grammatical foundations

Test your knowledge

6Explain the difference between restrictions imposed by a head on complements and those imposed on specifiers.

7Discuss implications of the rule Move and the Structure Preservation Principle.

8What levels of structural description are assumed and how are they linked? How can D-Structure be characterised?

9Discuss theta role assignment and the locality constraint imposed on it.

10Show the distribution of nominative versus accusative case in English.

11What bearing does the observation that clauses must have subjects have on the movement types passive and raising?

Test your knowledge

Exercise 1

Identify those tree diagrams that exemplify possible configurations. State what the problem is with those that contain impossible configurations.

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Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic Theory

(15)XP

ZP WP YP

Exercise 2

Fill in the well-formed tree diagrams in Exercise 1 with lexical items. Pay attention to category: if there happen to be two XPs in a diagram, make sure that the category of the lexical items chosen is identical.

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Test your knowledge

Exercise 3

Decide what the syntactic head of the following compounds is and where it is in the structure. Comment on whether the meaning of the compounds may be composed of the meanings of its elements.

Exercise 4

Comment on how the Theta Criterion can account for the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of the sentences below.

(1)a Peter drinks.

b*Peter Mary met John.

c*Peter met.

d*Peter gave Mary.

e*Peter gave flowers.

f*John put the book.

g*John put on the table.

hPeter wrote a letter to Mary.

iPeter wrote a letter.

jMary washed.

kMary wondered what the time was.

lThat they stole the diamonds surprised the police.

Exercise 5

Compare the grammatical functions and theta roles of the DPs in the pairs of sentences below. Comment on changes in either.

(1)a Peter gave Mary flowers.

bPeter gave flowers to Mary.

(2)a The postman delivered the letters.

bThe letters were delivered.

(3)a That he left surprised us.

bIt surprised us that he left.

(4)a Peter noticed the scar on her ankle.

bThe scar on her ankle appeared small.

(5)a Mary is easy to please.

bMary tries to please everybody.

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Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic Theory

(6)a Who do you want to meet? b Who do you want to help?

(7)a He took a shower. b He showered.

(8)a He made the ball role down the hill. b He rolled the ball down the hill.

Exercise 6

Below you can find an abstract sentence where small letters symbolize the words of the sentence while capital letters stand for larger units. Construct a tree diagram equivalent to the bracketed structure.

[I [H a b] [J c [K d [L e f]]]]

Exercise 7

Below you will find the tree structure of an abstract sentence. Small letters represent words while capitals stand for larger units. Give an equivalent bracketed structure.

Exercise 8

Give the lexical entry of each word in the following sentence.

The little boy may think that he will get a very expensive present for his birthday.

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Test your knowledge

Exercise 9

Identify the arguments in the following sentences and state what thematic role they are assigned to by what items.

(1)Jack thought that he knew the right answer.

(2)One of the big parties seems to be unlikely to be believed to win the elections.

(3)John gave three red roses to Jane.

(4)The teacher wanted the students to pass the exam.

(5)It was believed that John was taken to hospital.

(6)There is a man at the entrance door.

(7)The exam sheets were believed to have been corrected by the teacher.

Exercise 10

Identify the adjuncts in the sentences below.

(1)a The little boy gave a nice drawing to his mother for her birthday.

bThe teacher wanted to know whether the new students would know what to do when they arrive.

cWhy do you ask me whether I want to by a new computer next year?

dThe new guest professor of Mathematics from Germany will probably arrive at the recently renovated railway station at 2:15.

eHow can you decide whether a loaf of bread on the shelf is fresh or not?

fJack and Jane saw a very interesting new film at the cinema in the city centre.

gSometimes it is difficult for students to find the adjuncts in sentences like this.

hThe mayor of the city said that the river is unlikely to flood the city.

iThe workers didn’t believe that they don’t have to work on the following week.

Exercise 11

Decide whether the phrases in italics in (1) are adjuncts or complements of the verb. Try to prove your statement buy applying an appropriate constituency test.

(1)a. David wrote a letter on the desk.

b.David put a letter on the desk.

c.Mary slept in the bed.

d.Mary stayed in the bed.

e.Jill arrived at the station.

f.Jill waited at the station.

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Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic Theory

Exercise 12

Observe the contrast between the sentences in each pair. Explain why sentences (a) are correct while sentences (b) are incorrect.

(1)a. Julie met the student of Physics from France and I met the one from Spain

b.*John knows the student of Physics from France and I know the one of English from Spain.

(2)a. Julie met a student of Physics of considerable intelligence.

b.*Julie met a student of considerable intelligence of Physics.

(3)a. Julie met a student of Physics and of Mathematics.

b.*Julie met a student of Physics and of considerable intelligence.

Exercise 13

Give the X-bar structure of each of the following phrases in italics.

(1)a John solved the problem independently of me.

bMy professor lives right in the middle of nowhere.

cI am very afraid of wild animals.

dJohn read a book about Britain.

Exercise 14

The X-bar theory predicts that in English the following sentences are ungrammatical. Explain how the X-bar theory can account for the ungrammaticality of the sentences below. Notice that the phrases in italics are responsible for the ungrammaticality of the sentences.

(1)a *The teacher from France of English likes going to open lectures.

b*Mary often drives too fast her car.

c*Every student in Cambridge of Physics gets an excellent job.

Exercise 15

Give the tree diagram of the following phrases.

Exercise 16

Give the internal structure of the following compound nouns.

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Test your knowledge

Exercise 17

Why are these sentences ill-formed?

(1)a *Penny promised.

b *The boy slept a car. c *Garry gave Greg.

d *Gave a cent to Marion.

e *Adam ate an apple for Anne. f *Daniel danced Dora.

Exercise 18

Identify the thematic roles assigned by each predicate and identify the Cases of the DPs as well.

(1)a Who do you think Izzy will invite?

b Terry thinks that the car has been stolen.

c Frank will fly from New York to Amsterdam. d Sally seems to be selected by the committee. e I expect this girl to rewrite her essay.

f For Chuck to choose from these chicks will be hard.

Exercise 19

(i)Find examples from languages other than English for reversed orders of head–complement, specifier–head, specifier–head–complement, head–adjunct, etc.

(ii)Work out possibilities for adjunction the adjunct rule allows. Which constituent can never occur as an adjunct? Why?

(iii)Attempt to think about constructions that may potentially go against the idea that all phrases are endocentric (either because they seem exocentric or because they seem to exhibit properties of more than one head).

(iv)Given the distribution of nominative and accusative forms in English, what problem is raised by the following examples?

(1)a He being the owner, we were all given a free drink. b Who wants ice cream? Me.

c Her cheat on him? Never.

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Chapter 4 - The Determiner Phrase

This is not a good argument, however, as it is not wise to conclude about the syntactic properties of an element on the basis of its semantic properties. There are many elements which might be considered to be the syntactic head of a phrase which are not the semantically most important word. For example, consider the following:

(3)cups of tea

Semantically, the noun tea is the most important element in this phrase: it refers to something which can be described as tea and not a cup. When one drinks a cup of tea, it is the tea that gets drunk, not the cup! Yet, syntactically it seems that cup should be considered as the head and the phrase containing tea as its complement. This provides us with a straightforward structure:

If, on the other hand, we wanted to claim that the noun tea is the syntactic head of the phrase we would have difficulty fitting in the preposition and the other noun:

cups?

of?

N

tea

Neither of these elements appears to behave like either a specifier or an adjunct and so the analysis is highly problematic.

Another case where it might be argued that the syntactic head of a phrase is not the most important semantic element within it concerns preposition phrases:

(6)a go [to London]

b look [through the tunnel]

In these cases, as in those above, the preposition does contribute something to the meaning of the phrase, though it is not clear that this should be seen as the most important aspect of the meaning of the whole phrase. Indeed London and tunnel seem to contribute just as important, if not more important information. However, it would not make sense to claim that the nouns are the heads of these phrases as they are clearly not NPs, not having the distribution of NPs:

(7)a *go [London]

b *look [the tunnel]

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