something assumed)2) Chris gave a book to Pat.!-roles•An argument can participate in several thematic relations with the verb (e.g., Agent, Goal).•In the syntax, we assign a special connection to the verb called a “!-role”, which is a collection of thematic relations.•For the purposes of syntax, the !-role (the collection of relations) is much more central than the actual relations in the collection.!-roleAgentSource!-roles•We will often need to make reference to a particular !-role, and we will often do this by referring to the most prominent relation in the collection.•For example, in Bill hit the ball, we say that Bill has the “Agent !-role”, meaning it has a !-role containing the Agent relation, perhaps among others.Unique ! Generalization•Each !-role must be assigned to a constituent, but a constituent cannot be assigned more than one !-role.•Historically, the “!-criterion.”•Verbs have a certain number of !-roles to assign (e.g., say has two), and each of those must be assigned to a distinct argument.Selection•Verbs, as part of their meaning (that is, whatever is recorded in the lexicon), are often “selective” about what kinds of arguments, !-roles they have.•What verbs are said to do here is select for certain things.•There are quite a number of things that verbs “care about.”C(ategory)-selection (“subcategorization”)•Verbs that take objects differ in what they allow the syntactic category those objects to be. Suppose the ball is category N (NP) and that Bill left early is category C (CP):1) Sue saw/hit the ball.2) Sue saw/*hit that Bill left early.Feelings•The verb feel seems to have an Experiencer and a Theme/Source. But the Theme/Source can be any of several different syntactic categories. So: !-role does not determine syntactic category; nor does syntactic category determine !-role.1) Pat felt a tremor.2) Pat felt uncomfortable.3) Pat felt that Chris had not performed well.Kickings•The verb kick seems to require a nominal (category N) argument.•Verbs differ, so we need this to be recorded in the lexicon.•Kick is a verb. It has a [V] feature.•It “needs” a noun. Nouns have an [N] feature. But we need to distinguish between being and needing.Interpretability•The difference between “being” and “needing” will be referred to as a difference in interpretability.•Being a verb, kick has an interpretable [V] feature.•Needing a noun, kick has an uninterpretable [N] feature.•The name gives a hint as to why the N is required. The uninterpretable [N] feature is dangerous. It must be gotten rid of. Otherwise, there will be something we can’t interpret.Feature checking•For our model, we will say that if a syntactic object has an uninterpretable feature, it must Merge with a
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