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diff --git a/linguistics/syntax.md b/linguistics/syntax.md index 9c61f48..bf0d278 100644 --- a/linguistics/syntax.md +++ b/linguistics/syntax.md @@ -214,7 +214,7 @@ We have stated that Bare Phrase Structure pulls aspects of the lexicon directly A **lexicon** is a language speaker's internal collection of lexical entries. But what is a lexical entry? -What exactly a lexical entry contains is up to some debate. The English language consists of (significantly) upwards of 400,000 words. How humans can hold that much information in our mind, and retrieve it so quickly? This is biologically interesting, and there are arguments for what such entries should and should not contain that come from such fields. For our purposes, we will focus entirely on analysis, and ignore biological motivations. We treat a **lexical entry** as containing the following information about an associated morpheme: +What exactly a lexical entry contains is up to some debate. The English language consists of (significantly) upwards of 400,000 words. How humans can hold that much information in our mind, and retrieve it so quickly? This is biologically interesting, and there are arguments for what such entries should and should not contain that come from such fields. For our purposes, we will focus entirely on syntactic analysis, and ignore biological motivations. We treat a **lexical entry** as containing the following information about an associated morpheme: - phonetic features (**p-features**): how the word is pronounced - With our focus on syntax, we shall simply consider this the standard written representation of the morpheme. But it should really be written in IPA. - formal features (**f-features**): the type of the morpheme and what types it selects, if any @@ -248,6 +248,67 @@ Merge is *the* fundamental underlying aspect of syntax and arguably language as ### vP shells +Consider the following sentence: *Alice will speak to the assembly*. With our current knowledge of syntax, we would diagram it as so: + +![`[T [D Alice] [T_D [T_{D,V} will] [V [V_P speak] [P [P_D to] [D [D_N the] [N assembly]]]]]]`](no-subject-movement.png) +<details markdown="block"> +<summary>LaTeX</summary> + +```forest +\begin{forest} + [$T$ + [$D$ [Alice, roof]] + [$T_D$ + [$T_{D,V}$ [will, roof]] + [$V$ + [$V_P$ [speak]] + [$P$ + [$P_D$ [to]] + [$D$ + [$D_N$ [the]] + [$N$ [assembly]]]]]]] +\end{forest} +``` + +</details> + +The $D$ *Alice* here is the subject. While replacing it with some $D$s produces grammatical sentences ex. *The prime minister will speak to the assembly*: this is not true of all $D$s. Slotting in inanimate $D$s like *Time will speak to the assembly* and *Knowledge will speak to the assembly* produces grammatically unacceptable sentences. So there is some *selection* occurring somewhere in the sentence that wants a particular *feature set* (f-features) from the subject $D$. + +Observe, however, that our tree structure suggests that $T$ - and only $T$ - is involved in the selection of $Alice$ as the subject, given locality of selection. But this can't be quite right. Plenty of other sentences involving the $T$ *will* are just fine with inanimate subjects: *Time will pass*, *Knowledge will be passed on*, etc. (Notice that *Alice will pass* and *Alice will be passed on* are similarly ungrammatical). How do we reconcile this? + +We now introduce the idea of $vP$ shells and V-to-T movement. Our observations above point towards the $V$ of the sentence rather than the $T$ selecting for the subject $D$ - somehow. This selection would break our guiding principle of locality of selection. But this behavior *does* occur. Can we extend our model to explain this, *without* modifying the locality of selection that has been so useful thus far? We can, indeed, and illustrate so in the following tree. + +![`[T [D Alice] [T_D [T_{D,V} will] [V [D (subj)] [V_D [V_{D,P} speak] [P [P_D to] [D [D_N the] [N assembly]]]]]]]`](subject-movement.png) +<details markdown="block"> +<summary>LaTeX</summary> + +```forest +\begin{forest} + [$T$ + [$D$ [Alice, roof, name=Alice]] + [$T_D$ + [$T_{D,V}$ [will, roof]] + [$V$ + [$D$ [(subj), roof, name=subj]] + [$V_D$ + [$V_{D,P}$ [speak]] + [$P$ + [$P_D$ [to]] + [$D$ + [$D_N$ [the]] + [$N$ [assembly]]]]]]]] + \draw[->,draw opacity=0.5] (subj) to[out=west,in=south] (Alice); +\end{forest} +``` + +</details> + +So we say that *Alice* is originally selected by the $V$ and *moves* to its surface position in the $T$. Our head movement principles allow for this. This does mean that every tree diagram we have drawn up until now is inaccurate, and that almost every tree we draw going forward will have to have this V-to-T movement. This is a fine tradeoff to make in exchange for accurately describing previously-unclear syntactic behavior. + +> Note: this is not called V-to-T movement. What *is* it called? + +### small clauses + ## Agree ### theta roles |