1Week 3a. Morphosyntacticfeatures, part II.Ch. 2, 4.2-CAS LX 522Syntax ILexical items Recall that part of our languageknowledge is the knowledge of thelexicon. The lexicon is a list of the “words” More accurately, it is a list of the thingssentences are made of. It is traditionally considered to be where“unpredictable” information is stored. Thesound, the meaning, the grammatical categoryand other features.Features of lexical items A lexical item is a bundle of properties. It is a meaning,paired with instructions for pronunciation, pairedwith syntactic properties like category. We represent these properties as features—any givenlexical item has Semantic features Phonological features Syntactic features When it comes to syntax, syntactic features certainlymatter. But no language seems to arrange its sentencessuch that words that start with t are first. Hypothesis: Syntax can only “see” syntactic features.English pronouns The English pronouns make several distinctionsover and above a singular/plural distinction. One distinction is in person, which is sensitiveto who is talking and to whom. English (and most languages) distinguish threepersons.theyhe/she/itthird personyouyousecond personweIfirst personpluralsingularEnglish pronouns We do not want model this with three independentperson features [1], [2], and [3], since that would predicteight persons (e.g., [1,3], [1,2,3]). With two features, weonly predict four. By eliminating [3], we predict the system below, plus the[1,2] combination that is not morphologicallydistinguished in English.theyhe/she/itthird person [ ]youyousecond person [2]weIfirst person [1]pluralsingularFourth person If [1] indicates the person speaking and [2]indicates the person spoken to, whatshould [1,2] indicate? [1,2,pl] = we (including you). [1,pl] = we (not including you). Some languages make this distinctionmorphologically, e.g., Dakota. Nolanguages seem to distinguish 8 persons.2Gender Many languages distinguish nouns on thebasis of “gender” as well. English: he/she/it (3rd person pronouns) Gender often comes in 2-3 flavors(masculine, feminine, neuter) which oftencorresponds roughly to biological genderwhere applicable.Phi-features (φ-features) Collectively, person, number, and genderfeatures are referred to as φ-features. These are the features that are generallyinvolved in subject-verb agreement.Case features English pronouns also change form dependingon where they are in the sentence, what theirsyntactic role is. He left. I saw him. He saw me. The information about syntactic position isencoded by case features. In English, case is only visible on pronouns. In many other languages, case is visible on all nouns(and sometimes on words modifying nouns, likeadjectives or determiners)Case names In English, we distinguish nominative (onsubjects), genitive (on possessors), andaccusative (elsewhere).itsherhisyourmyGentheytheytheyyouweNomPluraltheirthemitittheirthemhershetheirthemhimheyouryouyouyouourusmeIGenAccAccNomSingularFeatures and pronunciation Recall that lexicalitems are bundles offeatures. Like [Acc, 1, sg, PRN] The syntactic systemarranges these lexicalitems into sentences,and then hands theresult off to the A-Pand C-I systems (atthe interfaces).itsherhisyourmyGentheytheytheyyouweNomPluraltheirthemitittheirthemhershetheirthemhimheyouryouyouyouourusmeIGenAccAccNomSingular At the A-P interface,[Acc, 1, sg, PRN] isinterpreted as “me”.Features and pronunciation Notice that the pronounparadigm does not makeevery possibledistinction. Only 3rd person singulardistinguishes genderforms. 2nd person does notdistinguish number orbetween Nom and Acc. 3rd person singularfeminine doesn’tdistinguish between Accand Gen.itsherhisyourmyGentheytheytheyyouweNomPluraltheirthemitittheirthemhershetheirthemhimheyouryouyouyouourusmeIGenAccAccNomSingular This structure can give us ahint about how the interfacerules work—more on this in amoment.3Verbal features Some features are specific to verbs… [past], for example, differentiating write from wrote,kick from kicked. This is a tense feature. Some languages have a special form of the verb forfuture as well, [future]. We can characterize present tense as being non-past,non-future. In English, future is expressed in other ways, with amodal (will) or with the verb go. English does not seem tomake use of the [future] feature; in English we have justpast and non-past. (cf. duals and the use of the [sg] feature on nouns)Participles English verbs can also take on a participle form:writing, written. These don’t express tense, but rather aspect. The -ing form is the “present participle” and appearsafter the auxiliary verb be, indicating a continuing event. The -en form is the “past participle” and appears after theauxiliary verb have, indicating a completed event. Tense can still be expressed—on the auxiliary: I havewritten, I had written, I am writing, I was writing. Adger’s proposal: Present participle: [V, part] (writing) Past participle: [V, part, past] (written)Bare verb/infinitive I want to win the lottery. The bare form of the verb (often appearing afterto) is the infinitive. We will assign infinitive forms the feature [Inf]. The fact that the infinitive is a bare verb (nosuffixes or other inflection) in English may besomething of a coincidence. Other languagesmark the infinitive with a special verb form, on apar with participles or tensed verbs.Verb agreement Verbs very often (across languages) agree withthe subject in φ-features as well. I eat bagels. He eats bagels. They eat bagels. However, eat isn’t really “plural” in any sense.Plurality is a property of the subject, but it isreflected in the morphology of the verb. This may be the clearest example of thedistinction between interpretable anduninterpretable features. The φ-features areinterpretable on the noun, but uninterpretableon the verb. (We’ll continue to discuss thisdistinction)Verb agreement In English, only finite verbs show agreement(those that are not infinitives or participles). In fact, only present tense verbs do, with the singleexception of the copula (be). In other languages, agreement sometimesappears on other forms. Participles, for example,sometimes agree with their object. Infinitivesvery rarely agree with