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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