Syntax 2 Lecture 1

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Syntax 2Lecture 1

• An Overview of GB

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The Main Questions of Generative Grammar

• What is language?
• What do we know when we know a language?
• How is this knowledge acquired?

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Language faculty

• an innate language acquisition device specific to
  the human species located in the brain.
  Genetically given structured, prewired mental
  organ determining stages of acquisition, allowing
  for cross-linguistic variety.

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What does the language faculty contain?

• Principles general principles concerning
  language, universal
• Parameters different options given by the
  principles. Different parameter-settings lead to
  differences between languages.

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Language Acquisiton

• Choosing the right parameter.
• How?

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Generative Grammar

• a set of rules with the help of which you can
  generate all and only the well-formed expressions
  of (a) language.

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What Makes a Good Grammar?

• generality the range of sentences the grammar
  analyzes correctly.
• selectivity the range of non-sentences the
  grammar identifies as problematic.
• understandability the simplicity of the
  grammar itself.
• Simple rules can produce complex phenomena if
  they interact in complex ways, e.g. chess.

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Government and Binding Theory
Lexicon
X-Bar Theory
D-structure
Theta Theory
movement
Case Theory
S-structure
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X-bar Theory

• a module of GB (Government and Binding Theory)
  containing three very simple rules to describe
  the structure of the expressions of a language
• 1. the specifier rule XP ? Specifier X
• 2. the complement rule X ? X Complement
• 3. the adjunct rule (optional, recursive)
• X ? X Adjunct
• 
  XP ? XP Adjunct
• 
  X ? X Adjunct

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XPs

• D(eterminer) Phrase
• N(oun) Phrase
• V(erb)Phrase/vP
• P(reposition) Phrase
• A(djective/Adverb) Phrase
• I(nflection) Phrase
• C(omplementiser) Phrase

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Government and Binding Theory(with the modules
already introduced)
Lexicon
X-Bar Theory
D-structure
Theta Theory
movement
Case Theory
S-structure
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Theta Theory

• Thematic roles, or theta roles specific semantic
  relationship between the verb and its arguments.
  The theta-role of the subject is not predictable
  (run/look at vs. love/see!)
• The verb theta-marks its arguments.
• Theta-theory that component of the grammar that
  regulates the assignment of thematic roles.

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A List of the Major Thematic Roles

• AGENT/ACTOR the one who intentionally initiates
  the action expressed by the predicate.
• PATIENT the person or thing undergoing the
  action.
• THEME the person or thing moved by the action
  expressed by the predicate.
• EXPERIENCER the entity that experiences some
  (psychological) state.
• BENEFACTIVE/BENEFICIARY the entity that benefits
  from the action.
• GOAL the entity towards which the activity is
  directed.
• SOURCE the entity from which something is moved
  as a result of the activity.
• LOCATION the place in which the action or state
  is situated.

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The Theta Criterion

• Every argument must be assigned a theta-role.
• Every theta-role must be assigned to an argument.

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Government and Binding Theory
Lexicon
X-Bar Theory
D-structure
Theta Theory
movement
Case Theory
S-structure
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Case Theory

• Case theory accounts for some of the formal
  properties of overt DPs and integrates the
  traditional notion of case into the grammar.
• Morphological vs. abstract case (in English
  abstract case is often not morphologically
  realized abstract case is part of universal
  grammar)
• English case system overt distinction between
  NOMINATIVE and ACCUSATIVE can be found in the
  pronoun system (with several examples of case
  syncretism).

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Accusative Case

• ACCUSATIVE
• (1) object DP of a transitive verb
• (2) subject DP of infinitival subordinate
  clauses
• (3) DP complement of a preposition
• ? transitive verbs and prepositions assign
  ACCUSATIVE case to the DP they govern, they
  case-mark the DP.

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Nominative Case

• subjects of finite clauses
• NOMINATIVE case is assigned by virtue of the
  specifier-head agreement between the subject DP
  and finite INFL

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The Case Filter

• Every overt DP must be assigned abstract Case.

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Government and Binding Theory
Lexicon
X-Bar Theory
D-structure
Theta Theory
movement
Case Theory
S-structure
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The Lexicon

• that part of the grammar that lists the
  idiosyncratic properties of words, e.g. the
  subcategorisation frame (listing the complements
  of e.g. a verb)

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Relationship Between the Lexicon and Syntactic
Structure

• (i) The lexical category of the head of the
  phrase determines the category of the phrase.
• (ii) The thematic structure of the predicate
  determines the minimal components of the
  sentence.
• Projection Principle
• Lexical information is syntactically represented.

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Government and Binding Theory
Lexicon
X-Bar Theory
D-structure
Theta Theory
movement
Case Theory
S-structure
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D-structure, Movement, S-structure

• Sentences have two levels of syntactic
  representation
• D(eep)-structure this level encodes the lexical
  properties of the constituents of the sentence.
  It represents the basic argument relations in the
  sentence.
• S(urface)-structure this level reflects the more
  superficial properties of the sentence the
  actual ordering of the elements in the surface
  string, and their case forms.
• The two levels of syntactic representation are
  related to each other by means of movement
  transformations D-structure ? Movement
  transformations ? S-structure