1Week 2a. 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 grammaticalcategory and other features.Features of lexical items A lexical item is a bundle of properties. It is a meaning, pairedwith instructions for pronunciation, paired with syntactic propertieslike category. We represent these properties as features—anygiven lexical item has Semantic features Phonological features Syntactic features When it comes to syntax, syntactic features certainly matter. But nolanguage seems to arrange its sentences such that words that startwith t are first. Hypothesis: Syntax can only “see” syntacticfeatures.English pronouns The English pronouns make severaldistinctions over and above asingular/plural distinction. One distinction is in person, which is sensitiveto who is talking and to whom. English (and most languages) distinguishthree persons.theyhe/she/itthird personyouyousecond personweIfirst personpluralsingularEnglish pronouns We do not want model this with three independentperson features [1], [2], and [3], since that wouldpredict eight persons (e.g., [1,3], [1,2,3]). With twofeatures, we only predict four. By eliminating [3], we predict the system below, plusthe [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, what should[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 onthe basis of “gender” as well. English: he/she/it (3rd person pronouns) Gender often comes in 2-3 flavors(masculine, feminine, neuter) whichoften corresponds roughly tobiological gender where applicable.Phi-features (φ-features) Collectively, person, number, andgender features are referred to as φ-features. These are the features that aregenerally involved in subject-verbagreement.Case features English pronouns also change formdepending on where they are in thesentence, what their syntactic 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(on subjects), genitive (on possessors),and accusative (elsewhere).itsherhisyourmyGentheytheytheyyouweNomPluraltheirthemitittheirthemhershetheirthemhimheyouryouyouyouourusmeIGenAccAccNomSingularFeatures and pronunciation Recall that lexicalitems are bundlesof features. Like [Acc, 1, sg, PRN] The syntacticsystem arrangesthese lexical itemsinto sentences, andthen 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 thepronoun paradigmdoes not make everypossible distinction. Only 3rd person singulardistinguishes gender forms. 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 theinterface rules work—moreon this in a moment.3Verbal features Some features are specific to verbs… [past], for example, differentiating write fromwrote, kick from kicked. This is a tense feature. Some languages have a special form of theverb for future as well, [future]. We can characterize present tense as beingnon-past, non-future. In English, future is expressed in other ways, with amodal (will) or with the verb go. English does not seemto make use of the [future] feature; in English we havejust past and non-past. (cf. duals and the use of the [sg] feature on nouns)Participles English verbs can also take on a participleform: 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 afterthe auxiliary 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 appearingafter to) 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. Otherlanguages mark the infinitive with a specialverb form, on a par with participles ortensed verbs.Verb agreement Verbs very often (across languages) agreewith the subject in φ-features as well. I eat bagels. He eats bagels. They eat bagels. However, eat isn’t really “plural” in anysense. Plurality is a property of the subject,but it is reflected in the morphology of theverb. This may be the clearest example of the distinctionbetween interpretable and uninte rpretablefeatures. The φ-features are interpretable on thenoun, but uninterpretable on the verb. (We’llcontinue to discuss this distinction)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, forexample, sometimes agree with theirobject. Infinitives very rarely agree
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