BU LX 522 - Week 1b. Morphosyntactic features
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1Week 1b. Morphosyntactic featuresch. 2.1-2.4.1CAS LX 522Syntax IThe atoms of the system! Syntax tells us whicharrangements of wordsmake good sentences. Butyet at a certain level thewords themselves don’tseem to matter, theyaren’t the basic elementsof 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 is morphologicallyrealized 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 ofthe actual 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 asentence need to agree in number and (forbe) 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)then the verb must take on a “plural” form.! It is crosslinguistically common to have this kind ofagreement relation between subject and verb.! Intuitively, the plural feature is interpretable on the subject,contributes to the meaning, “belongs there” in some sense.On the verb, the (agreeing) plural feature is just a“reflection”, 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 other languages(example, gloss, translation).! Why does it matter what other languages do?What are the features?! “Features are just properties”—but someproperties seem to matter for syntax, somedon’t. So, the features are actually part of ourtheory—features are the relevant properties.! No language says that subject and verb must agree in thefeature [invented in early September], although there are thingsthat have this property.! For the purpose of describing the grammar and explainingsyntactic principles, we don’t care about [invented in earlySeptember].! We have evidence, though, that [plural] matters to syntax.! We’re looking for the minimal (leastcomplicated) set of features that suffices toexplain the grammar.2[plural]! We know number matters. In English, things canbe singular or plural. So, a first guess is thatnouns have 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. Wechecked the predictions… and it doesn’tseem right. So, we’ll revise. The scientificmethod.! There is a simpler story we can tell, one thatpredicts 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]predict four combinations, overgenerates.! All attested combinations are predicted.! Some predicted combinations are not attested.! An analysis that says “All words are singular”undergen erates.! All predicted combinations are attested.! Some attested combinations are not predicted.What kind of thing is a feature?! If we view a feature like [plural] as being eitherthere or not, it is a privative feature.! Plurals have [plural], singulars don’t.! We might also view a feature like [plural] ashaving one of two values. This is a binaryvalued feature.! Plurals have [+plural], singulars have [!plural].! We don’t know from the outset which view is the best fordescribing syntax, we want to choose the one that bestcaptures the generalizations we see. The two views do makedifferent predictions—about what syntax can “see.”Duals! For English, either a privative [plural]feature or a binary-valued [±plural]feature would work. In English there aretwo classes for number, singular andplural.! Some languages also have a dual, anumber reserved for pairs. ClassicalArabic, for example, 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 akind of explanationfor that.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: Generalconstraint on grammars:Nouns must have somenumber feature, [sg] is thedefault, added in if there isno number feature already.! (We’ll return to this)Words and language! Let’s take a moment to lay out thegeneral structure 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 withthe “words” and put them together.! We can describe the knowledge ofthe words of a language as being alist, a mental lexicon.Interfaces! We can view a “word” as a bundleof features, as defined by itsproperties. The grammar assembleswords into sentences. The sentence isinterpreted and pronounced.! The assembly process is the grammarproper.! The system that interprets sentences isanother cognitive module concerned withmeaning, reasoning, etc. It interprets


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