Syntax

Wu Heping
MA Program in Linguistics and Language Teaching
Northwest Normal University
[Link]
[Link]
Lanzhou·2006

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Key Points Highlighted

 Syntax
 Types of Grammar
 American structuralism and its brief history
 IC Analysis
 Syntactic Categories
 Lexical Categories
 Chomsky and UG

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Syntax

 Syntax: the study of the structure of

sentences and the grammatical rules
governing the way words are combined to
form sentences.

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Types of Grammar

 Prescriptive Grammar
 Descriptive Grammar
 Universal Grammar

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Prescriptive Grammar

Traditional Grammar and the prescriptive

approach: Grammar as ‘linguistic etiquette’,
i.e. the identification of the best/proper
structures to be used;

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Descriptive Grammatical Rules

 Descriptive rules are more general and more

basic than prescriptive rules in the sense
that all sentences of a language are formed
in accordance with them, not just the subset
of sentences that count as correct or socially
acceptable.

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Prescriptive Rules

 Grammar is a collection of rules concerning

what counts as socially acceptable and
unacceptable language use. These rules in
question primarily concern the proper
composition of sentences in written language.
- Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction
- Don’t end a sentence with a preposition
- Don’t use sentence fragments
- Don’t use dangling participles
- Don’t use a plural pronoun to refer back to a singular noun; etc.
 e.g. Over there is the guy who I went to the party with

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Descriptive Grammar

 Rules of descriptive grammar have the status of

scientific observations, and they are intended as
insightful generalizations about the way that human
language is used in fact, rather than about how it
ought to be used.
- Articles precede the nouns they belong to
- Relative clauses follow the noun that they modify
- Prepositions precede their objects

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Grammatical sentences

 An ungrammatical sentence is conventionally

prefixed with an asterisk (*) while the grammatical
sentences are usually not specifically marked.
- ( ) Over there is guy the who I went to party the
with
- ( )Over there is the man I went to the party with
guy
- ( )Over there is the guy who I went to the party
with
- ( )Over there is the guy with whom I went to the
party

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Prescriptive vs. Descriptive

 Rules of etiquette or laws of  Rules of scientific

society observations
 Rules about all sentences of
 Rules about correct or a language
socially accepted sentences  Rules followed effortlessly
 Rules explicitly taught and consistently
 Document all variants without
 Based on the more favored
variants
discrimination
- …the verb CAN agree in
- …The verb SHOULD agree in number with EITHER the
number with the logical expletive subject OR with the
subject logical subject

 There’s some boxes left on the porch

 There are some boxes left on the porch

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Universal Grammar

 Grammar as a form of internal linguistic

knowledge that operates in the appropriate
production and comprehension of natural
languages.

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Goals of a theory of grammar

- Universality: a theory of grammar should provide us with

the tools needed to describle the grammar of any natural
language adequately.
- Descriptive adequacy: a grammar of a given language
has descriptive adequacy if it explains observed language
data and the intuitions of native speakers about the
grammaticality of sentences of a language
- Explanatory adequacy: a theory of grammar has
explanatory adequacy if it explains how native speakers
of a language can arrive at the knowledge of that
language.
- Learnability: an adequate linguistic theory must provide
adequate grammars which are learnable by young
children in a relatively short period of time. i.e., it must
account for the uniformity and rapidity of language
acquisition, given the poverty of stimulus.

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American Structuralism

 A brief history
 How is descriptive linguistics done?
 IC Analysis

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American Structuralism: A brief history

 Descriptive linguistics is the study and analysis of spoken language. The

techniques of descriptive linguistics were devised by German American
anthropologist Franz Boas and American linguist and anthropologist Edward
Sapir in the early 1900s to record and analyze Native American languages.
 Franz Boas: Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911
- He saw grammar as a description of how human speech in a language
is organized. A descriptive grammar should describe the relationships of
speech elements in words and sentences.
 Leonard Bloomfield,
- best known for his commitment to linguistics as an independent science
and his insistence on using scientific procedures.
- His major work, Language (1933) is regarded as the classic text of
structural linguistics, also called structuralism.
 Norm Chomsky
- had studied structural linguistics, was seeking a way to analyze the
syntax of English in a structural grammar.
- This effort led him to see grammar as a theory of language structure
rather than a description of actual sentences.

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How is descriptive linguistics done?

 A corpus of data
 Segmentation
 Identification of the phonemes
 Which phonemes can combine to form morphemes
 How morphemes combine into phrases and
sentences.

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IC analysis

 The basic concern of the descriptive approach is to investigate the

distribution of forms in a language. The method used is one of
substitution.
 Constituent: a grammatical unit which is part of a larger grammatical
unit
-- e.g., sentence = noun phrase + verb phrase;
noun phrase = determiner + noun; "subject", ”verb", "determiner" and
"noun" etc. are constituents

 IC analysis is designed to show how small constituents in a sentence

combine to form larger constituents.
 My || parents | bought ||| two tickets || at ||| Christmas.

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More exercises on IC analysis

 Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

 John found a fly in the soup
 the young king who gave up his throne
 the man from the city in the little country from
Western Europe

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 Labelled Tree Diagram and
S

Bracketing
NP VP

Pron N VP PP

V NP P N

Det N

My parents bought two tickets at Christmas

[S[NP [Pron my][N parents]]VP[VP[V bought]NP[Det two][N tickets]]PP[P at] [N Christmas]]]]

 Three aspects of a speaker’s syntactic knowledge are

explicitly represented in tree diagrams:
- The linear order of the words in the sentence
- The groupings of words into syntactic categories
- The hierarchical structure of the syntactic categories
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Syntactic categories

 A family of expressions that can substitute for one

another without loss of grammaticality is called a
syntactic category.
- The cat chases the mouse.
- The dog chases the mouse
- The policeman chases the mouse.
- The mother mouse chases the mouse.
 If words and phrases could not be assigned to a
small group of categories, it would be very hard to
learn or use a language.

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Syntax: Lexical Categories

 Lexical Categories:
- every word is a member of a category.
- a word’s category type determines the kind of phrase it
can form
- a phrase is a word or string of words that functions as a
unit in a sentence, built around a head
- Every language has specific phrase structure rules
determining how phrases can be combined to form
sentences

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Syntax: Lexical Categories

 Noun (N):
- real, imaginary, abstract things
- In English, if nouns refer to countable things, the
regular plural is made by suffixing -s/-es
- In English they can be paired with articles and
demonstratives
 EX: the book, this book, that book, etc.
- In English they can be modified with descriptive words
(adjectives)

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 Noun Phrases (NP)

NP NP NP

Det N Det A N N

the student the controversial book it

[NP[Det the [N student]]

 Evidence that NPs are syntactic units comes from the fact they can often be replaced by
a single word such as the pronoun they or it
- The students read the controversial book.
- The students read it.
- *The students read the controversial it.

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 Syntax: Lexical Categories

 Verb (V):
- refer to states of affairs and events
- express time, in most languages take a specific forms
corresponding to the time of the event
 EX English: walk expresses past by adding -ed
- express manner (aspect) of event, in many languages take a
specific form corresponding to the completedness of event.
 EX English: walk expresses ongoing action by adding -ing

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Verbal Phrase (VP)

VP VP

V PP
V NP

P NP

Det N
Det N

trip on the bat

drop the ball [VP[V trip [PP[P on[NP[Det the[N bat]]]]
[VP [V drop NP[Det the][N ball]]]

 Evidence that VPs are syntactic units comes from the

fact they can often be replaced by the word(s) did (it).
- The catcher dropped the ball, and the pitcher did (it) too.

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 Syntax: Lexical Categories

 Preposisions (P): Express roles

- Instrument
 EX Eng: with, He cut the bread with the knife
- Possessor
 EX Eng: of, Monday is the best day of the week.
- Spatial, directional and Temporal relations
 EX English: The food was on the table before it fell to the floor.

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Prepositional Phrase
PP

P NP

Det N

in the park

 The substitution test confirms that PP is a unit since it

can be replaced by a single word like there.
- The team practiced in the park, and Lisa practised
there, too.
- *The team practiced in the park, and Lisa practised
there the park, too.

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 Syntax: Lexical Categories

 Adjectjective (A):
- describe things that nouns refer to
- In English can be used in a sentence with the verb be:
 EX English: He is happy. They should be ripe.
- In English can be modified with degree adverbs:
 EX English: He is very happy. They should be completely ripe.
- In English have comparative form by adding -er:
 EX English: happi-er rip-er

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Adjectival Phrases (AP)
AP

Adv A

very intelligent
[AP [Adv very] [A intelligent]]

 An adjectival phrase can be replaced by the word so.

- Linda is very intelligent, and Mark appears so too.
- * Linda is very intelligent, and Mark appears very so
too.

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 Syntax: Lexical Categories

 Adverbs (Adv):
- Manner of action
 Ex Eng: quickly, He ran quickly.
- Attitude of speaker
 EX Eng: unfortunately, Unfortunately,he cut the bread.
- Temporal frequency
 EX Eng: soon, They’ll be here soon.
- Can be modified by “very” in English

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Syntax definitions, cont.

Determiner: a closed set of morphemes that “specify”

nouns, indicating definiteness or indefiniteness.
Includes articles plus other morphemes (a, an, the
those, these, many,most, some)
Degree word: very, completely (type of adverb)

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Lexical categories

Major Lexical Examples

categories Other Lexical Examples
categories

Noun (N) Pierre, butterfly Determiner The, this, these

(Det)
Auxiliary (Aux) Will, can, may
Verb (V) Arrive, discuss
Pronoun (Pro) He, she, her,
his
Adjective (A) Good, tall
Adverb (Adv) Yesterday,
silently

Preposition (P) To, in, near Conjunction And, or

(Con)

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Syntax definitions, cont.

Head (of a phrase): The constituent fundamental to the

phrase, from which the phrase derives its name.
(e.g. a noun phrase is “headed” by a noun).
Each phrase (NP, VP, etc) is the projection of the
head.
NP is headed by N
VP is headed by V, etc.
Complement: The other constituents contained in the
phrase that complete its meaning is called
complements.

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General Phrase Structure (XP)

XP

Spec X’

X (head) Comp

[XP [Spec] [ X’[X Comp]]]

 Key
Points
Highli
Spec=Specifier ghted

Comp=Complement
X=N, V, A, P, etc.

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More exercises: tree-diagram or
bracket the following the structures
 The teacher put the answers on the board
 He ran towards the red post
 Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
 John found a fly in the soup
 the young king who gave up his throne
 the man from the city in the little country from
Western Europe

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Chomsky and UG

 Chomskyan revolution
 Universal Grammar (UG)
 A historical review of UG
 From PS rules to X-bar theory
 Parameters and Cross-linguistic Variation
 From Transformation to Movement
 UG and language acquisition

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Chomskyan revolution
 Chomsky,
- has attracted worldwide attention with his ground-breaking
research into the nature of human language and
communication.
- has become the center of a debate that transcends formal
linguistics to embrace psychology, philosophy, and even
genetics.
- his "formulation of 'transformational grammar' has been
acclaimed as one of the major achievements of the
century.
- his work has been compared to the unraveling of the
genetic code of the DNA molecule."
- his discoveries have had an impact "on everything from the
way children are taught foreign languages to what it means
when we say that we are human."
- is also an impassioned critic of American foreign policy,
especially as it affects ordinary citizens of Third World
nations.

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Central Claims

 Main features of TG Grammar

 Chomsky’s TG Grammar differs from the structural grammar in a
number of ways:
- (1) rationalism;
- (2) innateness;
- (3) deductive methodology;
- (4) formalization;
- (5) emphasis on linguistic competence;
- (6) strong generative powers;
- (7) emphasis on linguistic universals.


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Universal Grammar
 Knowledge of Language
- Lexicon -Grammar
- Knowledge of words -Knowledge of rules
- Learned -Innate
- Language specific -Language Universal
 Universal Grammar
- The grammar which characterizes the innate
predisposition to learn language. UG is a set of
rules that all human possess by virtue of having
certain common genetic features which sitinguish
them from other species.

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A historical review of UG

 50-60s
- Standard theory
- Extended Standard Theory
- Rule-based
 80s
- Government and Binding Theory
- Principle and Parameter Theory (PPT)
- Principle-guided
 90s
- Minimalism Program
- Economy-driven

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Generative-Tranformational Grammar

 TG developed in the 1950s in the context of

“cognitive revolution”, which marked a shift
of focus from a concern with human
behaviour to the mental processes
underlying human behaviour.

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 Deep Structure and Surface Structure

PS-rules

Lexicon

Deep structure Semantic rules Semantic representation

representation

T-rules

Surface
Phonetic
Structure Phonological Rules
representation

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Principle and Parameter Theory

 knowledge of language comprises a lexicon,

together with a set of innate principles (that
means, X-bar Theory, -Theory and Case Theory,
etc.) and set parameters.
  Principle and Parameter (P&P) approach has
proved fruitful for
- constraining the core of innate grammatical knowledge (Pprinciples)
- defining the differences found between individual languages
(parameters)
- describing diachronic change (parameter resetting) and
- the investigation of first and second language acquisition (parameter
setting and resetting).
 .

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Minimalism Program

 Central Claims
- Language is basically simple
- The working hypothesis is that there should not be
any redundant elements in a linguistic theory and
that the computational system of language (CHL)
operates optimally.
- CHL is so designed that its outputs are naturally
‘well-formed’ and ‘economical’.
 the minimisation of linguistic levels;
 the economy principles of derivation and
representation.

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From PS-Rules to X-bar Theory

 PS-rules
- set up the general configurations of the phrasal
structures of a language
- the arragement of the elements that make up a phrase
- Rewrite rules
 S NP VP
 NP (Det) N (PP)
 VP (Aux) V (NP)
 AP (Deg) A (PP)
 PP (Adv) P (NP)
 CP (Spec) C S

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Tests of Phrase Structure
 Substitution
- The cow attacked him (the man with the gun)
- The cow attacked him (the man) with it (the gun)
- Q: Who attacked the man with a gun?
A: The cow did. (attacked the man with a gun)
What did he do?
Run up the hill and up the mountain.
*Ring up his mother and up his sister.
 Deletion
- The cow was planning to. (attack the man with the gun)

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Tests of phrase structures

 Movement
- The cow will attack whoever is in the field.
- Whoever is in the field, the cow will attack
- Who will the cow attack (the man with a gun)?
- Who will the cow attack (the man) with a gun?
- What will the cow attack the man with (the gun)?

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Syntax definitions, cont.

Head (of a phrase): The constituent fundamental to the

phrase, from which the phrase derives its name.
(e.g. a noun phrase is “headed” by a noun).
Each phrase (NP, VP, etc) is the projection of the
head.
NP is headed by N
VP is headed by V, etc.
Complement: The other constituents contained in the
phrase that complete its meaning is called
complements.

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Generalizing the rules

 S NP VP
 XP (Specifier) X (Complement)
- where X = {N, V, A, P, etc}
 Fundamental insight about the architecture of
sentence structrure:
- Sentences do not simply consist of word strings.
Rather, within any sentence, words are grouped
together to form phrases, which then combine
with each other to form still larger phrase.

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General Phrase Structure –X’
category

XP
 According to this viewpoint,
all phrases have the tri-level
structures as shown in the
tree diagram, in which the
Spec X’ head and its complement
form an X’-level constituent
and the specifier is attached
X (head) Comp at the higher XP level.
 The existence of X’
[XP [Spec] [ X’[X Comp]]] categories can be verified
with the help of the same sort
Spec=Specifier of tests for phrase structure
Comp=Complement - Deletion tests
X=N, V, A, P, etc.
- Substitution tests
- Movements tests
X’’ = XP X’=X’ X0 = X

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 S
S

NP VP
NP VP

Pron N’ V’ PP
Pron N VP PP

N V NP P’
V NP P N
Det N’ NP
Det N
N P N’

My parents bought two tickets at Christmas

My parents bought two tickets at Christmas

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Adjuncts
NP

 Can be loosely defined Spec N’

as an extension of a
category Adjunct N’

- a big red car of his Adjunct N’

XP N Comp

Spec X’ a big red car of his

Adjunct X’

X’ Adjunct

X Comp

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 S

NP VP

Det N’ Aux V’

N N’ V’ PP

N V NP P’

Det N’ P N

`N

The fourth-year undergrads will leave the university in June.

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More exercises: tree diagram the following
with tri-structure and explain the ill-
formedness of the starred sentences

 Mary’s solution to the problem

 *Mary’s the solution to the problem
 Mary’s latest solution to the problem
 the student of archeology from Canada
 the students from Canada and (from) the U.S
 *the student of archeology and from Canada
 *the student from Canada of archeology
 The man found a fly in the soup
 The lady found the man in blue jacket

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 NP

NP

Pron N’ Pron N’

A N’
N PP

P’ N PP

P’
P NP
P NP
Det N’
Det N

N N

Mary’s solution to the problem Mary’s latest solution to the problem

 The ill-formedness of the NP *Mary’s the solution to the

problem lies in the observation that both Mary’s and the
are candidate specifiers of solution but they can’t occupy
the [Spec] position of NP simultaneously.

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 NP


Det N’

N’ PP

N PP P’

P’ P NP

P NP N’

N’ N

the student of archeology from Canada

 the ungrammaticality of the NP *the student from Canada

of archeology lies in the fact that candidate compliment of
archeology can’t be adjacent to the head N and can’t
occupy the [Comp] position because of another PP from
Canada, which is more eligible as an adjunct.

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 NP
NP

Det N’
Det N’

N’ PP
N’ PP
P’
P’ Con P’
P NP

P NP P NP
NP Con NP

N’ Det N’ N’ Det N’

N N N N

the student from Canada and from the U.S the student from Canada and the U.S

 Note: the ungrammaticality of the NP *the student from canada and of

archeology can be verified by the observation the grammatical status of the
two PPs are different: while the PP of archeology is a candidate compliment
for the NP the student, the PP from Canada is more eligible for an Adjunct.
These two PPs functioning differently can’t be joined as a larger PP by the
conjunction word and.

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 S
S
NP VP
NP VP
Det N’ V’
Det N’ V’
V NP

V’ PP Det N’

V NP P’ N PP

P’`
Det N’ P NP
P NP
N Det N’
Det N’
N
N

The man found a fly in the soup The lady found fly in the plate

 These two sentences otherwise identical differ in

underlying structure in that the two PPs functions
differently, one as an adjunct of VP and the other as
a complement of NP, as illustrated in the tree
diagram.

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Parameters and Cross-linguistic
variation
Principles: those aspects of syntactic structures which
are invariant across languages
XP is the maximal projection of the head X.
Parameters: those aspects of structure which vary from
one language to another
head-first: English-type language
Kazu ate sushi, to Tokyo
head-last: Japanese-type language
Kazu sushi ate; Tokyo to.
 A head-first language applies the headfirst rule to
all of its phrases: NPs, VPs, PPs. Everything.
 Similarly, a head-last language applies the head-
last rule to all of its phrases: NPs, VPs, PPs

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Japanese English

XP
XP

Spec X’ Spec X’

Adjunct X’ Adjunct X’

X’ Adjunct X’ Adjunct

Comp X X Comp

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 IP

NP I’

N VP I

V’

CP V

C’

IP C V

NP I’

N’ VP I

V’

N’ V

Mary-ga Tom-ga hon-o yon da to omottei ru

Mary-S Tom-S book-DO read Past that think Present
Mary thinks that John read the book.

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From transformation rules to
Movement
 Transformation rules: part of TG grammar,
functions to convert a surface structure to
deep structure
- I can solve this problem.
- This problem, I can solve. (Move)
- The dog chases the mouse.
- The mouse is chased by the dot (Move and Insert)

 Move alpha: Move any category anywhere.

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Movement

 Head movement
- The movement of a word from the head position of
one phrase to the head position of another phrase
 The president was lying
 Was the president – lying?
 Wh- movement
- The movement of an operator expression into the
specifier position within CP
 You can speak what languages
 What languages can you speak __?

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Movement
CP

C’  The voters would

choose who
C IP
 Who would the voters
NP I’ __ choose __
I VP

V’

V NP

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Movements are structurally
dependent
 The man who kicked him escaped the
scene.
 Did the man who kicked him __ escape the
scene?
 * Did the man who ___ kick him escaped the
scene?

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Movement are constrained

 The senator knew the voters would choose who

 The senator knew who the voters would choose__
 *The senator knew who would the voters choose__
 The man might wonder the detectives found whose
shoes at which house
 *Whose shoes might the man wonder which house
the detectives found__ at__?
 *Which house might the man wonder whose shoe the
detectives found __at__ ?
- NP and an embedded S containing a wh-phrase
appear to create islands.

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UG and Language Acquisition

 Logical Problem: is our knowledge of grammar given,

or learned? Nature vs. nurture
 Learning the grammar = setting the parameters. Our
competence in syntax is given in part by UG, in part
by parameters defined by UG. The parameters are
set in the process of language acquisition on the
basis of exposure to a particular language
- switchbox
- Traffic rules

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 Parameters

[+] [value] Language A

Principle

[-] [value] Language B

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The notion of modularity

•Language module •Central Processes

•UG •Grammar •Memory

•Belief
•Pragmatics
•Language •Langauge
•Learning •Real-word Knowledge
•Parser
•principles •Problem-solving abilities

•Perceptual module
•vision, hearing, etc.

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UG and L2 acquisition

UG Other mental faculties

direct access no access

L1 L2
indirect access

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