CAS LX 522 Syntax IFall 2000 September 11, 2000Paul Hagstrom Week 1: Introduction to syntaxIntroduction to the enterpriseWe’re studying the properties of peoples’ unconscious knowledge of language• You have unconscious knowledge of language.• We can gain access to it via judgments.—Is this sentence a sentence of your language (say, English)?—In what situations would such a sentence be appropriate?—What can the sentence mean?(1) a. John read the book.b. * Book the read John.c. * John the book read.d. * The book read John.(2) a. John is too stubborn to talk to Mary.b. John is too stubborn to talk to.(3) A: Do you want some coffee?B: Coffee keeps me awake.(4) a. Someone told Mary to read every book by Chomsky.√ ‘There is a person x such that x told M to read every book by C’√ ‘For every book by C, someone told M to read that book’(cf. We have something for everyone.)—I know John told Mary to read Knowledge of Language, andSusan told Mary to read Manufacturing Consent……but did anyone tell Mary to read Syntactic Structures?—Yes of course; at some point or other,someone told Mary to read every book by Chomsky.b. Someone told me Mary read every book by Chomsky.√ ‘There is a person x such that x told me M read every book by C’* ‘For every book by C, someone told me that M read that book.’Badness can come in degrees:(5) a. I think (that) John fixed the car with a hammer.b. What do you think John fixed with a hammer?c. How do you think John fixed the car?d. I wonder whether John fixed the car with a hammer.e. ? What do you wonder whether John fixed with a hammer?f. * How do you wonder whether John fixed the car?But how do we know that some of these are bad sentences of English?(6) a. John read the book.b. Mary thinks that John read the book.c. Mary thinks John read the book.d. What did John read?e. Who read the book?f. What does Mary think John read?g. What does Mary think that John read?h. Who does Mary think read the book?i. * Who does Mary think that read the book?The point: Pretty much all English speakers agree about this.It wasn’t taught to any of us in our English classes.If we just went by what seem to be the rules, we should be able to say (6i).• Sentences can be embedded with or without that.• Questions are formed by putting the wh-word at the beginning.So how do we know it? Basically: We know it because we’re human.• Part of what it is to be human is to have language.—no other animals have language (even if exposed to it).—all (normal) humans have language • Our faculty for language is innate, specified genetically.—Kids acquire (complicated) language quickly.—Kids all end up knowing stuff like ‘you can’t have the word that if youask a question about the subject of an embedded sentence’ eventhough the evidence doesn’t lead them to that conclusion.• Kids do learn their language—they don’t come with English built in.—The faculty for language only allows limited types of languages tobe learned. Languages differ in vocabulary and languages differ incertain aspects of their grammars, but those differences are only ofa small number of allowable kinds: parameters of variation.Big picture: When we study syntax, we are partly working toward a characterization ofthis knowledge of language that speakers possess (unconsciously) about theirlanguage—and ultimately toward a characterization of the human faculty for languageitself.The data for syntax is generally (native speaker) judgments about the acceptabilityof sentences.• We are characterizing the knowledge of language of that person.(knowledge of language in an internal sense)• Communities whose members share very similar knowledge of language aresaid to speak the same language.• For us, a “property of English” is a property of language knowledge ofan individual speaker who would be classified as a member of theEnglish speech community.If a native speaker accepts I want to quickly go in. as a good sentence, that is a data point.Prescriptively, it may have a split infinitive and a dangling preposition, but we are in thebusiness of describing (characterizing) native speaker knowledge (not helping the nativespeaker get a job as an editor).We study the speaker’s knowledge abstracting away from what s/he may accept whendrunk (or tired, or asleep, or in a coma, …); we are concerned with native speakercompetence (not performance).Phrase structureKnowledge of language includes a lexicon (vocabulary) and rules of combination.(First pass) The lexicon contains: pronunciationmeaningkind of word (verb, noun, etc.)Parts of speech. Noun, verb, preposition, adverb/adjective, … These fit in differentplaces in a sentence.(7) The {man / puppy / *yellow / *swim / *under the table} ate lunch.Person, place, or thing?(8) The destruction of the rainforests worries many people.Some tests for part of speech (in English) from Carnie (2001).NOUNS Traditionally: Person, place, or thing.Distributionally:• the subject or object of a sentence• modified by adjectives• follow determiners (the, a, this)• marked with case, number (singular, plural), or gender endings• can have derivational endings like -ment, -ness, -ing, -er.Frame: X is a pain in the neck.VERBS Traditionally: Action (sometimes state)Distributionally:• the predicate of the clause• modified by adverbs and take auxiliaries (have, be)• follows subject, precedes object• has tense (-ed), aspect (-en) endings• can be negatedFrame: They can X or They X-ed the banana.ADJECTIVES Traditionally: State (modifying), qualities, attributesDistributionally:• follows very• modifies noun (and follows determiner)• can have derivational endings like -ish or -some.Frame: She is very X or I want the X book.ADVERBS Traditionally: Modifier of anything other than a nounDistributionally:• can have -ly ending• can appear at the beginning or very end of a sentenceFrame:Bill treats Fred X or X the students do the homework.Sentences have structure. Consider…(9) S This Sentenceis made up of the wordsthis, student, can, solve, the,and problem. Each word hasthis student can solve the problem a category (Det, N, Aux, orDet N Aux V Det N V).Parts of the sentence (strings of words) function together as a group in certain respects.These are constituents.Some ways in which they function together: —displacement—deletion—coordination—replacement—stand alone togetherThis student is a constituent.(10) a. She
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