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BU CAS LX 522 - Syntax I

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1Week 3b. Merge, feature checking3.6-4.2CAS LX 522Syntax IC-selection Verbs are recorded in the lexicon with the θ-rolesthey assign as part of their meaning. But, verbs are more selective than that. Pat felt a tremor. Pat felt uncomfortable. Pat felt that Chrishad not performed well. Pat is the Experiencer; a tremor (noun),uncomfortable (adjective), or that…well (sentence)is the Theme/Source. So θ-role does not determinesyntactic category. And syntactic category certainlydoes not determine θ-role. So verbs also need to be recorded with informationabout the syntactic categor(y/ ies) they combinewith.C-selection(“Subcategorization”) Kick needs a nominal object. Pat kicked the pail. Kick has a [V] category feature, but also needsto have some form of [N] category featureindicating that it needs a nominal object. We don’t want to risk interpreting kick as a noun,though. So, the [V] and [N] features must have adifferent status. On kick, the [V] feature is interpretable— the [N]feature is just for use in assembling the structure,it is not interpreted—hence uninterpretable.C-selection Not all transitive verbs (that take just oneobject) can take the same kind of object. Sue knows [DP the answer ] Sue knows [CP that Bill left early ] Sue hit [DP the ball ] *Sue hit [CP that Bill left early] So know can take either a DP or a CP asits object argument; hit can only take a DPas its object argument.S-selection Verbs also exert semantic control of the kinds ofarguments they allow. For example, many verbs can only have avolitional (agentive) subject: Bill likes pizza. Bill kicked the stone. #Pizza likes anchovies. #The stone kicked Bill. We’ll assume that this is not encoded in thesyntactic features, but if you mess up with respectto s-selection, the interpretation is anomalous.Feature checking To model this, we will say that if a syntactic objecthas an uninterpretable feature, it must Merge witha syntactic object that has a matching feature—and once it’s done, the requirement is met. Thefeature is checked. Specifically: Full Interpretation: The structure to which the semanticinterface rules apply contains no uninterpretable features. Checking Requirement: Uninterpretable features must bechecked (and once checked, they are deleted) Checking (under sisterhood): An uninterpretable feature Fon a syntactic object Y is checked when Y is sister toanother syntactic object Z which bears a matching featureF.2Feature checking To distinguish interpretablefeatures from uninterpretablefeatures, we will writeuninterpretable features with a uin front of them. D has uninterpretable feature F E has interpretable feature F. If we Merge them, theuninterpretable feature can bechecked (under sisterhood).D[uF]E[F]Feature checking To distinguish interpretablefeatures from uninterpretablefeatures, we will writeuninterpretable features with a uin front of them. D has uninterpretable feature F E has interpretable feature F. If we Merge them, theuninterpretable feature can bechecked (under sisterhood).CD[uF]E[F]Feature checking Or, for a more concrete example kick is a verb (has aninterpretable V feature) and c-selects a noun (has anuninterpretable N feature). me is a noun (a pronoun in fact,has an interpretable N feature,and others like accusative case,first person, singular)kick[uN, V]me[N, acc, 1, sg]Feature checking Or, for a more concrete example kick is a verb (has aninterpretable V feature) and c-selects a noun (has anuninterpretable N feature). me is a noun (a pronoun in fact,has an interpretable N feature,and others like accusative case,first person, singular) Merging them will check theuninterpretable feature, and thestructure can be interpreted.Vkick[uN, V]me[N, acc, 1, sg]Feature checking The head is the “needy” one.The one that had theuninterpretable feature that waschecked by Merge. The combination has thefeatures of the verb kick and soits distribution will be like averb’s distribution would be. Pat wants to kick me. Pat wants to drive. I like to draw elephants. *Pat wants to elephants. *I like to draw kick me.Vkick[uN, V]me[N, acc, 1, sg]glance at PatPat [N, …] at [P, uN, …]glance [V, uP, …]3Chris glanced at PatPat [N, …] Chris [N, …]at [P, uN, …] glanced [V, uP, uN, …]The idea Sentences are generated derivationally, by meansof a series of syntactic operations. A sentence that can be generated by such a procedureis grammatical. One that cannot is not grammatical. Syntactic operations operate on syntactic objects. Lexical items are syntactic objects. A derivation starts off by selecting a number ofsyntactic objects from the lexicon, and proceedsby performing syntactic operations on them.Syntactic operations Merge is a syntactic operation. It takes twosyntactic objects and creates a new one out ofthem. The new syntactic object created by Mergeinherits the features of one of the components(the head projects its features). Merge cannot “look inside” a syntactic object.Syntactic objects are only combined at the root. The Extension Condition: A syntactic derivation canonly be continued by applying operations to the rootprojection of ate tree.Feature checking Syntactic objects have features. Lexical items (syntactic objects) are bundles of features. Some features are interpretable, others areuninterpretable. By the time the derivation is finished, there must beno uninterpretable features left (Full Interpretation). Uninterpretable features are eliminated bychecking them against matching features. Thishappens as a result of Merge: Features of sisters cancheck against one another. Merge doesn’t just happen. It has to happen.Heads and complements When Merge combines twosyntactic objects, one projects itsfeatures, one does not. When a lexical item projects itsfeatures to the combined syntacticobject, it is generally called thehead, and the thing it combinedwith is generally called thecomplement. A syntactic object that projects nofurther is called a maximalprojection. Where X is the category, this isalternatively called Xmax or XP. The complement is necessarily amaximal projection.VPkick[uN, V]me[N, acc, 1, sg]maximalprojectionmaximalprojectionhead complementHeads and complements A syntactic object that has notprojected at all (that is, alexical


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BU CAS LX 522 - Syntax I

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