1Week 1b. Morphosyntacticfeaturesch. 2.1-2.4.1CAS LX 522Syntax IThe atoms of the system Syntax tells us whicharrangements of wordsmake good sentences. Butyet the words themselvesdon’t seem to matter,they aren’t the basicelements of the system. Rather, it is the set ofproperties each word hasthat seem to be basic.Verb or not a verb, pluralor not plural… *enthusiastic are students the the students are enthusiastic *the student are enthusiastic the student is enthusiastic the students are enthusiastic *the students is enthusiastic this coffee is/*are hot. these muffins are/*is tasty.Properties… features… Words have properties. There is an abstract concept of plural, that ismorphologically realized in several different ways. A deer ate my bagel. Deer are funny. A dog ate my bagel. Dogs are funny. A goose ate my bagel. Geese are funny. Same “agreement” requirement, regardless of theactual morphological shape. The abstract property of “plural” (or “singular”)seems to be what the grammar is sensitive to. (Morphosyntactic) features.Agreement In English, the subject and the verb of a sentenceneed to agree in number and (for be) person. The dog wants food. The dogs want food. The dog is hungry. The dogs are hungry. I am hungry. We are hungry. If the subject is plural (has a plural feature) thenthe verb must take on a “plural” form. Crosslinguistically common to have this kind ofagreement relation between subject and verb. The plural feature is interpretable on the subject,contributes to the meaning. On the verb, the (agreeing)plural feature is uninterpretable—more on that later.Data from other languages Il a dit qu’ elle était maladehe[3.sg] have[3.sg] said that she was ill‘He said that she was ill.’ Ils ont dit qu’ elle était maladethey[3.pl] have[3.pl] said that she was ill‘They said that she was ill.’ Standard 3-line format for examples from otherlanguages (example, gloss, translation). Why does it matter what other languages do?What are the features? Some features matter for syntax, some don’t. No language says that subject and verb must agree in thefeature [invented in early September], although there arethings that have this property. For the purpose of describing the grammar andexplaining syntactic principles, we don’t care about[invented in early September]. We have evidence, however, that [plural] mattersto syntax. We’re looking for the minimal (least complicated)set of features that suffices to explain the grammar.2[plural] We know number matters. In English, things can besingular or plural. So, a first guess is that nounshave either a [singular] feature or a [plural] feature. Hypothesis:[sg] and [pl] are features a word can have. Prediction:Four classes of words: [sg], [pl], [sg.pl], []. But we really only have two classes in English. This hypothesis overgenerates—it predicts theexistence of the actual distinctions, but it alsopredicts other distinctions that don’t exist.[plural] We observed the data (nouns can besingular or plural in English), we stated ahypothesis, which made predictions. Wecheck the predictions… and it doesn’tseem right. The scientific method. There is a simpler story we can tell, onethat predicts exactly two classes. [plural] for plurals, [] for singulars.Overgeneration /undergeneration Already we have the basic structure of ourtheory and a means of analysis evaluation. Two independent features [pl] and [sg] predictfour combinations, overgenerates. All attested combinations are predicted. Some predicted combinations are not attested. An analysis that says “All words are singular”undergenerates. All predicted combinations are attested. Some attested combinations are not predicted.What kind of thing is a feature? Although features are “properties,” there areseveral views that have been taken on features. If we view a feature like [plural] as being eitherthere or not, it is a privative feature. We might also view a feature like [plural] as havingone of two values: [+plural] for plurals, [-plural] forsingulars. This is a binary valued feature. We don’t know from the outset which view is thebest for describing syntax, we want to choose theone that captures the generalizations we see.Duals For English, either a privative [plural] featureor a binary-valued [±plural] feature wouldwork. In English there are two classes fornumber, singular and plural. Some languages also have a dual, a numberreserved for pairs. Classical Arabic, forexample, and Hopi.Hopi morphology Pam taaqa warithat man ran[sg]‘That man ran.’ Puma ta?taq-t yu?tithose man[pl] ran[pl]‘Those men ran.’ Puma ta?taq-t warithose man[pl] ran[sg]‘Those two men ran.’ In Hopi, the dual isexpressed bycombining singularand plural. If we analyzed dualas [+pl, +sg] (or as [pl,sg]), we have a kindof explanation forthat.3The fourth number? Three numbers areattested in the world’slanguages: singular,plural, and dual. We can handle this bygoing back to the viewthat [sg] and [pl] areindependent. Singular: [sg] Plural: [pl] Dual: [sg, pl] The fourth possibility shouldbe neither. But there doesn’tseem to be a fourth number. Hypothesis: General constrainton grammars: Nouns musthave some number feature, [sg]is the default, added in if thereis no number feature already. (We’ll return to this)Words and language Let’s take a moment to lay out the generalstructure of this theory. Knowing a language is knowing the “words” knowing how to put them together knowing how to pronounce them knowing what they mean in combination.The lexicon To construct a sentence, we start with the“words” and put them together. We can describe the knowledge of thewords of a language as being a list, amental lexicon.Interfaces We can view a “word” as a bundle offeatures, as defined by its properties. Thegrammar assembles words intosentences. The sentence is interpretedand pronounced. The assembly process is the grammarproper. The system that interprets sentences isanother cognitive module concerned withmeaning, reasoning, etc. It interprets theconstructed sentence at the interface. The system that determines thepronunciation of sentences is yet
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